Five important ‘work from home’ and ‘work from office’ lessons we learned at Guardian this chaotic year:

2020 has been a bit exhausting, hasn’t it? I remember it starting with a possible threat of world war three breaking out…the bombing of a civilian aircraft…and the discovery of a new, highly contagious virus. All in January!

Fast forward to December, 2020…the last few days of the year we have left, and we feel like we’ve aged 100 years in just the last 12 months.

At Guardian, we’ve had an interesting 2020. We’ve had to make large adjustments on certain processes, and we’ve had to do a complete 180 on other processes.

Here are some of the lessons we learned, from a Human Resources perspective.

  1. Calendars! Update your calendars always!

When the first lockdown happened, we were at a bit of a loss on how to go forward. We’d been on the verge of introducing ‘work from home,’ to our team, so we didn’t have any rules in place.

One of the things we quickly learned was making sure everyone kept their calendars up to date. Our general rule of thumb was—if you’re doing any task, whether it’s work related or not, that takes up more than 30 mins, put it down on your calendar so someone else knows not to schedule a meeting with you at that time.

  1. Lights…camera…action!

Cameras make a huge difference in participation. Of course, not everyone has uninterrupted internet access, so it may not be feasible for everyone in the team. But we asked anyone who had a decent connection to turn on their cameras during all meetings.

Humans are as visual as we are social.

  1. Productivity fluctuates with differing lockdown rules.

When the lockdown first hit us, we were thoroughly impressed with ourselves and the rest of our team! We were all working very hard—highly efficient—highly focused. We’d turned into supermen and superwomen.

Of course, what we realized later, when the lockdown grew more relaxed, was that—it’s very easy to be hyper focused on work when there’s absolutely nothing else to do. We had to fine tune our rules every now and then to make sure thing flowed smoothly.

  1. Getting the team back to office is a slow process.

At Guardian, we’ve been back at office for the last few months—we used a team-by-team approach. We segregated ‘work from office’ days by teams so that the office would have ample open spaces.

 

  1. Mask up and sanitize!

As of 2021, we expect all our teams to be fully back at work—and we have some strict rules in place.

The pandemic numbers may not be all that bad in Hyderabad, but Guardian has a strict ‘mask up’ policy when it comes to the work place…or anywhere else really…it’s always smart to wear a mask when there’s a deadly airborne virus spreading around.

It took us a few tries, but we’ve adopted a bit of a vigilante approach. Like Batman!

Or maybe no—but the general rule of thumb is: wear a mask, and make sure your nose and mouth is covered.

 

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