The Insightful Retrospection
The day started earlier than usual. I was about to start working from office from that day. I completed my home chores and ran a quick check on the important things to be attended in the office. It was all set and nice, when I got a call from my close friend. She was a free-lance content-writer and worked from home mostly. She wished me well for my re-initiated office-days and added that she still preferred working from home to office. This statement of hers got me thinking.
Am I the only person preferring office? Am I the odd one out?
This pondering thought led my agilist mind to do a retrospection of my work culture while working from home.
Here are my retrospection points jotted during my office ride:
What went well?
- Office travel time, cost and strain are saved.
- Was available for the family, always.
- Was available for work, always.
- Gadgets and services have increased to cater home office connectivity, home entertainment.
- Initially health consciousness was very effective.
- Mindful recognition of every team member’s contribution was used as a highly motivating factor.
- Tools and practices facilitating efficient remote operation were introduced and put to use
What didn’t go well?
- Extended work hours, sometimes without breaks.
- Personal management and grooming took a second position.
- Health issues came up due to improper ergonomic conditions.
- Social bonding was difficult.
- Informal brainstorming and spontaneous conversations reduced.
- At times, focusing was difficult.
- Decision-making got delayed.
- At times, technical issues took longer resolution time.
- “On the job” training sessions were not effective.
- Gadgets and services have reduced family quality time.
- In the later stage of continuous “Working from home”, health consciousness took a down slide.
Areas of Improvement
- Stick to regular work hours and extend only if needed, be it working from office or home.
- Get necessary tables, chairs and arrange proper lighting, it’s not a “cost”, it’s an” investment” for your body, when a remote working condition has to be re-initiated.
- Health issues call for strict exercising and treatment.
- Allot regular collaboration time both for work and for family and stick to the regular schedule religiously.
- Cut down on the gadget time for all including self, instead interact more.
- Learn to politely say “no” if you identify that you are taking more than you can chew.
Learnings
- Resume all routines stringently.
- Plan office travel time so that it is less straining. Find the breathing time between peak traffic hours and use them well.
- Now that we have a combination of team members working from office and home, interaction needs to be planned accordingly.
- Initiate social bonding irrespective of hierarchy, work experience and make yourself approachable to all.
- Learn to break work based on due dates.
- Don’t hesitate to delegate work and rely on teamwork.
- Plan meetings and overlapping hours (between remote team members, client) to be effective.
- Clear communication along with face-to-face interactions will save lot of trouble in conveying technical and non-technical messages, resolving issues and dependencies
- Continue the mindful recognition of every team member’s contribution to motivate the team
- Continue to leverage tools and practices facilitating efficient remote operation to reduce people dependency, errors and improve self-alignment and self-discipline.
As you can see, I prefer office-working to remote-working. Adding the improvements and learnings is definitely going to further improve my office-working culture.
As we move from remote-working to office-working, I recommend everyone to retrospect their respective work culture and add those needed improvements and learnings.
I am definitely “To Office”.
Love the article Gayathri- Personally, I didn’t quite realize how easy its been collaborating and coordinating work until my first day working from home!
Nice one, that too in Agile methodology.