Work from Home - A New Norm!

I always had a feeling that working from home was something that is full of distractions and unproductive. I thought work from office was something that earns salary for me and keeps me going.

Team meetings, Reviews, launches, engagements all that made your work from office effective and productive. All this collapsed due to COVID19 and suddenly life stalled by a thought ‘What Next?’

I realized that a shift from Work from Office to Work from Home has now become a necessity and lifesaving method for most of us to keep moving. And this shift has to be made very fast to adapt to new norm, to adapt to new communication mechanism, to assess your skills and acquire or adapt to new skill requirements.

Things may not work the way it was earlier be it connecting with your team mates, colleagues, customers, suppliers and the larger community. All personal and professional engagements have to be re-looked through a different lens of so called ‘Social distancing’.

When I started preparing for this, I thought of exploring more on Work from Home as a definition and I was surprised to discover few facts around this.

A Stanford University study in the year 2013 found that the productivity of employees who worked from home was 13% higher than their office-bound colleagues. Few research studies around the same revealed that people make more progress when working from home. Prior to COVID19, only 1.7 million people which is around 5% of the UK workforce, worked from home. Post lock down on March 23, 2020, these figures jumped to 15.3 million i.e 52% of the UK workforce working from home. I am sure similar situation also prevailed in India and looking at our population, our figures would be much higher than this.

Therefore for this set of people working from home involves lot of tech issues, virtual communication and self-discipline, as they adapt to a totally new out of office experience, all stuck at home, all of the time.

In addition to above challenge, work life balance has gone off-kilter, and this needs to be brought back to normal.

I had listed down few of my thoughts on making work from home more productive and enjoyable and maintaining a work life balance.

1.      Scheduling your work, and sticking to it

We all know that if there are no supervision, even the most conscientious of us can fall down. Setting a schedule not only provides structure to the day, it also helps you stay motivated. Start the day as you would if you worked in an office: Get up early, get dressed, and try to avoid online distractions once you sit down to work. Setting up realistic expectations for what one can accomplish during the day, will make you satisfy at the end of the day when you assess the quantum of work done during the day. Noting down ‘Things to do’ for the day and doing things as per the priority set will make your job easy and satisfying.

2.      Clear Demarcation between work and home priorities

This is very important from the point of view to keep work life balance, or else your work like may blur into your home life. We need to maintain clear boundaries between work and home otherwise you may feel that you are always at work and socially disconnected. The best way to make this happen is to have a separate space in your home for work with office like feeling and your personal desk space that will make you feel comfortable and focused whenever you are at your desk. This will also make your family realize that approaching you during office hours is like disturbing you in delivering your professional priorities. This kind of demarcation will help you to disengage yourself from work post office time and you can equally give time to your family. There are lot of scheduling of digital meetings during the day, and many times, these schedules that eat away your productive time, are not in your control. Do prioritize these meetings and ensure that they don’t eat away your personal family times, including weekly holidays. Many time we are carried away so much for some important project work that we work relentlessly to complete the same before the day end. It would be a better idea to close the work in the middle and start off again the next day. This will give some rest to your brain and time to you re-think again on the project with refresh mind.

3.      Keep exercising

I would not say that exercising is one’s personal choice, rather I would say that there is no choice for the same as everyone has to do it. Starting your day early and giving atleast an hour to yourself is something that will rejuvenate your body, strengthen your heart and revitalize your mind. Outdoor running, Yoga, stretching, sports activity are some of the important activities to one should engage during the week, and I am sure you will not get tired with your office work during the day. The reverse is true as well.

4.      Taking regular breaks

While working in office, I often take breaks if the meeting is for more than an hour. Moving out from the meeting may sound to be an irrational move, but for me it’s an energy booster for me to keep myself engage in long meetings. Work from Home has ensured that while you are not in a physical meeting but you are surely in a digital meeting, and this digital meetings becomes very tiring, glued to your laptop screens for hours is something not recommended. Taking breaks for atleast 10-15 minutes after every 45-50 minutes meeting is must. When I say break means ‘brain break’. Move out from the screen glance outside your window or balcony, read a newspaper, or moving out of your chair and taking a short walk. I found an interesting way to take break. Playing a light music, with a timer of 50 minutes, reminds me when to take a break. This has helped me to keep maintaining my focus on those long meetings.

5.      Regular Team Connect

When you have your team to manage and deliver organizational objectives, it becomes very important to keep all team members motivated and making them feel connected with all team members. Setting up a daily call for say 30 minutes for an informal chats to know each other’s wellbeing is a good idea to be connected with the team. Acknowledging contribution of team member for completing a task and recognizing him/her through encouraging words will make one feel happy, and stay motivated. Empowering team and making them work independently to deliver things will be a good start for them in developing good quality leadership skills.

6.      Weekends are Yours

This is the time when you dis-engage from work and relax. Try and learn new things, read, explore and connect with things that makes you feel happy. This actually is the time where you build energy for yourself so that your mind and body is in good shape when you resume to work on Monday.

COVID19 is testing time for all of us, time which we in past have never encountered and will be remembered by all of us as we Work, Rest and Play …all under one roof. Millions of us are adapting to working from home as part of strict lock-down rules.

Life needs reset. People will take time to reset. Situation will compel people to reset. New Technology and New Normal will emerge. We have to adjust, reset and live with it. I am sure everyone will learn something new in this time. Something that will make them happy and something that will make people sad. We need to move on, and we shall fight back. We are humans, much ahead of a virus.

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