Work and Coffee Republic = Wired Staff Writer
By Asavin Wattanajantra in Editorial
Posted in Coffee Republic, workwise week, remote working, flexible working on
Nearing the end of IT PRO’s working from home day, and what have I learned?
Well, for one thing, I’m never going to try working in a coffee shop again. It’s impossible. For one thing there are too many distractions. People talking around you - ended up having to put on a bit of Spotify to prevent distractions!
OK - the whole free Wi-Fi thing which I tried to do at Coffee Republic. Well I’ve realised it’s not exactly free, but I guess I shouldn’t have expected it to be.
What they do is give you 20 minute vouchers for buying something. I knew I was going to be staying for an hour, so I asked for three vouchers. However they only gave me two and said I should get one later.
I was impressed with the speed of the connection, as it seemed a lot quicker than the one I had at home. However it is very annoying when your internet cuts out after twenty minutes because that was the only time allotted.
Fine I said. With headphones got some work done - happy enough. But after the time at elapsed I asked for another twenty minutes, and they said I had to buy something else!
Thing is, I’m not much of a coffee drinker, and by this time I already had one of their lattes which had kinda put me in a hyper caffeined state. So I bought another one. By the end of it I was a little bit of a coffee addled mess.
It only after occurred to me that I didn’t necessarily have to buy coffee… But the point’s still the same. It wasn’t free, I had to pay around £4 for an hours connection. Although this is about half the price of getting it from someone like BT Openzone. But it’s not ‘free’ - kind of free in the way you get a free laptop in buying an 18- month mobile broadband connection.
Otherwise I’ve enjoyed today. I work in the heart of central London, so the commute and masses of people everywhere can really get you down, which I think would affect productivity in anybody.
Working at home I was relaxed. Had a little lie in, started working before I was actually meant to start work and was happy enough to do all the things I do at work on my Wi-Fi enabled Macbook. Without distractions and the office I was able to sit down and get my work done in comfort.
Ate lunch at a little cafe round my house without having to deal with the lunchtime rush. Apart from the coffee shop I felt I was productive and happy. Importantly I’ve always been in contact - whether it be email or IM.
Obviously there’s things I’ll miss about the office such as working with colleagues, but every so often working at home can definitely help in terms of a better work/life balance. However as I said at the start of the day, it does take a definite trust between manager and employee to get this to work.
Rated: 60% (1 votes)
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Working from home is a matter of trust
By Asavin Wattanajantra in Editorial
Posted in workwise week, remote working, IT PRO, flexible working on
Like my other IT PRO colleagues, I’m working from home today in support of Work Wise week.
I’m a fan of remote and flexible working. It makes a lot of sense. The big companies like Google and Microsoft undoubtedly have good flexible working policies, and it makes workers happier as it definitely improves the work life balance.
I would say though that managers really have to have faith and trust in their employees to make it work. There must be some management out there who still believe in ‘clockwatching’ - making sure that employees come in and come out at a set time.
Because you can’t see your employees then you don’t know what they are doing - are they offline, dossing, sleeping, playing with their kids - you can’t tell.
However I’m glad to say that IT PRO has faith in me and know that I won’t be doing that. They can also contact me on email and Windows Messenger at any time to check where I am and what I’m doing.
But in the end it’s about trust. They realise that I will work just as hard as at home, and that’s why employees and management need a good relationship to make this work.
I’ll also be going to my local Coffee Republic today to check out its Wi-Fi and to see whether its actually a good working environment!
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