My two cents about the forced experiment of working from home during the coronavirus pandemic.
The recent Coronavirus has disrupted day to day life in most parts of the world. As of March 16th, the highest number of cases are in China (around 81,000 cases) followed by Italy (about 28,000 cases), Iran, Spain, South Korea, Germany, France, the US, etc with about 14,000–4,000 cases. As the number of cases is increasing every day, most countries are closing their borders, for example, Germany being the latest one to do so on March 16. Along with this, social gatherings like concerts, sports events are being prohibited. Naturally, workplaces are also encouraging people to work from home and not come to the office. Kindergartens, schools, and universities are also closed and have online classes. All of these efforts are being made to flatten the curve of the total number of people being infected at one given time.
Through all this negativity, I tried to focus on the positives that this forced working remotely situation may bring in. I think of this as an experiment to see how teams and companies go through these trying times. I have always believed (and not preferred) that the future of work will be remote work. The cost of leasing offices, maintaining huge facilities and overheads is increasing and the convenience of working at home because of good communication tools is getting better.
Keeping these things in mind, below are my two cents about the positives:
- Teams will master their communication game: not being in the office means you cannot walk up to someone, make eye contact with a colleague and clarify questions or ask for help. Working remotely will mean reduced face to face touchpoints and lots of slack messages or in other words written communication. People will be forced to write well, structure their thoughts and effectively put their point across. Writing always helps to reflect on what you are going to say. Even if there are video calls or voice calls, they will be less frequent than just walking up to someone. There is nothing wrong with doing this but I have seen written threads trigger more powerful communication to wider audiences than just a water cooler agreement.
- Teams will be more productive: Working from home means no time wasted commuting, unplanned random meetings and less small talk. People tend to focus more while working remotely. This helps them concentrate and get a lot of things done. For me, personally, waking up, running to work is stressful and just when I take that out from the routine, I am more motivated to start my day earlier, focus on several topics, multitask and also save some time for my hobbies like writing this article, painting or reading.
- Time to shine for digital nomads: If you are living in the EU, there is freedom of movement and people can easily travel to different countries for events, short trips or offsite. Digital nomads can just login from anywhere, take a call or work for a couple of days from a certain location (unless there are taxation restrictions) without having to take days off. During the corona times, working remotely will just be another day in a digital nomad’s life.
- People will have time to disconnect more: Although there is a risk of always being connected, if people are disciplined and use the time saved on the commute properly, they can pursue their hobbies, meditate and not bring work home, coz guess what, they are at home. People have no choice but to disconnect at some point and watch TV or spend time with their loved ones.
- The real test of collaboration: More and more tools like Miro are rising to popularity as they help teams collaborate effectively even in a remote set up. There are tools available that help conducting brainstorming or retrospective sessions. If teams are healthy, they find innovative ways to collaborate no matter what.
6. La vie en Rose for introverts: Although I seem like a very social person, more than three people in front of me makes me anxious. I love to write and I feel my written communication is better than my FACE just staring at a bunch of people and blanking out.
7. People will spend a lot of time with their pets: Pets are known to help reduce stress and come on, who doesn’t want to just cuddle with their pooch after a tough meeting. Make sure they don’t bark during calls though!
All in all, I feel we must look at things positively during these trying times and stay safe and healthy! Remote work is changing the way we work and it is for the good.
