Remote Work: Ellen Steel Of Intelligent Decisioning On How To Successfully Navigate The Opportunities & Challenges Of Working Remotely Or From Home
An Interview With David Liu
Establishing home/ work boundaries — I find it difficult to separate work from home life when working at home. I always check my emails as soon as I hear them ping from my desk — no matter what time it is! I think it’s important to plan your week and day in advance so that you know you’ve got time for everything and don’t feel the need to rush in between responsibilities to get them done.
As a part of our series about the things you need to successfully work remotely, I had the pleasure of interviewing Ellen Steel.
Ellen is Marketing Co-Ordinator of Intelligent Decisioning Ltd.. She graduated from the University of Nottingham with a BA in English this summer, and her entire career has been remote. She researched, trained, interviewed, and began working during the Covid-19 pandemic, and has had to adapt to the new working world whilst still trying to make the most of opportunities amidst the challenges of the last two years.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would love to get to know you a bit better. What is your “backstory”?
I’m a recent English graduate from Nottingham, UK, and I’ve always loved anything creative. I fell into marketing after taking on a voluntary role in the University’s Musical Theatre Society as Publicity Officer, and have loved delving into the wealth of online courses and training available to help me kickstart my career. I’ve found it really interesting discussing this with my peers and family, as I know I’ve had a very different experience to them when they were beginning their careers, and I’m particularly passionate about inclusion and flexibility when it comes to working as a result.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?
The most interesting thing I’ve found is how every little experience and connection has come back to me. For example, my current role all links back to my first voluntary role at university! I began helping with publicity thinking I was creative but not very good at putting pencil to paper, and soon discovered a love and knack for graphic design. From this I was able to take on a freelance role creating social media graphics for a financial education company. A role came up for a similar company through a temp agency on campus, and purely because of my experience working in finance marketing roles, I secured the new position, which led me to explore other companies in the area using the agency. That is where I found Intelligent Decisioning! It’s so strange to think in just a year of my career I’ve made so many connections that have led me to new opportunities — It’s fascinating to me and I’m excited to see what else comes from it!
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
The funniest mistake must be being petrified to ask questions! I thought I was expected to know absolutely everything and spent a lot of time at the start of each new role panicking and looking up the ‘exact’ way to do every little task sent my way. Little did I know that all I had to do was get started and it would all become clear — but it is quite funny to think back at how worked up I got over getting things wrong.
What advice would you give to other business leaders to help their employees thrive and avoid burnout?
Business leaders have a responsibility to make sure employees are aware of their expectations, but also to alter them when they notice a change in their employees’ attitude or behavior. Personal life does interact with work life, even when people try to not let it affect them, and so if somebody is going through an intense period personally, their employer needs to have an open and supportive conversation with them about how they can best support their efforts. Business leaders need to listen to their employees’ needs and take note of how they change and how they can work together to make the completion of their work possible without burnout.
Ok, let’s jump to the core of our interview. Working remotely can be very different than working with a team that is in front of you. This provides great opportunity but it can also create unique challenges. To begin, can you articulate for our readers a few of the main benefits and opportunities of working remotely?
Working remotely helps to reduce time, money, and carbon emissions that are normally used when commuting. It also helps employees to create a work/ life balance that works for them. Most importantly though, it allows teams to make the most of the opportunities available through online training and networking that they may otherwise miss out on if in a shared workspace where taking video calls and having discussions online wouldn’t be a possibility.
Can you articulate for our readers what the five main challenges are regarding working remotely?
The biggest challenges of working remotely are:
- Establishing home/ work boundaries.
- Getting into a healthy routine
- Dealing with practical and logistical issues
- Successful collaboration as a team
- Socializing as a team
Based on your experience, what can one do to address or redress each of those challenges? Can you give a story or example for each?
- Establishing home/ work boundaries — I find it difficult to separate work from home life when working at home. I always check my emails as soon as I hear them ping from my desk — no matter what time it is! I think it’s important to plan your week and day in advance so that you know you’ve got time for everything and don’t feel the need to rush in between responsibilities to get them done.
