8 years of remote working

A long time ago on this blog, I wrote a weekly series on flexible working and the many places you could legitimately work with the right tools. I’ve now worked remotely now for eight years. Sometimes from my sofa, occasionally from my home office, often the kitchen table, bean bag, lying on the floor staring at the ceiling - you name it, I've probably worked from nearly every inch of my homes at that time. It can be an isolating experience especially if you come from a highly engaged work environment but fortunately, I never felt that isolation with Atos.

I admit to rarely using personal video, and outside of work phone calls ironically fill me with a level of irrational dread that makes no sense. I do after all spend pretty much all my day on the phone, talking to my teams, colleagues, and partners. Modern collaboration is as much about talking and sharing as it is in action, whether sharing your screen and a presentation you have been working on or a starting something new from scratch.

So what I have I learned during the eight years of my remote working?

• Routine is key. Often when you are working from home you will inevitably open your email earlier than if you were in the office, you will feel like a set lunch isn’t necessary. You may even feel that leaving the house is cheating but you’d be wrong. Have a routine, maybe open your email at 7 am but be in the gym at 9 am, maybe getting out at lunch and going for a walk. It’s okay to put the dishwasher on, it’s okay to nip to the shop - all of that stuff should be okay. Just make sure you are as productive as if you were in the office.
• Contact, Contact, Contact. You will quickly find yourself isolated if you don’t keep in touch with people. Make sure your 1-2-1s are booked, make sure there is a way of you joining a meeting online. Have people and relationships where you can just call and have those water-cooler moments you will miss when at home. And contrary to my personal habits, video is helpful especially if you get into the routine of using it early. Seeing people is important.
• Objectives are even more important. Because you are not seeing or being seen every day it’s vital to make sure your objectives are clear, and more in-depth than they might be if you worked in an office.

So what can Atos do for companies looking at remote working?

• Call, chat, meet cloud-delivered collaboration solutions to help you work from anywhere.
• Remote IT management tools delivered from the cloud.
• Video Conferencing solutions.
• Industry leading premises technologies for critical business communications.

Find out what we can offer you today - drop us a message here.