A few weeks into remote working the IT Business Partnering, CX and Communications team took some time out to reflect on how we’ve settled in to the new work routine.
How is remote working going for you? Don’t forget to engage with the IT Services Collaboration Team and ITS Social Team for a wide range of support, information and entertainment whilst we’re working off campus.
What’s working well?
Weirdly, remote working has enabled us to get to know some staff better. Getting a glimpse of someone’s home life (décor, kids, pets) does mean we know more about the full person – rather than just the work persona.
There feels like a greater sense of team within IT Services – as we all worked together towards the same goal of supporting the transition to remote working. This (and probably the lockdown limiting other social interaction!) has meant we’re seeing really good levels of engagement with the IT social activities currently.
Nobody can spend 8 hours a day working solidly without a break – the social channels and activities are designed to fill that five-minute break when you might have chatted to someone in a coffee room or kitchen when on campus.
Working at home can be really effective when you need some focused time to move something forwards without distraction. The team already had a couple of examples where they’d moved something forwards which had been ‘stuck’ or making slow progress for a while.
What’s challenging?
It turns out that everyone was feeling a little bit guilty. The members of team with children were feeling guilty that they weren’t getting as much done as they would usually at work; whereas the other members of the team felt like they were having a much easier time remote working, and that maybe they should be doing more to make their colleagues’ lives easier! We’ve all agreed to stop feeling guilty and just do what we can.
We have lots of technologies and tools available – but sometimes that can lead to confusion. Multiple channels and multiple conversations can be hard to keep track of… “Did someone send that to me in Teams, Skype, email, Zoom, Slack?”
Most meetings seem to have been replaced by virtual meetings that are the same length. Previously we might have needed 5-10 minutes to get between meetings on campus – but when they’re all at your desk, those breaks disappear. Even if a meeting overruns, it feels a bit rude to try and leave it, as everyone knows you’re still going to be sitting at your desk when you exit the call.
What do we want to improve?
Some key areas we want to work on:
- For the Business Partnering team, we need to work out how to remain visible in our partner areas virtually. On campus, hotdesking or catching up when seeing people before or after meetings in their building meant we picked up valuable information and insight about what was happening. We’re exploring ways of replicating this virtually.
- Work/life balance: a couple of members of the team admitted they hadn’t got this quite right yet and would be looking to add more exercise into their day or create clearer boundaries between work time and home time or childcare.
- We’re keen to change the mindset that any conversation, discussion or collaboration has to be in the form of a video conference call. We have many technologies at our disposal and we’re keen to explore how this might replace or reduce the need for so many calls.
- With many staff unable to commit to a standard 9am-5pm working pattern, we need to explore how we can work at different times to our colleagues and still reach the same output. We’ll be trialling a different approach with our fortnightly Rolling Eight Quarter Plan meeting in the first instance – and will keep trying new ways of working until we settle on one that works really well.