Be Careful, When Home Becomes Office!

The practice of doing office-work from home, is commonplace and familiar in the IT sector and in some consultancies. Many people (mainly start-ups) practice home office methods where homes are permanently used as workspaces. However, in general such systems are only known to a very small percentage of the masses.

The corona era is totally transforming this system. Millions have switched from the usual office style to work-from-home just within a week. This happens to be a new practice for a vast majority of them. In the light of our experiences in this particular situation, here are some suggestions on how to make work-from-home more efficient and comfortable.

A minimum Home-Office is ready if you have a laptop and a stable internet connection. But for the job to become more efficient, the following material conditions must also be ensured.

1. Office Corner: If possible, convert a room in the house itself into an office. By creating some changes in it, an office atmosphere can be brought home. A desktop calendar, writing pad, sticky note, pen stand, a five-wheel-arm chair (with back support), and a comfortable desk are some must-haves. A bean bag or armchair can be used for an hour or two of work, but if you have to work from home for more than a week, an office table and chair is a worthy investment.
2. Reliable Power - Internet Connection: The modern work-from-home method can be effectual only with a high-speed internet connection. We use the BSNL connection at Perumbavoor in Kerala. Which is also the best. Equally important is uninterrupted power.

If you are working for a company or client outside India, pay special attention to the effectiveness of the internet and electricity. Foreigners often do not hold a good opinion about the material facilities of third world countries. It has a basis too. If the power fails during a video call, the efficacy of the work will be questioned and the preconceptions will also be confirmed. This is also an opportunity to alter such assumptions. Having a 4G data dongle in hand, apart from the Broadband and an inverter with two- or three-hours of backup power, are also prerequisites for jobs from Kerala.

3. Do we need a separate office room? It is best if you have an office room in your house or apartment. If there is a vacant store room, it can be cleaned and turned into an office space. Those who cannot keep a separate office room can convert a small area in the house (dining room or living room preferably; avoid bedrooms) into a workspace. Inform the family members and relatives to be a little mindful and formal here, during the office hours.
4. Couples sharing the same office room: Many of the new generation spouses work outside their hometowns. Is it a good idea for them to work together from home; in the same office room? Some tabloid experts have predicted that the number of divorces in the UK will increase after this corona period and that the number of childbirths will increase at an unprecedented rate in the coming days. So, whether an office is enough for both, depends on the size of your house and the nature of your relationship.

If your job is of a sensitive nature, like in the Human Resource department, it is best to have a closed room. While on a video conference, make sure there are no undergarments visible in the focal point of the camera. Instead, you can keep in your room books by Yuval Nova Harari, a picture of Greta Thunberg, or a very inspiring or futuristic quote. There is no harm in those in the office misunderstanding that you are of noble thinking.

