I began writing this on December 31, 2021 when I realized that the Write Concept team had been working from home for over 600 days. So this is how it played out for us.

Around March 12, 2020, I happened to be out of town when I received an email from the management of the co-working office space, we were operating out of in Indiranagar, Bangalore. As news of the pandemic began filtering into everyday life, they had decided to close the office for a week beginning Monday March 16, 2020. The idea was to have two weekends where a thorough sanitization was done divided by a week where the office would be closed while routine cleaning and maintenance was done.

As things worked out, we never got back to working from that facility where we had a dedicated office. Really pleasant place located on a tree-lined road.

The office was subsequently closed for renovation. However, the management of the co-working space did offer us an excellent replacement office in the vicinity. The only hurdle was that the number of containment zones in the areas around the office had risen. Folks advised us to avoid the risk of travel and to stay at home. In addition, we noticed that of the multiple former occupants, there was only one company working out of the second office. By the end of July 2020, work-from-home became a reality.

Advantages of WFH

A huge advantage was the ability to avoid the morning and evening commutes to work. In my opinion, there is nothing more painful than being in traffic for 45 minutes to travel 6 kilometres.

For some of our team the need to depend on public transport or OLA/Uber to get to office was negated and a huge plus.

Since work from home involved work components that needed to be completed by a deadline—we were not bound by what time we should be at our desks. This meant that aspects like the quality of output became a priority.

Another aspect was the ability to support family that was also home-bound and working or studying online.

The not-so-great aspects of WFH

Ranked high by our team was the need to interact personally. This would help understand the problem a person is facing or to discuss how to get to a particular end result. Sometimes, even understanding the required end result was a challenge.

Remote working removed personal interactions, and everyone missed that. On examination, it actually went way beyond the pure work-related communications. Just noticing reactions to news on a business or world level and observing the gentleness of someone’s smile—commonplace things were wiped out of our lives within hours.

One of our most recent hires had the experience of being placed at a client location and working out of there for a few weeks before the pandemic began. In his own words, “In the beginning, it was a bit difficult working remotely as communication was through calls and meetings only. Also in my case, I joined the company just one month before the lockdown. So, I was in the learning phase regarding the client’s working process. But after a month or so, our team got used to the new process and it was smooth after that. There were times where I felt things could have been communicated better if we all would have been in office, but after working for two months remotely, we learned how to communicate and manage time efficiently.

In my opinion, time management was one of the key skills I learned during this time. After the initial three months, we all were very comfortable working remotely and got used to the process. “

Other issues faced were uncertainty regarding uninterrupted power and internet services. Though the family of one employee switched to an internet service provider reputed to give higher speeds and better quality, they did not end up receiving the kind of service they expected. This could be because many new subscribers had to be accommodated with all the WFH and online classes for school and college.

In the end…

Everyone learned how to manage within the constraints they faced. Some found that working way after regular working hours was a means to get around utility and internet failures and concentrate on the task at hand. This was especially true in regions where the power companies would decide to cut off services for an entire day because some urgent fixes had to be done.

We did make all the agreed upon deadlines despite our working away from offices that have high speed internet and power, despite being away from colleagues from whom we could get information directly.

The success of the WFH effort was because everyone was determined to make it a success. The team helped and supported each other—knowing that at different times each one was faced with family emergencies and personal ill-health. Thank you team for your understanding and generosity at all times!