Nearly a year working from Home

As it has been a while since I last had a cathartic insight moan under the guises of a LinkedIn article I thought it was time to share again. So what has it been like to work at home over this length of time? However, first I must say that I feel incredibly blessed to have a job in the first instance and to be working on such an amazing project. I realise acutely that there are so many people in worst circumstances than I am.

I have shared before how I have struggled previously with working from home and that actually at the beginning of working from home regime, working out in the garden was great. It was a real blessing to be able to see my family a lot more in the day and to go out for our daily walk into the Dales with the dog. Wonderful. To see how our three girls adapted to online learning so well and how their mum as always was incredible in supporting, helping and coercing them in a positive way was lovely to see at first hand. I did learn that I could work from home but it always occurred to me that this would be a day or two a week and not full time.

For me work, but project work especially, is all about people management. It is about seeing how people react in project meetings when in both positive and negative situations. It is about the joy of the collective work and achieving more than just personal goals. Sharing vision, values and positive behaviours: How are we going to get things sorted together, who wants to lead this part of the work, what skills and resources do we need? etc. Teams/Skype/Zoom calls (other conference call mediums are available) are a means to an end but are not in my view a replacement for a face to face meeting where it is required. Body language in pressure situations is useful to see and this is very difficult to judge on a face call. What I also find is that staring at a screen in a conference call meeting is very tiring or am I just old? For me, if you are in a meeting you tend to look at other things in the room or outside (whilst obviously still listening) but with the call you are looking at one view all the time. A few of these calls a day can be exhausting. As an aside why then do people want to exhaust me more with a virtual drink, coffee or other event? Sorry for the grumpy old man interlude there. The interaction at work of discussing issues in the kitchen whilst making a proper brew or the water cooler cannot be underestimated. The ability to go to a break out area, sit down with a colleague, have a brew and a biscuit (preferably cake) to discuss an issue over a plan for me is priceless. For those of you who have had to work with me before will know that I love a plan on the table to discuss matters. I like to visualise the impact on an issue to help me in any decision making. It is a mixture of pleasure and concern at being so predictable that colleagues walk into meetings with me and put a plan on the table without me saying anything! I did train as a Planner I suppose so am following the stereo type. Please let me know however, if the goatee beard, corduroy arm patches and the Cornish pasties shoes start making an appearance. Just kidding fellow planners but you do know people like this!

I am amazed because of the pandemic situation of so many people predicting the future of the office being dead and we will all only need a computer and a conference call service to work wonderfully well. I think what is dead is the ability to create developments without the sufficiency of open space for us all to interact with. The ability to get out and take a break from work or home life situations has come to the fore in this last year as a priority and not a nice to have. We need open areas, fresh air and life to watch. We need to be able to relax away from our too busy lives and focus on what really is important. When we are only allowed to stay local and/or spend an hour exercising, this has shown each one of us what we have on our doorsteps whether of lack or abundance. For me, the way we use offices will change but not the need for the office or indeed the workplace. We will continue to need flexible work spaces. We will continue to see the shift away from one desk per person and that that is the entitlement. We hopefully will see better use of space for shared areas for interaction with or without masks. The hierarchical large office for the relative rank is hopefully on its last legs without a vaccine. When we get back surely those final walls will be taken down where they are not needed. We will continue I think to want to exploit the use of home working but will balance this wisely with the need for the office/workplace interaction.

Having been involved in the Superfast West Yorkshire broadband project, I am relatively surprised as to how well the country's broadband network provision has held up with the massive increase in usage. I know there remain a lot of problems especially in rural areas with coverage, speed, band width etc and this is still causing problems. I was expecting more of a meltdown with so many people moving immediately to working from home but respect is due to the network companies for holding this all together. I am finding it increasingly funny though with the numerous people who need to tell me vehemently how incredible it is to be working from home and that they do not miss the office at all when this is not always the same for me. They are almost sycophantic in their praise for the digital equipment and all the apps that you can use to enlighten your life. Their backgrounds are to die for, their use of the chat function for praise is legendary and the ability to put others on mute or remove legacy hands is so efficient. They have the latest update of how to make the call more productive and have shared this across the universe and thankfully are extremely willing to demonstrate on the call this new found life I did not previously know I needed. I sit there and ask my grumpy self, will this actually make me as an old grump more productive? Fat old dogs can learn knew tricks but they may need some convincing....

What has been a positive stimulus in my homeworking life is the use of my mum's little office in her new flat, sorry I have to call it an apartment. Mum moved into a ground floor apartment in September 2020 in our town that had a little office laid out already with a lovely desk and chair. I was struggling when coming back into the house from the garden to work (as the weather had become a bit more unpredictable) with a very open plan format inside. It was not fair on the girls coming home from school or when they were remote learning to expect them to be relatively quiet and not enjoying themselves. A secondary school for two, a primary school for one, a project office, the registered office for an online retail business all operating during the day was not that easy. Rural broadband was also taking a beating. I have before explained my liking for differentiating home and work and so this was starting to get me down being "trapped" in my thinking always at home.

A wonderful solution then transpired with my Mums office. I am not ashamed to say it but I love a good commute. I love to be able to wind down before I get home and adore the separation time between work and home life. I now have a 15 minute walk to work at my Mums and this is such a positive for me. Simple things make me content. As you have seen from the photo above it can be challenging at this time of year but is rather lovely. It separates my life roles; with mum being 87 and in our bubble I can also help her and keep her going; I can really concentrate on work without the obvious wonderful distractions of sledging, watching Homes under the Hammer or Dog Bingo (it is a real game) etc; it really helps my weekends to think of home as home and not as a part workplace. What is very funny is that my mum's office has a very ornate fireplace in very dark wood panelling. It was brought in from another building and has a date of 1634 carved in it. I have had people ask where I got my Narnia background from or am I in the family seat baronial hall? Another positive is the coffee and tea delivery service at regular intervals and the lunch menu is excellent.

So I am not ashamed to admit that I have struggled working from home. I do not like it as much as being in an office but am so grateful that I have a job and can work remotely relatively simply. For me, I need a vision to go for, or something to aspire to. I love working with others in a great team and not Teams environment only. To carry on working from home, my life would be so much easier if I knew when we were going to get back to normal. No-one can predict this as yet. That is just me and how I am. What I do hope for myself and others is that from all this we do not just go back eventually to how it always was. I hope that we realise finally what are the important things in our lives and how to cherish them. A great friend of mine has always challenged me by saying, "how much time are you spending with the people who will be standing around you at your funeral?" Sobering stuff in these strange times but a great prompt on what is important to us and how we prioritise the most important aspect of life; time. How we treat others, whether colleagues, family or friends should always be something to reflect upon every day but with so many having gone through so much in this year at home we need to be more considerate, empathetic and caring. I know what I need to work on.