1 Year on of Working From Home...

This time last year saw myself, our business along with millions of others thrust into a completely new world of working from home. With close to 8 years with MCS Group, I can only recall one single day of working from home prior to March 2020 (due to us moving offices, and admittedly it was a pretty unproductive day for me!). I felt a range of emotions last year moving into remote working; everything from anxiousness, to excitement, to nervousness and self-doubt (could we operate effectively as a team? As a business? What was going to happen? – again, like most I thought we’d be in this situation for a few months at the latest. 12 months on I wanted to share some of my experiences and thoughts:

Communication or rather effective communication while working remotely has been the most difficult learning curve. Instantly we were thrust into our silos and quickly had to master Zoom and Teams calls instead of gathering round with a coffee for our daily stands ups as a team or shouting a quick question to one and other over the shoulder in the office. While we have check-ins as a team, it was apparent from day one how much easier it is to celebrate wins, share information and even pick up on your team mates having a potential issue or struggling (almost by osmosis) when everyone is physically together in one place. 12 months on, there’s a huge amount of literature citing how people are fatigued of constant video calls and I’m just not sure how best to replicate the ‘water-cooler chat’ that’s normally so effective at building relationships with co-workers.

IKEA chairs aren’t the comfiest – I spent my first 6 months working from home at the kitchen table. While I availed of perks such as unlimited snacks and free (technically) coffee, I really missed my office chair and wish I had retrieved it from our office sooner! It’s amazing how simple things like a supportive chair or de-cluttering your desk can affect your mood day to day while working.

Suited and Booted? I'm not ashamed to say that instead of suits & business attire, shorts became my go to, coming in handy especially during the warmer weather! My commute time went from 20 minutes in the morning to 20 seconds, affording me some time to think and plan for the day over a coffee or squeeze in some much-needed exercise. The record player and growing vinyl collection provided the background music versus the Spotify playlist in the car (I guess I have enjoyed having control of the background music being in an office of one!!)

Staying connected – this is something I’ve really enjoyed – while we couldn’t meet with our customers (clients and candidates) physically as before, we’ve embraced the virtual world and in a lot of ways got more face time than pre-pandemic! From weekly check-ins, hundreds of virtual coffees, hosting meet-ups and virtual roundtables – this all allowed us to check in how people were coping, share ideas with each other and celebrate successes (these exercises fed directly into our remote onboarding guide as an example)

Focused time – while missing the buzz of a busy office, I have found more occasions for peace and quiet to think and plan along with dedicated time to work through tasks uninterrupted or distracted

Disconnecting/Work Life Balance – with little else to do bar work, I think a lot of us found it harder to switch off. Personally, before I created my own working space in the spare room – jumping onto emails and calls after dinner and into the evening with the laptop in such a close proximity was too much of a temptation! In the last 6 months I’ve spoken with countless leaders in technology who have all echoed their concerns of their teams risking themselves of burning out by not switching off.

Well-being – I, like many was a victim of ‘The Lockdown Stone’ - and no wonder! Pre-pandemic, I would have averaged around 5,000 steps a day – from walking about the office, nipping out for a walk at lunch. Confined the house, I was down to a few hundred! Since Jan, I’ve been exercising more and as a business we rolled out a ‘Vitamin D Hour’ encouraging our folks to get out in the daylight for a walk during the working week

Resilience – I think everyone would say it’s been a really tough year – disconnected from friends, family, social lives and our hobbies and interests. I’ve been blown away by the resilience of our team – we’ve worked harder, more collaboratively and I’m confident will come out the other side of this as better recruiters. I’ve been so impressed by how some of our customers have adapted, pivoted and grown from strength to strength and confident this is testament to the mindset of the tech sector in NI.

I write this blog full of optimism for the future of work. Collectively we’ve learnt a lot of lessons, made mistakes and hopefully broadened our mindsets to remote working. What have been your biggest learnings/takeaways after a year of remote working?