Adapting to a year of working remotely.

I’m pretty sure that in March 2020, the betting odds on us working from home for a whole year would have been quite low. But here we are, one year on & we have survived it. We have some massive wins under our belt and we’ve also learnt a few lessons on how we best work together and how we can optimise our own working habits.

We can be more efficient and effective without ‘real-world’ constraints

Isn’t it crazy to think that we used to wait a couple of weeks for a meeting, until we could find a meeting room that would fit everyone in.

We sometimes let meeting room availability stagnate our progress and ability to make decisions on what we wanted to do.

We can now have every person in every conversation, which helps us get things done. But….

You need to be protective over your time

No one has to wait for a decision, any free slot in your calendar will get taken. You can’t go and work from home for the day so that no one disturbs you any more. We can now have every person in every conversation. So if you want to be effective and get things done, you have to block time out, and be strict on it. As soon as you start doing this and being firm on it, people will respect it and even decide to do the same themselves.

Focus on the balance between multitasking and paying attention

Where we’re probably less respectful.. Is in the attention we pay in meetings. It used to be very obvious if someone wasn’t engaged and was typing away on their laptop. Now we all do it all the time. Our Slack messages don’t stop pinging, and often people require a fairly immediate response. If one part of a meeting goes off on a tangent, we switch off and don’t give the conversation our full attention.

If you’re guilty of this, you can try muting your slack messages and emails. You can make sure a meeting has a clear agenda. You can decline meetings if they’re not super relevant to you. You can keep meetings on track and to the point. Any side conversations can be picked up afterwards.

Take time to build relationships, be sociable and communicate.

When we started forming new teams and plan new work the pain of working from home really hit.

We’d never built relationships and teams in this kind of way before. Well — we had, with off-shore development teams.. But there’s a big reason why a lot of people don’t like using that model.

It’s not easy, but we had to make it work.

So we put more effort into planning effective kick-offs, team building exercises and giving ourselves time to reform.

Actual relationships no longer happen organically. Long gone are team lunches for new members, pub Fridays to socialise or coffee kitchen chats. But these things are still super important. You can’t expect a new team to just work. You need to get to know each other and encourage this behaviour.

So socialisation needs to be encouraged. We have tried plenty of things over the year: after work socials, fun time Friday, socialising in stand-ups. We’ve tried different techniques like having ‘a question of the day’, quizzes (so 2020 I know), playing games. Yes it sounds pretty forced, but it works. It’s often the highlight of our week and helps build better working relationships.

As well as being social in your teams, you have to try harder to create a community and a sharing culture. You should actively check in with people that you used to see around. You should create forums that showcase the work being done in different areas of the business. Make the conversations happen.

Communication can also sometimes be misinterpreted via messages and emails. So never be afraid to jump on a phone call to have more meaningful chats and solve problems that could take days over messages.

To really improve your communication — whiteboard it out

One of the best ways to help communicate is to communicate visually. Use Miro, use jamboard — convey your message in a way that people can picture and debate if they need to.

Give yourself a break

We never used to spend this much time looking at a screen. When we had face to face meetings or even conversations, we got a break from the screen time. It is not good for anyone to spend this much time staring at technology.

Some simple fixes here: Don’t feel like you need to be on camera. Switch your camera off. Take calls on your phone. Walk around and don’t look at the screen.

Enjoy the perks of working from home

Enjoy the perks of working from home. When we first started working from home and it was fresh and exciting, I enjoyed the novelty of being able to spend a Friday morning working in my PJs. . I have now become a lot stricter on my morning routine — now that this is the ‘normal’ life.

There are still ways that I’m incorporating the perks into my life now.

If I’m having a 2pm lull, I don’t feel like I have to work. I can produce my best work earlier in the morning and so I will. If I have a call and can go for a walk — I will walk and talk. If the sun is shining, I will spend my day working outside.

This year has been tough on everyone — find the things that make you happy and enjoy the perks that exist.

We still have a long way to go, and full time office work will probably never be the norm. So we need to keep growing, improving and enjoying the elements that we can. I hope these areas help you to assess how you’re being effective and looking after yourself whilst working from home.