We have realised that remote working is here to stay, as long as the COVID-19 outbreak continues. Indian organizations who were allowed or rather forced to shift their operations from corporate offices to employee homes are in fact thanking the authorities now when we are into the 3rd week of the 21-day lockdown.
Why are they grateful to be able to work from homes? Is it convenient for their employees? Is it more productive or more cost-effective? Is it easy for team leaders and managers to manage effectively? Why?
The single reason why the organizations are thanking Indian Government is that, because of the work from home option, they are able to still keep serving their customers, they are able to maintain business continuity!
It looks like companies will have to continue remote working for a few more months, even after the complete lockdown is lifted in India. This is important to maintain the social distancing to stop the spread of coronavirus disease COVID-19.
What have we learnt from the last few days of the WFH regime?
Lesson no 1- No Dedicated Home Office Possible for All
Initially, it sounded like a very attractive proposition to work from the comfort of your home, but soon we realised that it was not so easy to sit at one place and focus while your entire family is around. WFH works best when you are alone in your room and have a proper desk, AC, stable high-speed Internet and no power cuts in your locality!
But many Indian houses are not equipped with these facilities. Many Indian houses are small in comparison to the size of the family staying. Two or sometimes even four generations stay in the same house, with grandparent, parents, kids and their kids. It becomes difficult to set up a typical “Dedicated Home Office” in such a situation.
Lesson no 2 – No Work-life Balance, Only Work, Officework-Housework and Homework!!!
Everybody is at home. And everybody is working from home, even kids have online classrooms. But house help is not working, since they are also staying at their homes! The maids, cooks, dhobi, drivers, nobody is available. It is an awakening for us, Indians, we suddenly realise how dependent are we on our household helpers. Many foreign countries do not have this luxury due to high labour costs. So now what, we have to do housework and office work, both, and sometimes homework, too. Our entire routine has gone for a toss and we are working from 6 am to 11 pm!
Lesson no 3 – COVID-19 Anxiety Leading to Faster Burnouts
Our bosses think that now the team is working from home, they are saving the commute time and the restriction of office hours is no longer a constraint. Most of us have experienced that there are team calls throughout the day and sometimes late evenings, the urgency of deliverable has intensified and we are working for more than the usual working hours.
Mondays were always blue, but now even the Wednesdays are becoming tiring and we all are always waiting for Fridays, Oh, but there is work even during weekends! We are already feeling the burnout, as a combined effect of increasing work commitments, family pressures and the COVID-19 anxiety.
How do we manage this COVID-19 situation, which does not seem to go away quickly?
Here are 3 Tips and 3 Templates for Making WFH Success, Especially for Indians
Plan
Planning makes life easier. We would advise all the project managers and team leaders to make a detailed task-level plan for all the office/ project work.
Highlight the critical path and task dependencies in the work plan so the remotely working team members are aware of the importance of timely completion of their task. Use online software to help you do the detailed planning and resource allocation. This tool needs to have the functionality of recording and measuring the employee time spent on each task which will help in client billing.
Whizible integrated project management tool is one such tool which has already benefited their existing customers to plan the office to WFH transition seamlessly. Register for the repeat webinar to learn how technology companies are managing WFH effectively.
For planning your personal activities, use this template
Download WFH personal week planning template
How to use the WFH planning template?
Please classify all the daily activities that you are required to do into 3 buckets
- Office – club all official activities, tasks, meetings, etc in this activity type
- Family – include all tasks you are expected to do as a contribution to household chores and related to your family members here
- Self – add all the activities that you would like to do for yourself – from relaxing, exercising to taking online skill up-gradation courses here.
For any further help on how to use this planning template, write to us at info@whizible.com
Engage
Mere communication is not enough, be proactive and try and engage with your peers and superiors! Inform your boss and other dependent team members about any deviation in the planned work schedules. Have daily Skype/ Zoom meetings with your team and your peer group. Use online communication tools such as Slack, for keeping touch with your teams.
Talk about your daily plan, any blockers, dependencies.
We, at Whizible, use one such template to track our daily tasks.
Download WFH Whizible Team Quick Status template
Another level of engagement should come from the company CEO in the way of all-hands meetings to facilitate team building. Download the template for conducting Virtual All-hands Meeting during COVID-19
It is equally important to have smooth communication flows within your family members. It becomes even more important to clarify any misunderstandings and expectations quickly to maintain peace at home, to create a supportive remote working environment
De-stress
I can not stress the importance of de-stressing, especially during these tough times caused due to the Global COVID-19 pandemic!
Each one of us will have to find out what makes us relax. For some of us, it could be doing Yoga and meditation as prescribed by many spiritual leaders and fitness experts. For some of us, it could be spending time, playing games (indoor games only – such as Antakshari, chess, cards, carom, board games!) with family and for others, it could be talking to friends or reading online novels or learning a new form of art online.
One sure shot thing to de-stress yourself is not to watch coronavirus news frequently by checking your Whatsapp or other social media accounts.
Let’s accept the grim fact that this disease is causing a huge disruption which will impact our lives for a long time. Acceptance of uncertainty makes it easy to manage the consequences.
Let’s accept COVID-19 and carve out a way of doing things around it.
