New Director Jon Briscoe tackles the current reality of working from home & ponders the future
Working from Home - Is this the future?
During these extraordinary times we have all had to find new ways of working. For those of us lucky enough to be doing this from the safety of our own homes this can be working from the coffee table, the kitchen table, sitting on the end of the bed, taking over the children’s playroom or perhaps in the garden. I know this because video meetings have given us all an unexpected glimpse in the home lives of not just our colleagues but clients as well. As for my ‘home office’, its an old camping table propped up on bean bags to be at a useable height – the big Swedish furniture company doesn’t deliver my desk for another 19 days (not that I’m counting!).
Back to those video meetings – they’re working much better than we all thought aren’t they. And they have a number of advantages. Firstly, you can carry on with other work in the background which is an excellent boost in productivity. Secondly, if you get bored you can always go and do something else. If you turn off the camera no-one else knows that you are now eating a big slice of cake – you can’t do that when you are all meeting around a table.
And what about that rush to buy wine and beer before we went into lockdown? I don’t know about other people, but our office only consumes alcohol at work on Christmas Eve. Somehow the same rules don’t apply when you are working from home in your pyjamas. Whose going to know that you’re enjoying a glass of wine while still on the clock? Just remember to keep the camera off during those meetings!
The biggest adjustment has been finding a work routine - I’ve settled on: get up, eat, work, eat, work, eat, watch tv, sleep, and repeat. And now that we have the technical capability to work from home there’s the opportunity to do this 7 days a week!
When life returns to normal, will this become my new normal? No – I’ll be unlocking the office door quicker than you can say ‘social distancing’.
