I miss working from the office

In the spirit of continuous improvement, I always like to do retrospectives following any initiatives or actions… looking back at last week's SoftServe and 星展银行 meet-up in Gdansk, it hit me: I miss working from the office… do you?

…of course, remote working is more convenient for many reasons and many consider it a more productive use of their time, and I agree. The possibility of saving time on commuting to your office, the ability to take care of your children, pets, and house while working, or simply the ease of waking up and not worrying about what to wear because Zoom or Teams only capture your face and shoulders (if you decide to turn your camera on - that's a subject for another post ??).

But there's always a but - the ability to meet and discuss important topics, challenges and dilemmas in person, in the form of action-driven discussions can be enlightening. The ability to connect with people you work or collaborate with on a different level, where there's no mute button or bad internet connection, can help overcome multiple barriers or any miscommunication caused by a lack of context or emotion.

Turning on your chair or taking a stroll through the office to speak with your colleague about a matter in hand and resolving it in seconds VS writing messages back and forth trying to explain your thought process or, scheduling a call that requires both parties to be available and active – let’s call it a draw, as everyone has their preferences but, I personally lean towards face-to-face interactions.

Throughout the week, our project team has had a chance to meet in person, in some cases for the first time. We spent this time getting to know each other on a personal level (in 3D). We've also had an opportunity to talk about our work, brainstorm solutions or ideas, and become a better team altogether.

A side benefit of last week, a great one, to say the least, was the opportunity to meet with our client and share our common vision for the future, discuss our growth potential and align our strategy to highlight our passion -?#innovation.

So, the questions remain:?What's better, an office or remote way of working?

We need to understand that there's no correct answer to these questions. For some, working 5 days a week from the office is a must (for reasons stated above or something completely different) but for the majority, based on my experience in the IT industry, remote working is the key - without such an option, most people won't even consider working for a particular company.

I'd say, as many probably would have guessed, a hybrid model is ideal. It gives me a chance to choose whether I go to the office or not, and align with my colleagues or teams on when to see each other in the office. I appreciate benefits of both, remote and office way of working. As most of you, I'm passionate about building relationships and partnering with variety of stakeholders to drive ideas forward. In a lot of cases, such initiatives are often a collaboration with global teams hence, it doesn't matter if you are in the office or not. If you have a focused team, it can also be a very fruitful collaboration that can build relationships no matter of geographical location. But, I find it incredibly productive whenever there is an opportunity to meet with project teams in person and work together on particular initiative.

This questions has been raised hundreds of times since the beginning of the pandemic and multiple studies or analysis have been conducted but at the end of the day, whatever works for you it the right way.

*****

Coming from recruitment, I wouldn't dare not mentioning that at SoftServe we do what works for us ?? - office, remote, hybrid - so get in touch if you are looking for new opportunities. https://career.softserveinc.com/en-us/vacancies

Hope you can find, what works for you.

Adrian Bednarz