5. Office and Family: Relatives generally entertain the presence of someone at home on a daily basis (at least for a while), who usually goes to the office before 7am or earlier and comes home after 7pm. This can be especially challenging in a family involving parents, as in India. It mainly affects women working outside. If you are at home, children, husband, father, mother and mother-in-law might always approach you to deal with almost all the trifles. Or even if they do not, you might feel anxious sitting with the laptop and working alone, when the mother or mother-in-law strides around doing all the chores. So, it is important to convince them that you are not on leave and that you will be completely engaged at work during the office hours. At the same time, because you are not travelling back and forth to the office, that spare time can be spent fruitfully with your family. Do not encourage guests at home during your office hours.
6. Office hours: In modern offices your daily attendance does not matter, but whether or not you are doing the work assigned to you properly is what counts. While at home, you may feel like working at a different time each day. This is not a suitable habit. It is best to agree in advance that everyone in a team will be present at work for at least five to six hours while on work-from-home and act accordingly. In the case when working hours do not match at all, like in India and US, inform your working hours in advance with the other team mates. Ask them to do the same. This is to know when to expect a response if you send a mail, or when you will be available for the others to contact you.
7. Home Office Attire: It is reasonable to doubt whether it is okay to wear the same dress worn at home while at the home office too. But if the office is shifted to home, it is suitable to wear formal clothes during the office hours. First of all, office related video calls are now commonplace. Participating in it with your PJ’s on, is not in line with most office styles. Secondly, experiencers and studies claim that when starting work from home, sitting in the office room or in the declared place for the office in a formal attire and engaging in the usual office hours, without any change in other routines will increase the work efficiency. However, be careful not to go overboard. Just because in the cold temperature of 20 degrees at Geneva, a suit and tie are appropriate, do not attempt the same at the 35 degrees of hot weather in Kerala. There are also several new generation companies with informal office environments. These norms of formality do not apply to them.
8. When leaving the home office: Unlike normally informing the boss, secretary or colleagues when stepping out to meet a doctor or client from the office, at home, there is usually nobody to ask permission to. So, a tendency to leave the house for both necessities and not is quite natural. But this is not a professional behaviour. The confidence between team members, or direct supervision taken by each individual and the determination to act responsibly even without any corporeal control (e.g., punching the id cards) is the foundation of any work from home. That being so, it is unprofessional if a colleague fails to attend a call because s/he is driving or attempts to talk on the phone while driving. Hence, do inform others if you are planning to go out.
9. Planning is important: When working on your own, it is a good idea contemplating on the work to be done per day and per week and writing it down at the beginning of each week. It is also important to document at the end of the day and the week whether work was done as planned, or anything new had to be done in between.
10. Working Together: The basic goal of any office is to have people with different skills work together for the same purpose. So even if the togetherness changes, this complementarity will not change. It is important to have a common goal, work plan and timeline when working from different locations. They must be documented too. In addition to email and phone, many tools are now available to connect people together from different locations, such as Trello, Google Calendar, and the Microsoft team. If you are not yet familiarized with them, this is the best time to. Those who are experienced in this arena may introduce the better tools here, if there are any.
11. Ensure Data Security: The spirit of modern organizations is their algorithm or data. Securing the company data is relatively easy when we normally work behind safe firewalls in centralized offices. But it is rather difficult to ensure this, when everyone is working from different places around the world. This can only be executed if each employee shows full responsibility. Use only the computers provided by the company and ensure its security; for whatever reasons, do not connect and use public Wi-Fi in this computer. Do not check your mail from the computers available in hotel lobbies or internet cafes. Such safety instructions alone shall be written as a separate article.
12. Create happiness: The world is going through an unexpected and unprecedented situation. There are those who are unfamiliar with working from home and those who are limited to working only with regular supervision. There are people like this with us too. Just the other day I had been testing everyone's work sitting at home. It has also come into effect indefinitely from next week. In this case I told them the following things mentioned below.

The first thing to appreciate is that we do have a job to work upon, even though there are many limitations to working from home. For most people, what they already have is going to dwindle. So, we need to do things as efficiently as possible despite all the limitations. Each of us has a role to perform in this challenge faced by the world. The cyber security of an Exchange, which transfers money from an apartment in Dubai through the Internet, is just as important as the leading healthcare professionals in the forefront.

While each of us is fulfilling this historic mission, do not succumb to stress and make work from different countries, as efficient and as humorous as possible. We usually have our breakfast together every Friday. This Friday too, at eleven o'clock, no matter wherever in the world, we have agreed to dine together and share pictures of it with each other. Singing songs together at the beginning and end of each week are also part of the special programmes that belong to the Corona period.

This corona period will be a crucial event in the field of employment. The latter world will evaluate office cultures in two ways: "pre corona era" and "post corona era". If the work from home movement can be accomplished properly, there will be a situation where Malayalees can do various jobs from all over the world while being in Kerala itself. There will be transformations in the culture, the financial system and politics in Kerala, if at least half of our talented individuals of the new generation, who are now scattered all over the world, can have the opportunity to do world class work from Kerala. This is a great opportunity. Make it useful and enjoy!