Remote Working: A Retrospective
Remote Working: A Retrospective
Since pandemic hits and the first lockdown began, for us it was in March 2020 the beginning of our country’s “panic mode” and people had no idea how to handle it properly at that time. Some workplaces still enforce their employees’ presence in the office physically, until one of a well-known company gets sued for it.
After the incident, companies start to pivot their work style, from physical presence to remote presence. As panic mode went on, everyone seeks for the best tool to support their meetings, Google Meet, Zoom, a self-hosted Big Blue Button to Microsoft Teams. No winner yet here at that time, natural selection was gonna do the job.
Almost two years had passed, normal conditions went up and down over and again, there have been variants coming in and out from Delta to Omicron. Some already got their permanent remote work-style but some still don’t. There are two kinds of companies that still enforce their physical presence at the workplace, first, it may be because the work needs to be done physically like unloading stock, assembling, or such, and the second one may be that their leader still has a traditional mindset, the one that says “I still need to see everyone face-to-face or else I can’t trust that you’re working”.
Lucky us, an IT company which possible to do almost every work remotely, even all the paperwork. At least we think we should be.
Years goes by, remote working was on and off for us, if everything is normal and nobody gets positive for it, we gradually increase our workforce in the workplace from 25% to 50% to 75%. But when someone got one, instantly it would get back to 25% or even 0%. Even though I said we can do all our work remotely, still, for us physical presence is necessary, we might be the second kind of leader as mentioned.
Retrospectively, there are some keys takeaway from current situations, some of them are good and some of them are degrading.
Anytime, Anywhere, Anyone
Before remote working was embraced, a meeting took up some space. We need rooms, tables, chairs, whiteboards, and of course physically presence in one place. We gather, sometimes we need pizza or coffee (in our country’s culture it’s common to buy some cold-brewed coffee for meetings). Now, we can gather anyone anytime anywhere, and oh for those who are busy, you can even be omnipresent by attending multiple meetings at once. There’s no more “out of meeting room” or “the room is not big enough” problems anymore.
The degrading part of this though, as a host we can’t directly feel and see the audience at once while being in the room. Before this, we are able to monitor if someone is getting bored, yawning, or tired directly and might call out to them to wake them up. It’s surely different, seeing people physically versus face only (and muted for most of the time).
The worst part of this “virtual meeting” is that our employer has a chance to exploit the work hour. It should be 9 to 5, but the ease of access to us makes it easy to start a meeting anytime. Indeed, you don’t have to go to the workplace anymore, because you sleep in the workplace.
Bye Commute Life!
For those who commute, this is the best era to save those journey time and convert it to something more useful. You don’t have to get up 1–2 hours early to catch the bus or train anymore, you can use those saved up time for something else more useful than sitting or hanging on the train.
You can make sure zero inboxes, arrange schedule for the day or the next, read news, articles to prepare your brain before work. You have to agree that this is a good era for commuters, besides, you also saved up some money from the commuting fee!
Unfortunately, we are Human, we tend to preserve resources when it’s scarce but waste them when it’s lavish. Be careful and wise for the extra time and money saved up.
Cabin Fever
Still realizing that we are human, we are not designed to sit in the same spot for 8 hours straight. Our brain demands us to keep socializing because we are social creatures. Think about it, that’s why prison’s punishment is The Hole or Solitary.
To keep this from happening, try to socialize more, talk to friends, old friends, call your family, brothers, parents, or better you can socialize with your neighbors and get some fresh air. Dress up your room and make it comfortable for you to work, try to create a “workspace” around you so you won’t get bored with the same ambiance all day. Hopefully, this will balance out your meeting frenzy and fatigue to prevent Cabin Fever.
Minimizing Force Majeure Impact
We can’t predict natural disasters, earthquakes, storms, floods, mount eruption (for those living near it), or worse like we are currently having right now: pandemic. By working remotely, we prevent the virus from spreading when pandemic comes, we avoid single point of failure when an earthquake, storm, or flood comes. Even though it’s possible to happen to everyone in their own zone, at least it’s partial, not everybody has the same problem at the same time. The wheel gonna keep spinning.
This is a simple retrospective of what happened for the last two years. FAANG companies embrace some new sophisticated remote (hybrid) workstyle, while some of the micro, small, medium company still hoping that this remote thing to be gone sooner. The bright side for this is that everyone is exposed and enforced to this new remote work style and might consider this as an option.
