Weeknotes March 16th — 20th
The daily change
Like most people across the country and world, my life changed very rapidly last week. My physical world got a lot smaller. My inner world got a lot busier and messier.
The quick transition to a permanent working from home state in the current world situation has led to a few plugs of my brain wiring being put in the wrong holes. Like those big telephone switchboards from the 1950’s with the ladies taking out cables and putting them into different slots to transfer calls. But the ladies have been a bit preoccupied and mistakes are being made. Personal stuff intrudes more on work stuff and work stuff intrudes more on personal stuff and it’ll take a while for me – maybe for any of us, I don’t know – to untangle that tangle.
I still believe that work and life are not two different things that should be separated by a wall, but I’ve reconsidered what I really think when I think that. There is still a wall. There has to be a bit of one. It’s just more porous than iron or brick. More like a cell membrane, passing some things across, keeping other things out. More is going in either direction now and my work-life proteins are not yet arranged to separate things out just enough for this new normal.
And – like my body, with its alien, sticky, self-organising inner life of cells and valves and sphincters and tubes — and its outer life, the one I see and feel, which understands the concept of bumble bees, credit card interest rates, the different and changing types of love, what it feels like to walk barefoot on gravel, and the taste of the first ice cream cone of the year: Both of these worlds are me.
Wherever I am mentally or physically for work or not-work. It is me that exists there, needing to do my thing. Whatever my thing is.
My task for the next few weeks is to exist in work and out of it in the most useful and healthy way I can. To adapt successfully. And – if I can – to help my colleagues and my family to do the same. To find that balance and to keep things running.
I want to do this. I hope I can do it.*
The week
On Monday last week (so long ago now, it may as well have been last year), I went into the office to see our new starter Ceri — what a week to start a new job — and to pick up some of my things. I’d already taken the personal decision to work from home from that point onwards due to my own situation making me potentially more vulnerable.
As the news progressed during the day and evening we had a long operating board call on Tuesday morning and took the decision to close the Bristol office (the only co-working space Delib has) from the end of the week, giving us enough time to plan for a transition to full remote working for everyone normally based in HQ and for everyone to get what they might need to work from home on a more permanent basis.
The things that happened over the week were many and varied and, of course, stressful, so I’ll share only some of them:
I wrote this public-facing contingency article for our customers and colleagues to use and send out and I have since updated this three times in the face of changing news: https://delib.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360006633897-Business-continuity-Coronavirus-COVID-19-
We planned out the closure of the office and I wrote an internal document for all my colleagues worldwide to help them understand the transition and what things they may need to know. The majority of us work from home or from elsewhere fairly regularly, but that’s different to becoming a totally remote team and may mean that people’s home working space hasn’t been optimised for the long term. We asked the following questions of everyone making the transition to full remote and logged any outstanding needs in a Googlesheet. Over the course of the week, people came to the office to collect their things and Andy and others did lots of ferrying of office chairs and desks to help people get set up properly. We ordered more phones, increased contracts, bought wifi boosters and so on. Here are the questions we asked:
- Do you have a comfortable space to work from for the longer term? Remember to move around: sitting too long in one place will make you stiff and sluggish, and some of you might be generally exercising less than you’re used to.
- Do you have everything you need at home already? If not, get it from the office this week — we can help (consider, for example, getting mouse, laptop charger, keyboard and your adaptor from office, stationery, and maybe monitor if you really need it, even your chair if you have space). Take the time to pack this up and get yourself set up properly.
- If you don’t have a work mobile, what personal mobile contract do you have? Do we need to, for example, increase the phone minutes or data you have available? (we’ll pay for that)
- Do you have unrestricted broadband? i.e. no limit or a very high data limit — can we help?
- Is your wifi ok (does your wifi signal work in only one room in your house)? We can get a wifi booster to you if needed
- Do you have headphones with microphone that you can use for video chats and phone calls? We can order some if not.
- Are you familiar with infosec for home working, e.g. locking your devices if out of your sight, not working in places where third parties can observe your screen or listen in on confidential calls. Do you know how to check you’re doing this right?
- Think about how you will work from home and your routine, you need one to get the things done that are needed, to stay sane, and to be able to protect your out of work time.
- Who do you share space with and how will you manage it? http://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/13/the-family-lockdown-guide-how-to-emotionally-prepare-for-coronavirus-quarantine
- Are there any other concerns about your home working space that we’ve not asked about?
I set up four Whereby rooms so that we don’t need to keep asking each other if there is a room free for a video call. We use this for internal Delib chats and have done for a while. Communication tools and what we use when became a big deal last week, and I imagine not just for us. Suddenly, the remote working tools that are so handy and largely fine because we rarely need to have more than one bunch of people using them at once became a hot commodity, like toilet roll, and chickens. I’ve spent time setting up back-up options, doing a supplier review on an additional tool, answering lots of questions, and writing a bit of guidance for what to use when and how. When it comes to new processes that might affect productivity and smoothing the path so others don’t have to worry about how we do stuff, I normally like to have time to think and plan properly so as not to cock it up and make things worse; I have not had that luxury this past week. I have had to hope that what I’ve done is good enough for now and people will understand if things aren’t perfect just yet because of *gestures at everything*. Though nobody really tells you if something is working ok, only if it isn’t. That is quite hard. It’s hard to keep a thick skin in these circumstances.
A big thing last week was reassuring our customers that we were still working, still supporting them. I had some lovely chats with people I’ve known and been working with for a long time now. Human to human chats, checking in, making sure everything is ok. I’m very conscious of the pressure the colleagues and friends I work with in public service must be under. It’s been good to be able to take at least one concern off their plate.
We had plenty of issues, not least getting poor Ceri online at home and adjusted to a whole new company and culture but without being able to sit with us and absorb it by osmosis. Those are still things being worked out and worked on, but we’re getting there.
It’s been busy.
I made biscuits because we ran out at home and I’m self-isolating so I’m living in a hob-nob-free world:
*I have not managed this 100%, more like 75%
