Working from home!

What happens next when work from home becomes the daily expectation?

Working from home has finally become a reality and while grateful, some people are realizing they don’t particularly like it. In this COVID-19 world we are living in, some of us have the privilege of working from home and that is exactly what it is, a privilege. So many are having to seek unemployment, unsure how they’ll pay bills or buy groceries. I’m not here to cure those ails, although I wish I could but I firmly believe we have a great opportunity to get more workplaces to recognize the employee benefit that work from home can be. This means, be productive! Seems easy enough, however there are moments when Netflix and chill takes on a completely different meaning as in: me, myself and I with popcorn and a drink and what was I supposed to be doing. Not that this has happened to me anytime recently, just making conversation. Here’s what my team and I are doing:

• Using Zoom to get the face time we are missing
• We’re using this whether we have a meeting or not
• Google docs to collaborate on work we need to complete on different time schedules
• Key & Peele , don’t judge and we do our best to only share safe for work content but laughter is a huge part of human interaction and this works for us

Not an exhaustive list but something to be aware of. Find out what works for you and try to implement it. Ask someone who has been doing it consistently and gather some tips. At this point, we will have weeks to work this out and ideally when the world is back to normal (whatever that is), our companies will recognize a couple of days a month isn’t a lot to ask. In the meantime, don’t forget a kind word can go a long way. More than ever, we don’t know what those around us are dealing with.

 

Dee M. Williams is a human with diverse interests who happens to love teaching. Luckily he indulges that passion as an adjunct professor having taught courses in Organizational Change, Change Management, HR, and Career Planning and Management. He has also assisted in the creation of an adaptive learning HR course, social media and project management courses in the Higher Education space. His day job is being a Manager of Career Advising for a non-profit University. He is passionate about providing information to assist friends, family, students and alums in professional development and uses his management experience in Fortune 500, non-profit and private corporations to inform his decisions. His thoughts are his own and in no way reflect his employers or something like that. Feel free to connect via LinkedIn and follow @Dee_M_Williams since I finally decided to return to Tweeter. Oh, and a dad and husband and lover of bow ties!