Golden rules for WFH
Ihave worked from home for close to 15 years. It’s my true comfort zone, workwise. And while I know that it’s often challenging, it is possible make the situation work perfectly well for you. These pointers should make things easier not just for you, but for those you share a home with, and those in your professional life.
1 FIND A DEDICATED SPACE, SOMEHOW
I get it; spare rooms are a luxury that many Irish homes just don’t have. But working in the main arteries of the house — the kitchen table, under the stairs, the living room — is a fool’s errand. If you’re lucky enough to have a guest room, a ‘good room’ or even a dining room, repurpose it for the time being. Then be sure to make it somewhere that you genuinely like returning to. A scented candle, hand lotion on the desk, some instrumental music on Spotify...
2 DON’T WORRY ABOUT YOUR ZOOM BACKGROUND
2020 became the year that we finally got a peek into what our colleagues’ homes looked like. There was something secretly thrilling about seeing the bookshelves behind Alan from Accounts. Well, 2021 is the year in which we no longer care about Zoom backgrounds. We are so jaded with seeing people painstakingly curate their spaces. No-one’s looking anymore.
3 ENJOY THE BENEFITS OF WORKING FROM HOME (UP TO A POINT)
One of the great joys of working within your own household is the ability to pop on a load of laundry before you get started, have an afternoon nap or to slap on a hair mask for the morning and let it do its job while you do yours. Having said that, it really does help to have a strong line between your working day, and your home life. It helps to get up in the morning and get into a ‘work’ frame of mind. I get up each morning, shower, dress and put make-up on as though I am going to an outside workplace (I don’t even allow myself to wear slippers).
4 CHECK IN WITH THE ENTIRE OFFICE TEAM, REGULARLY
Slack and Zoom are great ways for work teams to stay connected on an ongoing basis, but other tools, like team boards on Trello and projects managed on Toggl, are useful too. It probably goes without saying, but ‘likes’ on Facebook or Instagram do not constitute meaningful interaction. The truth is, if you’re gawping away at social media sites for most of the day, you’re not ‘connected’ to anyone at all. Unless you actually work for one, keeping up with social media sites throughout the day amounts to little more than extreme time-suckage.
5 SPLIT THE RESPONSIBILITIES
If you and your partner are both working from home, get strict — and real — about sharing the home-schooling and childcare responsibilities. Tag-teaming is fine if you have kids, but one parent always needs to be on deck, parenting-wise, if the other is working. Otherwise, you’re on a hiding to nothing. When you try to parent and keep a boss happy at the same time, you end up doing both terribly.
6 CREATE WORK BOUNDARIES
Your mates may not be calling around to lure you out for the afternoon, but you still need to enshrine your working hours. To get the most out of the WFH situation, sticking as faithfully to a regular set of hours as you can will give you greater freedom in the long run. If your boss emails you at 8.30pm at night, remember that you are entirely within your rights to reply and say you will give their request your full consideration, in the morning. Likewise, if you’re a boss attempting to get ahead of yourself with a spot of nocturnal delegation, please don’t expect your team members to jump to it.