There came an extraordinary time for us all, bringing us sudden change of work model, and our everyday habits. Numerous dangers caused by coronavirus pandemic forced Ailleron to switch to Work-From-Home model. For some of us the change came naturally, but there were others, too, who found it very challenging. However, the entire situation inspired Ailleron employees to share their experience of home office work. Then, we thought that we should share their opinions with you, too. Below you can find a part of Mariusz’s blogpost that was recently posted on LinkedIn. Have fun reading it!

LeaseTech in the time of epidemic?

Oh no, Marian, do not write the post! There are thousands of such guides out there. One can’t use LinkedIn without stumbling upon some of them – said Scrum Master when I told him, that I want to share my experience on how Lease Tech, where I work as Head of Operations, had been doing during coronavirus pandemic. So let me get this straight: this is not a guide. This is the very first epidemic in my life and I do not want to give advices on how to deal with it. Still, I would like to tell you what we did up to this point to make our Work-From-Home model look like a typical Monday. And, by the way, I would like to leave my comfort zone and post my very first article on LinkedIn!

First – understanding people

This is a brand-new situation for each and every one of us and we have not experienced such a change before – not to mention our children that cannot understand why their parents are now home and why they claim they still have to work while staying there. My aim was always to create a working environment that can be created both in the office and at home. This time it is no different – we try to understand the situation of each of our employees, as they all have some other commitments to attend to, whether it is going shopping while there is no queue outside the mall, or taking care of one’s children. We are all people and if we cannot secure what is the most important for us, we are not going to do our tasks efficiently. We put on flexible hours. It would be great for everyone to attend the same video call, but we fully understand that someone needs to leave earlier to take care of his children and spend some more time sending emails in the evening.

Secondly – empathy

Each and every one of us has a different way of handling the lockdown. There are some people  that can find it amusing and such a person after a few hours will find himself playing Heroes 3, while others will simply miss spending time with colleagues. I have asked the leaders of my teams to stay close to their employees, to listen to their needs and to react accordingly; to be on call at all time to support the teams whenever they need it. We also decided to see each other on our daily video calls (especially when it is possible to blur the background in Microsoft Teams to hide our dogs stretching behind our backs). We also began to organize so-called “corona coffee meetings” – a 15-minutes-long conversations that were created to let everyone to speak their mind.

Third – lots of preparations

Before Work-From-Home model became a reality, we have decided to check whether we can do our job remotely. On Friday, 13th March, we started work remotely to check if all the systems we needed to use are working properly. The test went our flawlessly, despite some minor problems with employees that were not equipped with VPN that time. Other Ailleron divisions also joined this test to make sure our network could support all of our activities. This made the decision of switching to remote work mush easier. What is more, we also asked our customers for understanding our temporary situation, as we could encounter some more problems during very first video calls with them – but we still wanted to be there for them!

I still have some more things to do on my roadmap of ideas, as work-from-home model may stay with us for a long time. For now, I would like to pause here, wishing you a nice and productive day. Let me know how do you do during #stayathome. Share your experiences and your emotions.

Author:

Mariusz Domaradzki