The trend of working society

The Unseen Advantages of Organization-wide Working from Home

It’s great when we all do it together correctly

Working from home was a foreign term to me until about five years ago, where I joined a company that provides the flexibility of working from home when required. Even with that, I rarely take, as I viewed that as a career-limiting benefit if one takes it too often.

Covid-19 has changed the world, at least for now. Working from home is a compulsory and norm for the time being. Only if one has a reason not to, can go to the office, but it is still greatly discouraged.

It has been three months now I’m working from home, together with most of the people in the company. Below is what I discovered. Unimaginably great!

Got back 20% of my working life back!

I worked 8 hours a week. I have to travel a 1-hour journey to work and back each way, which is 2 hours in total. So in total, my working hours were 8+2, which is 10 hours!

Some may argue that during traveling in a car, bus, or train for that 2 hours, we can still do something productive. But it is SOMETHING, and very limiting. I would say even the SOMETHING we did, it’s not the best way of doing that SOMETHING.

To me, having the extra 2 hours at home is so great. I literally feel I have more time now. I have better rest, and still manage to get my things done, both work and home. I get back 5 x 2 hours a week, i.e. 10 hours, which is 40 hours a month. I gained a full week of working hours back each month!

I gained a full week of working hours back each month!

Bye-bye meeting rooms!

Meeting is an inevitable activity to communicate face to face formally and get things going. The thing I hate most about meeting it looking for meeting rooms, trying to find one fits everybody’s schedule. In fact, meeting rooms have the least flexible time compare to attendees, as it is 95% booked out.

Many faces the same problem, and hence booked meeting rooms ahead before one needs it. That compounded the problem further.

After a quarter of the year working from home, I’ve forgotten the frustration of finding meeting rooms. I just need to ensure all attendees time is available, and that’s it! Scheduling a meeting is a breeze.

No more walking to the meeting room, need to come out 5 minutes earlier to attending another back-to-back meetings. And the best experience is, no more got lost and wonder where the meeting room is 🤣

Anytime we need to have a quiet 1-to-1, there’s no need to walk around, look for a quiet room or a quiet corner. Everything could be set up instantaneously. No more hassle of, having to skip it for a later time, just because we cannot find a suitable place now.

After a quarter of the year working from home, I’ve forgotten the frustration of finding meeting rooms.

No more pain connecting to a projector or other setups

Did you remember the time everyone is already in the meeting room, and you are the host wanting to present, then you realize the monitor is not working. The connection is missing. The TV can’t be turned on.

Oh! in such a moment, I almost curse as the spotlight is on me. My slide is ready, and I need to have a stunning start of the presentation. It is just the technical side of it is wasting everybody’s time! Well, in the future, I have to be there 10 minutes ahead.

But now, working from home, all this is kind of history (it’s still “kind of” because we might be going back to the office again one day 😅)

CEO is closer to me than ever!

I am just a normal developer, working at the bottom of the chain in the organization. CEO and higher-level executives are way too high up there for me to reach them.

We have a quarterly meeting from the CEO, with hundreds of employees attending. Being low profile, I usually sit in a middle row seat in the hall if not at the back of the hall. Hearing them talking is sometimes not easy due to the quality of the microphone, and looking at those slides is almost impossible.

With Covid-19, the CEO has taken the effort to provide a more frequent update, at times weekly, and sometimes bi-weekly.

Since everyone is working from home, the only means to communicate with all is through video conferencing. He talks directly facing the camera. As a recipient, I can see and hear his talks crystal clear. So much clearer than ever in the past few years working in the company, and my decades of experience working in any organization.

We do have video conferencing with another country in the past, but that’s in a meeting room with people. So still feel very distant.

Now in my home, the CEO calls in, and I call in to see him in person. I hear him talk clearly, and able to observe each emotion he shows clearly, for me to get a better message of what he is delivering. I can still post a question anonymously, without worry about the person next to me see me typing. It’s so much better than in the office big town hall meeting.

I hear him talk clearly, and able to observe each emotion he shows clearly, for me to get a better message of what he is delivering.

Dynamically personalized meeting for everyone

In the office, to have a meeting, we go to the meeting room. Each of us has different agenda going to the meeting. Some are there to present. Some are there to learn. Some are there to support, etc.

However, almost everyone has to show the same meeting etiquette (i.e. close laptop, listen attentively, etc), and spend (or to someone it’s considered waste 😜) the same amount of time.

The presenters require more than just share the content but also being visually presentable, sound at the right level, and good body language, and ability to react to the audience reaction appropriately.

Here’s how when everyone working from home, we could have a more dynamic personalized meeting.

As an attendee

Let’s be frank. We are in a meeting. Our intention is not to give 100% attention in the meeting, while we like to get 100% of what is shared in the meeting that is RELEVANT TO US. We have some spare attention span that can still be used for other things.

In the office, we have to be in the meeting room. We have no choice but to be 100% compliance with others in our actions, in respect of the presenter. No laptop, no other actions. Avoid snacking unless it is shared. Our spare attention span is now floating around wander about.

