After staring in awe at our new office, one of the questions was ‘where do we hang the dressing gowns’?
Nope, we don’t have a fancy spa downstairs – although a gym is coming shortly – we got so used to working from home while the office was kitted out, that our dressing gowns and PJs became our style BFFs…
That’s right, as anyone who is a home worker will tell you, getting dressed in the morning isn’t high on the priority list. And, as many businesses move towards cost savings in deliberately hiring home workers, there’s lots of pros and cons to this. Something we’ve learnt over the past few months of WFH. Here’s some of them.
1. You know EVERYTHING about Jeremy Kyle’s guests
In fact, you become obsessed with it… Because, if you must have noise around you while you work, that’s about all that’s on.
Oh wait, what’s this? Jeremy Kyle is no more! We’re sad to see it leave our screens but as we’re in the midst of Mental Health Awareness Week, and moving forward, we think it’s absolutely the right call by ITV. *Rushes off to check TV times for Escape to the Country and Homes Under the Hammer.
2. The postie’s scared of you
Working from home can be a lonely business and although your workmates are at the other end of Slack or the phone, nothing beats a face to face convo. So, when you spot that postie, you’re going to beg them to come in for a cuppa just so you can tell them all about the latest episode of Jezza or your nan’s illness… yep, if you were on the receiving side, you’d probably run too.
3. You get caught in your PJs
When you get an email from a colleague telling you they’ll give you a call, you assume it’ll be the audio kind. Not in our case. We’re all so Skype happy that when that call comes through, you find yourself on video in said PJs and wearing yesterday’s make-up… and it’s so much worse when it’s your boss on the other end. Now where’s that lip gloss?
4. Things take double the time
An office environment means that a simple question can be answered within seconds. When you’re WFH, it means an email has to be typed, received and then responded to. Now we’re back in the office, we’re so pleased to have the human connection back and an open plan space means those questions get shouted out and answered quick smart.
5. You become much better at connecting
Working from home means you’re going to need tools to talk to your colleagues. And we like to think during our office break, we’ve nailed them. We’ve become experts at Slack, Teamviewer and cloud-based phone systems, which means we’re always available. And let’s not forget all our clouded up files, so we can work anywhere – from home, in a shopping centre or our clients’ offices on an internal doc. And yes, we do get dressed for the latter visits!
So that’s pretty much our findings on WFH and although we loved it for a time, we have to be honest and say that we’re so pleased to be back in an office working creatively as a team. Especially when the office looks as awesome as ours #smugface. Want to pop in and see it? Drop us a line and come and hear what we can offer you in terms of social, audio, event planning and web design!
