Homeoffice – Sharing of experiences

There are so many blogs available on Net about Homeoffice, and that makes you think why do we need one more blog about this topic.

I am not going to give you any tips regarding Homeoffice, as each of us is in a different situation and needs to handle it differently. What I have decided is to share the experiences of my Greenliff colleagues. Since we all work for the same company but on different projects, it would be exciting to read about our how they lived this unprecedent experience and what helped them getting the best out of it.

Covid-19 has almost killed the 9-5 job scenario!

Now when life seems to get back to normal, there are few open questions left unanswered for all of us. Are you ready to get back to the office, or are you happy working from home? Or would you like a mix? All of us agree that home is where we rewind ourselves from a hard day's work. But what when homes are the new offices???

Most of the people are reluctant now to go back to the office five days a week. Well, the main reason seems to be a better work-life balance. The time they'd usually spend commuting can be spent in the garden, or out exercising, walking or even relaxing a bit longer in bed. People said they'd be willing to make a significant sacrifice in order to hang onto this new-found flexible way of working.

Here follow the Homeoffice stories of my colleagues:

Stuart

I’ve been working at home for about five months now and will continue until the end of this month! At the beginning, it was quite a difficult transition. Finding how to split your day and tasks into “work” and “home time” was difficult when it was all in the same space. However, after about a month or so, I had worked out a routine and a mindset that made me far more productive than I ever was in the office. There have been a lot of benefits: I don’t have to travel anywhere to start work, so that’s given me a large portion of my day back to me, I eat better as I cook all my meals rather than eating out for lunch.

Since lockdown began, I also invested in making my home office space more comfortable and organised with filing cabinets for my notes, a new desk, so I can fit my work laptop and screen on it together, new microphone, camera and headphones so that I can be seen or heard and hear people clearly even when there is a lot of noise around me, and that’s helped significantly in the transition to it being a comfortable working environment. In addition, having my own snacks and coffee machine nearby, as well as my couch to relax and think on makes me feel like I am working out of a Google office :D

I think the social aspect of teams and office spaces is lost of course and as a result, if people were generally interested in maintaining that, having the monthly in-person meetings is probably an excellent initial step. This distant socialising isn’t too new to me as a young immigrant however, as I often socialize with my college and school friends every weekend over video chats where we might just talk or play games together.

To conclude: I think I would prefer to continue this way of working, as it saves me time and money while also making me feel generally more productive.   

Gianmarco

For me as well, the home office has been all in all a pleasant experience.

I think this is also due to the fact that my son is now nine years old and therefore he left me quite undisturbed while I was working. A few years ago, I would have probably lived the lockdown differently

One of the best advantages has been that I have had more time for myself and my family. I decided not to change my habits so that my alarm rang every day at 6:20 am as usual. But I could start working much earlier (typically at 7:30), which gave me the time to do sport (= do some exercises and go jogging) over lunchtime, when there was almost nobody on the streets. Moreover, the stress I usually have due to having to catch a specific train to be at home by a particular time also disappeared.

My wife was happy to have more help at home for small things (loading the washing machine, unloading the dishwasher etc.) and my son was delighted that I could spend more time with him.

The fact moreover that I did not stop working at the Greenliff office (I came here at least once a week, even though for just few hours), allowed me to keep some social contacts besides family and neighbours.

What I missed (and still miss) is the direct contact with our customers and the colleagues who are not in the Greenliff office. I’m missing visiting the colleagues at clients’ premises, our lunches together over there and spontaneous conversations with customers. We indeed had regular calls and meetings, but meeting in person has for me much more value than meeting virtually.

David

Basically, I already worked some days at home before. During the lockdown for the first two weeks, I enjoyed it because I saved the commute. Plus, I was able to start earlier with work (sometimes I started at 06:00) but also stopped earlier in the afternoon. I'm more the guy who likes to work in the early morning but doesn't like to work late in the evening. However, because I was not able to do sports (except jogging) because gyms were closed, my back started hurting after a while. Then, after two weeks of lockdown, it became quite dull to always stay at home. But I did a lot of Zoom calls with my friends. Instead of going to a bar, for example on Saturday evening we met in Zoom and drank some beers at home :D

Praveena

I agree with all of you, for me also it is working fantastic and I love it. Of course, I had a discomfort in the beginning, lack of self-discipline was the main reason. But once I got the knack of it, it's a great experience. Personally, this change in work-life helped me far better than my last year's sabbatical.

All said and done, I badly missed my coffee break with my colleagues to get things straight. Maybe because I still believe in the old school thought that face to face conversations are much more valuable. Let's see what next is waiting for us to change.

Felix

For me it has also been a mostly positive experience and I share similar feelings as my colleagues.

On the positive side, I like to be so close to my family in this "challenging" times. With a 5-year-old and a newborn at home, I can quickly step in almost any time to help out, which is being a great help and relief for my wife, especially as we have no close relatives nearby and they are also not able to visit us during this times. Also, I like the fact that I can organize my day very flexibly, especially handy if there are nights where I don't get much sleep, which happens often now :) If I would be in the office I would have to take one coffee after another and try to get through the day somehow without being able to be very productive, but at home, if I realise I need some rest I can quickly take a quick nap and be much more productive afterwards, which is great.

On the negative side, it is harder for me and my family to distinguish when I am working and when not. At the beginning, my 5-year-old daughter always wanted to play with me and I had to tell her: "No sorry; I have to work". And now it is the opposite, a couple of days ago, it was Saturday or Sunday, I told her: "Let's play something!" and she was like, don't worry Papa you have to work. Which was kind of sad...

So yeah, Home Office is nice for me, but I have to be careful and somehow manage to set clear boundaries, otherwise, ....

The experiences reported by my colleagues show that the lockdown mainly negatively affected the social aspect of the working life. On the other side, the work-life balance was perceived positively, and the productivity does not change, under the condition, one finds the way to maintain focus.