As we are at home now, all meetings are virtual. Below are some great benefits

• We can pay full attention to the meeting on everything shared. The speaker is as if talking to us DIRECTLY! The slide content is all shared clearly in front of us, without needing us straining our eyes.
• If the detail is really interesting and we would like to share it with others, we can easily screen capture it, and post it out without distracting others! Note: Please protect the confidentiality of the organization material.
• If we have lots of spare attention span to do other things, we can still do so without distracting the presenter and others at all. Some people can listen to things and doing other stuff effectively. A great multitasker would benefit this very well.
• Snack as you like as much, do whatever at best that you could benefit from the meeting. Lay on your bed, go out to your garden, etc… (or even go to the toilet if really need to 🤪, and not missing listening to some interesting content shared). Just make sure you switch off your video if you are doing so, to avoid distracting others.
• If there’s more than one meeting you would like to attend, you could literally be teleported from one meeting to the other in a split of a few seconds, without walking a step. In the office, you’ll probably spend 5 minutes, walking from room to room, across the walkways, stairs, etc and worst of, looking for the room, as you don’t know where it is!

Go to the toilet if really need to 🤪, and not missing listening to some interesting content shared

How nice! Flexible. Dynamic. Personalized meeting for you.

As a presenter

As a presenter, you won’t have as much flexibility as the audience, as your presence is essential. Sharing the content from your home still has some advantages.

I am not a fluent public speaker. Pretty much affected by other reactions and have huge stage fright. Looking into the eyes of others is always a challenge for me. If there’s tiny sound by others speaking behind, I felt that maybe my sharing is boring.

By sharing the content from home, it’s so much better for me.

• I just focus on looking into my content, which makes me look like I’m still looking at the camera. No need to consciously have eye contact with the audience.
• If I like to look at others, I can still have their video seen, as some of them will turn on the video to provide great moral support for me.
• I am not distracted by others. I can have everyone on mute if needed to be. No one can have a side talk as they are remote from each other. If they do so by messaging, that’s fine. I don’t care as I’m not distracted.
• I don’t need to worry about throwing my voice out, and just speak naturally. I am also more natural without the need to worry about my body movement.
• If I think the content is important, I can record it, so that it can be shared with others.
• If I think I don’t want to be visually visible due to concern about my “nervous facial appearance” (it’s okay if my hands or legs shivered 😉), I can’t turn off my video. Note: turning off video to present is still not a “normal” practice yet, but I think the audience is okay with it if required.

Note, I’m speaking in the sense of purely office work nature of sharing. Not public or motivational speaking, which requires a lot of interaction with the audience

Closer family relationship

In a normal working day in the office, as I stated, I spend 10 hours (inclusive of 2 hours commuting) for working. I sleep on average for 8 hours. that’s 18 hours of life. The remaining 6 hours is to be at home with the family.

But as a developer, after working, we need to continue learning. A life-long committed learning career, as stated in my blog below. For the remaining 6 hours, I used 3–4 hours a day for my learning.

A normal working day, I only have about 2 hours of self-time and family time. That also includes doing family chores, eating, washing, etc. That’s really a tiny fraction of the time I spend with the family. They don’t see me most of the time. When they see me, I am fully exhausted came back from work, looking forward to rest and working the next day.

In the office, during lunchtime, we spend time with colleagues having meals, and morning coffee sessions. Those are the time where we have our energy and still able to express well and connect. So most of the working day, back from office, we only give to the family our “leftover”.

It is not surprising that many family broke down after a while. Office affair happenings. People prefer to go to office as they have a better experience with colleagues than family.

For the last more than twelve weeks working at home, I eat at home lunch, having my breakfast at home. My wife cooks lunch when she can, and I enjoy it. I had a great conversation with her during lunch and gave some updates on what happens in office before I’m fully exhausted in the evening.

Day to day, she no longer sees my exhausted face, but part of my fresh faces. As I mentioned in my first point, I got 2 hours back of my life daily, which is great! That makes me have more time with family, having some quick quality family moments each day.

I can literally feel my family relationship got much better than the past years. It is not we’re bad in past years. It’s better now. Not because we did anything special. It’s just we have more time to see each other. We get to know each other working experience better when we share fresh content while we still have our energy at noon.

This is my experience. Some others might have a different experience, but my belief is that the more time spent, the better relationship will be. Although it does have more shoulder-rubbing, but as we manage it well, we get better over it. It builds a relationship. A good family will usually result in good employees.

A good family will usually result in good employees

Having said all these, I’m not ignoring the need of building good colleague relationship to build strong team bond. It is an act of balance. I would weight family higher though. We just need to introduce some mechanism, or perhaps when we are allowed to go back to the office, we should have someday in offices for team building activities, while the others working from home. That’s a different set of topics anyway.

Covid-19 may seem to be one of the worst things that happen to the world in this century today. Nonetheless, it does open our eyes to some other options of paths that we might not have a try, and realize the goodness of it.

An organization-wide working from home was not a norm before that, and now this open the opportunity to try it out, and weight it’s pros and cons. The above are some great experiences I had. There are some downsides to it as well, but as for now, the benefits seem to outweigh the challenges faced by my side. I feel blessed to experience such a moment.

What I share above is pretty much from an employee's point of view, and for a short term of three months experience. I’m sure a different set of views from the employer side is essential to make a much balance decision of what’s best for next.

Looking forward to seeing how the organization world evolves on!