What equipment has made the biggest difference for everyone working from home?
I’m in my workplace (didn’t leave it).
The Pret offer for £20/month for potentially 150+ coffees has certainly made work easier to bear! Fantastic value.
Shame Monzo couldn’t incorporate something like it into Plus (I think Monzo did some sort of promo with Pret once?)
I think they did for Points
When we were sent home in early March we were told to take any equipment we wanted from our desks. Since that time we’ve also been told that the office will be backfired with equipment so we will have dual setups.
Couldn’t imagine having to just work from a laptop. Not an exaggeration to say it would reduce my productivity by more than half.
I couldn’t do it.
Before the official lockdown, they wanted more of a half in/half out situation. I said I’d do either, but I’m not going to work full days from just my laptop screen.
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It’s not even the dual monitors, although I do like having them. Even with one display, the screen estate over a laptop is huge productivity gain for me.
But just as important, I need a full keyboard and a real mouse.
Work from home (WFH) has its pros and cons.
Pros:
- Flexibility around doing own admin e.g. going post office, waiting for a plumber or delivery to arrive
- No commute
- More time to sleep in
- Saving money
- Cook your foods/eat healthily
- easier to exercise
Cons:
- Lack of human interaction, F2F, bouncing ideas and thinking on the spot etc
- Further spending/investing in desk and chair (if the company have not paid for)
- Lack of social interaction, going out for lunch, on the commute etc
- Mixing work with home
I personally think WFH should not be the norm, however, I do feel that WFH for me, the balance is 2 days WFH (Monday and Friday) and 3 days(Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday) in the office.
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In the short to medium term, working from home can work pretty well.
But long term, when you had some staff turnover, and you’re working in a team that barely know each other, may have never met, then I’m not so sure. I think it gets harder for new team members to integrate themselves into remote teams, although this is somewhat dependent on the nature of the work. It’s also harder to manage underperforming staff, recognise stress and low level issues in the workplace, etc.
Personally, I think the ideal is a mixture of office work and working from home.
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Completely agree. I think the whole ‘everyone can work from home now’ is not going to last as much as we think. Right now it’s in an odd spot, everyone works from home but they all know each other, have worked together physically.
Once you get to completely new remote teams, I think people will finder and it will suit some people and some teams, but not all, and there’ll be a lot of people wanting to move back to physical working.
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Not to say that these aren’t real issues and don’t occur, but it doesn’t match our experience. We’ve had various new starters join our team over the last few months and it’s actually gone really well.
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We’ll all be back in the office in a couple of years once managers decide it’s easier to work co-located, and manage teams better.
Because it is more productive to work together.
I have to say as a manager I find it easier to be more objective about management decisions when everybody is working from home.
All those small social interactions in the office shouldn’t factor into your performance reviews, but being objective and excluding them is harder than you think it will be. When wfh, most of what I have to go on is the objective performance indicators.
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That’s a strong blanket statement.
If I’m working with other people then being in the same room is better than being on a hangout.
But for me that’s a minority of my time. For my “real” work it’s way more productive having my own distraction free space and banking the dead time savings (commuting, chit chat, walking around the office…).
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True, providing you don’t mean “physically”. I don’t find working in a busy office especially productive, unless I’m wearing some headphones that blocks out the sound of everyone else. Surely that defeats the object of working in an office in the first place.
Think about it, people walk up to you to ask you something; people walk past having a loud conversation; people ask why the printer isn’t working but have never in their last 10 years in the office learned how to change the toner. Your time in an office is not necessarily yours to work.
At home, colleagues schedule a Teams chat, you have that chat, you get on with your day. Plus, you save hours of travel time and money at either end. Better yet, employers get to save a small fortune on rent. It’s a win-win.
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I think this is another one of those things where your outlook depends very much on the type of work you’re doing. For report writing, programming, etc peace and quiet is golden. For sales, some project work, creative stuff, etc the social interaction and collaboration can be tremendously useful.
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Our workplace announced on Friday that it will be equipping every member of staff with a device to enable them to work from home or from an office along with the choice of when and how they do this by March 2021.
This includes all customer facing roles and anyone in a call centre, Corona had certainly changed what’s possible.
Nearly 10 years ago I suggested that they enable the call routing systems to enable WFH but it was a massive no that’ll never happen ever. Now it’s a yep that’s fine and here’s your laptop to do it with.
Makes a refreshing change to be fair, anyone customer facing will be allowed to decide how they deal with their own customers so if they don’t need face to face time it can be telephone, online etc
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This is a government department an all which makes it even more surprising to be fair, we all know what dinosaurs they can be, set in ancient ways and that.
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After using a 12" laptop screen for the past few months I’ve had enough and got permission off my manager to use my WFH allowance to buy a 32" monitor. That’s my entire allowance wiped out but I don’t need anything else so it’s money well spent.
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My company has recently given everyone a ~ £500 stipend to spend on any new equipment we’d need to make WFH more effective.
I think a sign that we will be working from home for still some time to come.
The two things that have made this super bearable for me is 2 22inch monitors (tempted to buy a third…) and a a deeper desk at home.
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Ouch! Don’t do this, people!
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