- Getting into a healthy routine — The easiest thing to do when you don’t have to worry about commuting is to roll out of bed 5 minutes before starting, but it’s so important to dedicate time to getting ready, having breakfast, relaxing for a couple of minutes and then beginning with the day. Otherwise, I find, the first hour of work you spend waking up and aren’t your most productive! I even sometimes take a quick walk around the block as though I’m commuting to work to set me up for a productive day.
- Dealing with practical and logistical issues — working from home is great if you have a home office but can be more difficult if you don’t have a dedicated space to set up for work. Pinterest is a great place for home working and space saving inspiration, and I’ve made sure that, even though I work in my bedroom, I’ve turned my desk to face away from the rest of the room to make it feel like a separate space. I’m fortunate also to have a curtain around that area, making it much easier to block off at the end of the day rather than stare at my to do list all evening.
- Successful collaboration as a team — collaboration is so key to create the best work, and I’ve found this a challenge when working remotely. The secret is setting expectations, both of each other and of each method of communication. For me, emails are for external communications, teams’ chats are for individual discussions, and our dedicated teams’ channels are to be focused on a specific topic or project. This makes it so much easier to keep track of conversations and to keep organized based off the task at hand.
- Socializing as a team — this is always going to be different when working remotely, as you don’t have the opportunity for casual and spontaneous conversations by the coffee machine or as you walk into the office. I think the most important thing is scheduling time to check in with the team as regularly as possible. It’s easy to take for granted asking how somebody’s weekend has been, or what they have planned for the evening, but touching base like this can really help keep everyone connected and happy in their work environments.
Do you have any suggestions specifically for people who work at home? What are a few ways to be most productive when you work at home?
One of the most important things to consider when working from home is separating your workspace from your living space. Now I know this can be really difficult for some people and space is always an issue, but trying to work away from your bed, or at least facing away from your bed, is an easy way to keep the two separate. On the same line, it’s important to try your best to not work from the comfort of your bed, as you’ll risk messing up your sleeping pattern as your brain stays active when in bed at night. Taking a quick walk before and after you start the working day can help you mentally reset for work or relaxation in the evenings too.
Can you share any suggestions for teams who are used to working together on location but are forced to work remotely due to the pandemic? Are there potential obstacles one should avoid with a team that is just getting used to working remotely?
Don’t force people to have their cameras on or join unnecessary calls! Adapting to a new working environment is always stressful, no matter the situation, forcing people to look their best and react on camera is a sure way to make them dread their working day even more. You need to allow them time to adjust. Similarly, just because people are at home, doesn’t mean that they should be available 24/7. If they’re on a lunch break, or their work day is over, they should be able to take that time to relax and be with their families.
What do you suggest can be done to create an empowering work culture and team culture with a team that is remote and not physically together?
There are lots of simple ways to empower people when working remotely. Microsoft Teams has an option to give praise to a team member, that all other members in that team can see. Verbal and written feedback is really important for remote teams, when visual clues and body language may not offer them the reassurance that they need. Simple rewards like recognition in front of the team, or allowing them to choose the activity for a weekly call that week can be a great way of keeping people motivated and empowering them to do their best work.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
I’ve thought a lot about this, and I think a ‘You choose’ movement would have a great impact. By this I mean that work should be done in the ways chosen by the employees, to give them autonomy over their work and work/life balance. This has already been kickstarted as employers have been asking their workfroce to choose office based, remote or hybrid approaches as Covid restrictions ease, but I think this could be taken further by asking employees which hours of the day they’d like to work in, what sort of tasks they should be delegated and what sort of structure their workday should take. Of course, there are logistical issues to iron out, particularly if all staff were to work at different times as there would be limited collaboration opportunities as a result. However, I strongly believe that when given control, employees are keener to prove themselves in their work and so will produce high quality work as a result.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
‘Don’t worry about getting it right, just get it started’ — Marie Forleo
This is such an important one for me as all throughout my degree I battled with the blank page before writing essays, and this has carried through to my career when preparing marketing campaigns and copy for the website. It’s a great reminder that just by getting something on the page you’ve got things to work on and staring into space trying to craft the perfect opening line really shouldn’t be the goal!
How can our readers further follow your work online?
Visit the Intelligent Decisioning Ltd. and Mercury Intranet websites here and connect with me on LinkedIn!
Thank you for these great insights! We wish you continued success.
