Remote work - what could go wrong?

Amidst the global pandemic of Covid-19, software, and technology companies are thinking about their employees’ safety. Companies like Google, Apple, Microsoft, all have allowed their workers to work from home to fight with the novel coronavirus.

Not going into the specifics of the virus but more discussing the steps that software companies can take to protect their employees and still function as a business entity. One of the biggest advantages, specific to this situation, is to be able to promote “Social Distancing”.

But what that mean for the Software Companies. Companies where teams have to work with each other, interact, communicate and process together. Some of the biggest challenges that Project managers and team leads have to face could be:

Distractions

When you are working with people in an environment where it is more professional, there are fewer distractions. When you talk about working from home, you may not be able to avoid the distractions that arise. Interruptions from children, work, neighbors, friends, and family members may be very disruptive and special efforts must be made to make it known that you are working and unavailable for interruption within work hours despite your physical presence at home.

Distinguishing between home and work

The temptation to engage in household matters since you are at home is often very strong. Suddenly you may start to feel obliged to clean the home, do a little shopping, take a little more time with your child, do a little bit here and there around the house, and socialize. Not to mention the riskiest factor, “being a little lazy”. You must be able to draw the line between home and work to avoid both areas suffering.

Communication

Communication is the most to be affected, as concerned by the project managers. Teams will have to follow scrum and communicate between timelines to discuss their progress and determine the task loads. When you are working as a team and physically present in the same location, communication is easy and straight forward. Now think that you have to work where you have to communicate with all your 10+ team members on Skype. That seems more time consuming and loses productivity.

Maintaining a work schedule

Since no-one is looking over your shoulders or enforcing your hour strictly, you may feel tempted to work endlessly, or worse, try to skip a few minutes surfing Netflix. This pressure to work endlessly or without supervision may be compounded by the fact that you feel there are greater expectations made of you as a home-worker or by self-imposed pressures to prove yourself and your abilities in this arrangement. Moreover, the lack of physical separation between home and work may add to this pressure to work endlessly or supervision.

I’ll finish with WC’s tradition of using a Dilbert cartoon :) Stay safe in these uncertain times and let us all hope and pray that this will be over soon.