Yet Another Article About Working From Home During Quarantine
It’s getting more important to stay sane these days. A lot of people have never worked remotely before. Hence, working from home and especially self-isolation could feel a little bit sad, if not dramatic.
In light of the recent lockdown and quarantine, two of our team members Varduhi and Anna have already shared their ideas on “how to work from home more effectively” and “why working from home is a terrible idea.” And while they have already shared their experiences, there still are some of us who decided to add our experience on top of it.
Below, you will find answers to questions that were asked to two of our HR managers and a bunch of Product and Project Managers at SFL.
12 people have participated in the survey, and half of them said they have worked remotely (for more than a week) before.
What are some advantages of remote working?
Most of the respondents mentioned silence and the ability to concentrate on their tasks. Some other advantages were:
- No need to book a meeting room for team meetings (that can be a problem while at the office)
- You can cook and quick-bake during the lunchtime
- You spend 0 time on the commute, on makeup, dressing yourself and/or the kid
- You don’t get your name called all the time since people write to you via Slack and that doesn’t happen as frequently as at the office
- Working comfortably from your sofa and drinking as many cups of coffee as you want
- Fewer conversations and chat, more work done
What are some disadvantages of remote working?
Most of the respondents mentioned that working from home sometimes means working for more than 8 hours. If you cannot establish a work-life balance right at the very beginning, things can get messy.
Some other disadvantages of working from home were:
- Communication can be an issue especially if the person you are working with is not answering proactively
- Lots of calls and online meetings can be overwhelming
- It’s hard to concentrate and organize your work at home if you have kids
- Less social life — you miss the fun with your coworkers
- Looking like a mess (remember the point about no makeup?)
What tools are you using for team communication during the quarantine?
Since we are all working in the same company, we are all using the same tools for online communication. Those include but are not limited to the following:
- Slack
- Zoom
- Google Hangouts Meet
- Whereby
- Krisp — for noise cancellation during the calls
What other tools have you started experimenting with during the quarantine (for retros, time tracking, etc.)?
- More documentation in Jira and Confluence
- Trello for personal task management
- TomatoTimer — to be more concentrated on work
- Funretro — you can create a board for your team and invite them for collaboration
- Explain everything — this is an online whiteboard for having technical discussions. But you can always use Google docs too
- BlueStacks — APK testing tool
How do you keep your own work-life balance while working remotely during the quarantine?
Varudhi Petrosyan (HR Manager)
Working strictly during work hours, taking breaks at the same exact time as I regularly do.
Anna Hovakimyan (Project Manager)
It’s my biggest struggle at the moment. I don’t have kids or other responsibilities. So it’s one of two extremes: either procrastinating for hours or working endlessly from early morning through late night. Sometimes those extremes happen on the same day :D
Ani Aghababyan (Product Manager)
Emm, what’s that?
Diana Melkumyan (Product Manager)
I’m in it for a bit longer already. Also, I’m married to my co-worker, which isn’t making things easier at all. We really had issues stopping the work and are still pulling out 4–5 12h workdays a week. It’s really exhausting. On the good side, we’re finishing watching our 4th sitcom during the last few months. Not much energy is left to watch something more serious or read, unfortunately. You just wanna sit down and not move/think/do anything for an hour and then you go to sleep :)
We used to go out for evening walks and had a “No TruePublic” rule for the conversation topics. We’re also going to a co-working space to separate the workplace from the place we live in, and to also communicate with more people. The quarantine is limiting these so we work until our eyes melt. Needless to say, my anxiety has jumped up during the last days.
Narine Hovhannisyan (Project Manager)
I try to walk in the mornings at around 8 am when there is almost no one outside. I also try to have a break between 1–2 pm and not work after 8:30pm. I spent my personal time watching movies, reading articles and books on Product Management and Leadership.
Varduhi Zakharyan (Product Manager)
I do yoga, solve jigsaw puzzles, read books, I even did some coloring.
Alisa Mkrtchyan (Project Manager)
It is hard when the whole family is around: you fight for a “meeting room” and kids fight for your time. So for moms, I guess it is much easier when you are at the office, and you’ve got your time and space.
Anna Poghosyan (Chief HR Officer)
For me, it is flowing smoothly. I am keeping my work hours and enjoying the time with my family after work.
Margarita Artemyan (Project/Product Manager)
Well, this is something that really sucks for me. I think I am still struggling to keep my work-life balance after a week of working from home. I have noticed that I work more now from home than when I was at the office. The reason is that I don’t have distractions at home.
Ani Avdalyan (Product Manager)
Actually, it is more difficult now to keep that balance as I always have a feeling that I am at work and I might be missing out on something important. The only thing I try to do is to switch off my PC in the evenings and on Sunday, but I should admit that it does not always work so far.
Sergey Tadevosyan (Product Manager)
It was pretty hard at the very beginning. Then you start balancing your time and having more control over what you do.
Tsovinar Tarakhchyan (Product Manager)
I try to work with fixed hours and spare the evenings and the weekends for my personal life.
What tools do you use to boost your own productivity?
People have mentioned Pomodoro, Evernote, noise cancellation apps and headphones, background music, silence, closing the door of the room where they are working (lol), TomatoTimer, inspirational Ted talks, To-do apps, Trello, and Noizio as productivity boosters.
What tools/techniques do you use to boost team spirit and motivation while working remotely?
Being responsible for your team and being there for them whenever they need you. This was one of the common answers. Of course, humor, making jokes, organizing online coffee breaks, and using /giphy in Slack were also mentioned as great spirit boosters.
Summing up
So make sure to eat healthy food, stay productive, exercise at home, relax after work and talk to your loved ones.
At the end of the day, we are all in this together.
Check out our open roles at https://sflpro.com/job/.
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