Working From Home vs The Office

The recent global pandemic created a new temporary ‘norm’ of working, seeing many people adopting work from home. As we’ve moved into a post-covid world, many sectors have returned to their offices, while others have seen benefits of remaining working from home. These include a reduction in overhead costs, improved work life balance and higher productivity in some cases. It's still common for job seekers to search for roles that incorporate working from home or a hybrid schedule.

In the creative sector, working from home presents its challenges.

As an automotive video production agency, we are an extremely collaborative team. A usual day in the office sees countless productive conversations, from feedback, questions, opinions, and sharing knowledge. Much like many other team-led sectors, workflow is considerably more seamless when individuals are physically together.

With the projects we do, multiple members of the team can work on a project throughout its entirety due to factors like other shoots and project deadlines, the scale of the project, holidays etc. It is possible for team projects like these to be completed remotely if needed, however, it is considerably easier when the team is in one place and this is what works best for us.

It’s important to recognise that an office environment can also have its downfalls, such as; distractions from other team members, long commutes, not taking necessary screen breaks etc, though these downfalls can be controlled.??

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Like many other companies, we are lucky to have technology that gives us the option to work from home if another pandemic were to rear its head. Our team all use portable computers which can be taken on shoots easily for data management, but also be used at home if needed. We also use a range of online tools and services including an online file storage solution. We can access any of our files from anywhere in the world, granting team members have internet access.?

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At Centric Creative, we are mostly office based, however we do have one team member who works from home. Matt lives a couple of hours away from our office, it would be one heck of a commute if he were to travel every day!?

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?“I have a good home-setup for editing and enjoy being able to work without the long commute to the office.??

?There are of course a few dis-advantages of working from home; due to working with large file sizes and editing with lots of different data-heavy assets, it can sometimes be tricky to send and receive footage or files on a quick turnaround as I’m relying on the internet - which isn’t too fast down in Devon!

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You also miss out on collaborating, sharing ideas and knowledge between the team when working from home. However, I have always found inspiration and creativity for my work in my day to day and personal life.?

?I pride myself on my work ethic and I know that if a project needs to be done, it’ll be done regardless of whether I’m in the office with the team, or working remotely from home.?

Working from home isn’t necessarily for everyone, it can feel isolated at times - especially as an editor, we can sometimes go for days without seeing sunlight! But if you can make it work and motivate yourself to be creative and accomplish set tasks as part of the team, then working from home can be viable” – Matt Woodley.

Tom Keegan, our Creative Director, recently had no choice but to work from home…

“Covid is, sadly, still very much a thing. I know that, because I caught it a couple of weeks ago. Now, there’s never a good time to get ill, but we happened to be in the last week of post-production on one of the biggest projects we’ve had to date. Safe to say, that was not a good time.

Worry not, I thought. I can still operate a computer, I’ll just work from home.

But sat at home, with two red lines on my test, I was soon reminded of the limitations, and isolation that working from home can bring.

We’re lucky enough to work in a creative industry, and one of the joys of the creative process can be collaboration. Collaboration, by its very nature, is an exercise in communication. Bouncing ideas around, taking on board others feedback, trying new things, seeking out room for improvement. It’s all part of the process, and one that we take part in every day here at Centric. We live in an age with almost too much communication. Everything from current events to images of your friend’s cat can be accessed whenever you want, wherever you want. But, despite all this, there is no true replacement for physically being in the same space." - Tom Keegan

Working from home is a completely viable option for those that need it. In many sectors, the temporary norm that was created by covid has now turned into the new norm, however, here at Centric, we feel the ease of communication and collaboration through physically being in the same space takes priority. We choose to still operate from our Bristol office. But as a result of the pandemic, we have solutions that enable us to work remotely when it is required.?

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