Work from home: Our experience so far
/
We’re hitting the two months’ mark for working from home (WFH). It’s been, overall, an excellent experience for us. We’ve turned, overnight, from a fully working from office to a working from home company. And thanks to careful planning and great execution by our systems and facilities teams we did not miss a beat in that transition. We wrote about the steps we took to move to home in this blog, today’s post is a summary of what our experience and learning has been over the two months that we’ve been doing it.
WFH is great
Working from home worked very well for us. We have not lost a bit of our usual efficiency, in fact sometimes we feel we have gained more with more focused work and collaboration. The time we save everyday by not travelling to work through Dhaka’s horrendous traffic is by itself a great win. Add to that the convenience of working in familiar environment and ability spend more time with family - WFH is a winner. So much of a winner that we think WFH will stay beyond this pandemic (yes there will be a time when will have no coronavirus!), we are planning to make WFH part of our regular working procedure when things get back to normal one day and we get to go back to the office again.
Work environment is important (even at home)
This was expected. As we went through the motions of WFH we realized over and over that having the right work environment is important even when you working from home. So having a table dedicated to work (rather than using the dining table), in a space where you are not disturbed is very important. Over the first week this realization meant many of us adjusted our work computer setup at home. Some even moved their furniture around, moved to a different room or opened up an unused space at home to setup a relatively noise free working environment.
The chair needs to be just right
The other big realization is that the chair that we sit on needs to be just right. Many our us had chairs that was OK to sit and play game for a few hours at home but when you are spending longer hours of work that chair becomes extremely important. We arranged to send emergency support missions to provide the work chair from the office to the home of some.
System support is essential
Our technical support team has been playing a very important role during this WFH period. As we went through the weeks of WFH new issues came up on home PC, work environment, access to resources at office etc. that needed direct support from our technical support team. Our systems guys have been busy providing Kaz developers spread throughout the city with technical help over phone and online, even risking a trip to the house to support on site with cables, monitors, internet troubleshooting, VPN setups, hard disc installations, etc. They also worked with our facilities team to switch on developer machines, coordinate access to resources available at the office.
Office needs to be accessible
However well you plan things in a company like ours where there are multiple projects with multiple teams working on separate deadlines and priorities the need for access to the office is essential. We expected this and had on site support at the office made possible by the fact that some office staff stayed next to the office space. Hence it was possible to provide access to any resource at the office on a very short notice. This is one of the key factors for successful full on remote operation.
So our fight against cornovirus continues by staying at home, maintaining social distancing and by working remote only. We plan to do this until all signs of the virus is gone - we pray and hope that it will soon.
