Making Working From Home Work

At the start of the week, we made the decision to shift Creature to a remote-working model for the foreseeable future: we're fortunate enough to run a business that can, for the most part, operate with people working all over the place, and it felt like we had a bit of a responsibility to make the shift.

Funnily enough, though, it turns out shifting a whole company to a remote-working model isn't quite the same as working from home every now and again: challenges that we were anticipating turn out to be fine, and things that we weren't anticipating turn out to be massive sticking points.

With that in mind, we wrote a few tips for the team, which I thought I'd share here - I'd also hugely appreciate hearing any bright ideas from anyone else who's gone/is going through similar...

1. Don't Just Stare At Your Screen All Day

You wouldn't do this in the office, so don't do it elsewhere. Get up. Walk around. Make a cup of tea. Give your brain a rest.

2. Get Away From Your Desk

Under normal circumstances, we all burn thousands of calories a day from just getting around - whether that's cycling to work, riding a motorbike, or just walking to and from train stations. You'll need to find a way to make up for that when it disappears, or you'll get pretty sad pretty quickly.

3. Technology Isn't Always The Answer

As tempting as it may be to set up a Zoom, or to fire off a bunch of WhatsApps, sometimes just picking up the phone and giving someone a call is the best way of making something happen. Don't let five minute chats turn into thirty minutes of video conference.

4. Don't Assume Everyone Is Always Staring At Their Screen

If you're shifting meetings around, or putting them in for (technical term) 'quite soon', let people know - either with a message, or with a quick call. I have already discovered that it's all too easy to miss last minute invites, and thus meetings.

5. Make Sure The Working Day Starts And Ends

It's easy to underestimate the psychological importance of getting into the office in the morning and leaving it at the end of the day. Find an equivalent: whether that's moving from sofa to table, closing your laptop and putting it away, turning off notifications on WhatsApp, putting your phone on silent, taking your shoes off, sticking a hoodie on, or something else that works for you, find ways of signalling to yourself that the working day has started, and that it's done. Working from home can't mean always working.

6. Speak Up If You're Struggling

One of the many joys of an office environment is that it's tough to be stressed in silence - somebody will pick up on it, and somebody will check that you're ok. That isn't going to happen while we're all working remotely. You'll be getting regular emails from me and the rest of the management team asking if you're ok - those only work if you respond honestly. So do that, please. And if nobody asks, tell us anyway.

7. You're Not On Your Own

It's up to you lot how you manage this, but I just want to remind everyone that we're not on lockdown yet, and there are absolutely no rules against meeting up with folk face to face for coffee to chat something through. A couple of us met up this morning, grabbed a coffee, and went for a walk while we caught up on everything, and it was bloody great: we don't need to be isolating just yet, and hanging out for a bit can make all of this feel a lot less weird.

8. We Don't Need To Be Perfect

This is a literally unprecedented situation, and it's affecting everyone - normal rules don't apply. If the only place you can find in your flat to join a conference call is the loo, turn your camera off and crack on. If your kids run in on you while you're on a Zoom, laugh, do what you need to do, and crack on. If you just don't feel like putting trousers on today... well, we should probably chat about that one. But as a general rule, don't beat yourself up - everyone's working their arse off to make this work, and everyone appreciates that it's not easy.