This article was originally written by me when I was employed by Opin Kerfi an Icelandic company back in 2020. I wrote this article at the time to help people in the Icelandic working culture cope with the new reality of Covid at the time.
For the past 3 years, I have been working remotely for Opin Kerfi from Norway, and I would like to share my personal experience of what it means to work as part of a team remotely, as well as what it takes for companies that want to go on such a journey. But before we get into this story, maybe it’s right to give a little history that explains what caused me to work remotely at Open Systems. The background story is that about 3 years ago there was a turning point in the family that made us decide to relocate. We had sold our house in Akranes, but we had been renting in the capital area and the idea was to move “south” as we peninsula people call it. The housing market in the capital area was not particularly friendly when the rental period ended, which made us look outside the country, and to make a long story short, Norway was chosen. Afterwards, I sat down with my boss and told him that I was moving to Norway. At that time, I had thought that I would start looking for a job in Norway, but it turned out that the company offered me the option to work remotely, and here I am still. Over the years, Opin Kerfi has had good remote access in view of being an IT company, however, it was not common in the company to have many employees working remotely, so there were a few things that had to be formalized before proceeding further. At first, this remote working method started in a limited group, but has since expanded across the company, bringing us various benefits and also challenges.
Personalities and workspaces—not for everyone
It is very common in workplaces to work in open spaces and it is individual whether it suits the person. Some people are very open and like to communicate, have a coffee chat and form good personal relationships at work, while others care about having peace and privacy to carry out the tasks of the day. Most of us have heard terms like introvert, extrovert and even ambivert when it comes to people’s personality traits, which in some cases play a role in whether open spaces are suitable for that person. For my part, I consider myself an ambivert, i.e. a person who wants to focus on current projects and is a little introverted, but in the right context, I just as much enjoy having a coffee chat when it’s appropriate, whether it exists to discuss the projects in a relaxed and informal way or to connect with colleagues or clients. As a result, working long hours without having to interact with people face to face has never been a problem for me. However, human relations are very important to most of us and we look for ways to communicate in other ways, especially when we are working remotely and cannot have a cup of coffee with colleagues when the need arises. What we did at Open Systems to respond to this was, among other things, to:
- Move the coffee chat into our chat program when it had some value for the group or the company.
- We created a culture in the chat for professional groups, the humor and the departments.
- Move departmental meetings into the chat / teleconference and to shared document areas where we save meeting minutes and handover documents between employees
Remote work — Long or short term — in Scandinavia or abroad, does it matter?
If teams communicate a lot and rely on each other’s expertise, this can make a difference. However, such risks can be reduced by setting up active communication channels such as chat rooms, shared documentation areas that are easily accessible at any time of the day regardless of the time zone in which the person works. If you work remotely for a short period of time, there may not be a need to set up special facilities or prepare your spouse and family members especially, as the disruption to household work or work is insignificant. However, if you work remotely from home for a longer period of time, there are certain factors that need to be considered:
- If a company decides to offer long-term remote work, in many cases it requires cultural changes in the company
- Peace of mind at work is important, so it is important to establish a good working environment
- A good headset and webcam for remote meetings
- Good remote meeting equipment both at the workplace and in a remote office
- Good working conditions so that the working day is effortless
- Good communication tools and a documentation platform so that others in the group are aware of what you are working on.
- A good remote connection tool if you need to connect to a workplace, for example. via VPN (virtual private network), multi-factor authentication, etc.
- Minimize the use of spaces at home that you also use to relax. It makes it easier to be able to “stop work” when you are working at home.
- An agreement between home guests to respect the peace of mind of those who work remotely during the working day and to try to minimize unnecessary disruption.
- Stick to work and know how disconnect after work.
It is worth mentioning that it is important to be critical of yourself when working from home. The reason why I mention this in particular is that we as individuals are different, but it should be kept in mind that remote work is based on mutual trust and mutual restraint. Some individuals may go into gear working at maybe 70–80% capacity while working remotely, while others may go to 100–130+% capacity. Therefore, it is important that the employer and the employee have a common standard to work by. One measure can be hours clocked, another requests in a work order system, documents processed in an archiving system, Contribution regarding building a chat and remote working culture. In any case, there must be a clear agreement between the employee and the employer when working remotely so that both parties can assess the quality of the work based on the same criteria and that the work is comparable to other individuals who work, for example. in the office. It is also important to mention that if you are an employee who has been given the trust to create value for the company remotely, that comes with responsibility. That’s why it’s important not to fall into looking at “cat videos” on YouTube for hours because no one is watching you. Instead, make good use of your time and try to work sensibly/intelligently, and don’t be shy to call for help on the chat or take a short teleconference when you’re down.
Protocols and structure
As the emphasis on a friendly remote working culture increases and there are changes in the way we communicate, the rules change as well. As the company moves more into electronic communication media, it is necessary to consider various factors such as:
- Which chat program to use if the company has more than one way available.
- Which filing system to use if the company has more than one way available.
- Establish a naming standard for “chat channels” in chat applications.
- Establish a naming standard in archive areas (and preferably pair with a chat channel if applicable).
- Edit the creation of channels so that the name standard is followed.
- Establish a communication standard that supports remote work and chat culture.
- What are the channels that all company employees are members of and the purpose of the chat rooms is clear.
- Move announcements into the forum instead of distributing them by e-mail to all employees unless there is a good reason to do so.
- Where do employees report when they show up for work, withdraw or are absent due to illness.
- In open channels, questions are answered in the form of threads so that people can easily assess whether they want to participate in the discussion or not.
- Give feedback on a discussion, for example. with emoji or short answers when asking the company as a whole.
- Let me know when you are busy and can’t answer a message until later if the message is such that the person asking is waiting for an answer from you.
Conclusion
Working remotely is a viable option today and there are various tools and devices that support this journey. However, it is good that when starting to create a remote work and chat culture, it is about the people and the processes and not the tools. As soon as the people and processes are ready, you can use the tools and devices that make sense to use at any given time. Some of the things I’m going to highlight below are still a work in progress, but other things have become established:
Benefit
- Remote workers are first-class citizen workers
- The company’s chat culture has become a natural part of the company’s culture
- Communication channels have shortened and reactions have increased
- The quality of documentation increased (as part of the need for remote workers to access data)
- Much more respect is given to work order and case systems than before
- Email communication including the thread monsters quickly decreased and communication became more concise in the chat program
- General disclosure within the company became more visible
- Communication increased between parties from different sources, for example through humor channels or professional groups-channels (special-interest-groups)
Challenges
- Not everyone succeeds in adapting to the tools that have been chosen (adaptation inertia).
- Some people do not actively participate because the solution is called X, but the person wanted solution Y (tool fetish).
- Cultural changes take time, here we mean that the drop hollows the stone.
Finally
Opin Kerfi offers advice regarding numerous implementations of remote work solutions, collaboration tools and user equipment. Our consultants also help with the implementation and teaching of solutions that are suitable for remote work, such as Microsoft Teams.
Our remote service is also suitable for companies and organizations that want to receive general technical user support for their employees wherever they are.
More information at https://opinkerfi.is
Credits
Photo by Jodie Cook on Unsplash
