Working from Home - Our Experience

If the Prime Minister can work from home for the next 2 weeks, we should all be able to do it. 

Perry Group is a fully virtual company and has been from its inception - we have no offices, everyone on the team works from their home office, or from coffee shops, their car or from the cottage. I personally have been remote working for over 13 years and have done some of my best work on ferries, planes, in the passenger seat of the car at 100 kmh, in the corner of a kitchen, a library, and in my own home office.

Of course, there are pro’s and con’s of working from home. 

Here’s some of the things that we have learned as a company and as a team in that time.

We encourage our team members to get the basics right in where they physically work. It will make a really big difference. People with aching necks and shoulders, headaches from poor posture in an uncomfortable working space can’t do good work. So, even at short notice, please try and find a decent quiet space with a good chair and desk/surface, try and find good natural lighting if you can. Take breaks every 20 minutes - even if just to move your head and body around for 1 minute.

Check out this guide from the Mayo Clinic on setting up your workspace.

One of the weird things about working from home is not doing too little, but doing too much. Set yourself working hours 8.30 - 4.30 or 9.00 - 5.00 or whatever and try your best to stick to them. Working through dinner and into the night works once in a while, but not as a common practice.

Also, make sure you take a real break for lunch - if you can, get out and take a walk.

As a manager - please trust your people. Let them do their thing. Trust them to get things done. The vast majority of people (99.9%) are diligent and care about what they are doing - they will work more than they ask them, not less.

Don’t over-monitor.

Don’t create unnecessary meetings to check what people are doing. We have a daily written status update (Basecamp automatically sends us a message at 4pm every day) - that every member of the team sends out - sharing what they’ve done today. It helps us keep connected and that’s all we need. You can easily recreate this informally with email among a team.

Ensure that you have a central place to communicate. We use Basecamp to be our central place. You could use Jostle or SharePoint or Teams or Slack or WhatsApp or any manner of other solutions - but having an agreed place to message and share information transparently within teams is important.

Recognize that while online chat can work great, some things that you could spend 30 minutes banging messages back and forth could be solved more easily and quickly by picking up the phone and having a 5 minute conversation.

Let people be off-line when they are heads down working on something. Constant dings of interuption from Slack, Teams, Jabber or whatever messaging system you use break concentration and break up flow. So, expect that people will sometimes turn that stuff off while they get some solid work done.

If you are doing virtual meetings - turn on your video for video calls. It keeps you and your colleagues more engaged in the conversation and helps you not to drift off. 

If you are in a noisy space make sure you mute your microphone when you are not talking.

By the way - if your kid wanders in while you are on a call you don’t need to be like this guy.

Everyone is in the same boat right now and understands - kids get bored and want to say hi. Have them say hi to the people on the meeting and then take 5 (or whatever you need) to get things straightened out.

Recognize that people can feel disconnected when working from home. We are social beasts, so encourage social interaction. Make sure there is a watercooler space for chatting on off-topic, non-work related topics. 

As a manager offer time to your staff to reach out and connect, to talk - keep your one-on-ones going. 

Also, and this is important, please bear in mind that right now people have got a lot on their minds. I know I am less productive than I normally am. 

So for those working at home for the first time - recognize that worry and fear of the unknown, kids at home, disrupted everything - means we can’t be as focused as we’d like and can’t perform at our highest level.

It also takes a while to get used to and adjusted to working from home. It's different from the norm. As people we shouldn’t expect full productivity - and as managers don't expect it from your teams right now.  

Best of luck and stay safe.