Working from home

I am currently starting a new transformation programme and will end up with approximately 20-25 people additional people in the building. A significant number will be consultants but many will be internal permanent and contractor employees as well. Number of desks that are allocated to me? Zero. So I am having to beg borrow steal sneak and squat in about 4 different floors in the building.

This is obviously not beneficial and has been escalated to senior management. Although given the seat situation, I really dont know where they will find the space. I hear there are some spaces in the window cleaner's boat, but not sure how many will like to work there. So homeworking it is.

But that's good when you have an established unit working and people know each other and a team has been formed, when you are forming a team, then its much more difficult.

I was speaking to a friend of mine who has young children and he said that its tough to do calls with babies at home. I recalled what I used to do, try to bunch up calls to take at home, open the call and announce that you are at home and have a baby. Made a sling out of my ma's sari and put the baby in the sling, lying down or up against my left shoulder. Bought one of those phone headsets which has a mute button and off you go.

Its not pretty or hunky dory, you can end up with a shoulder full of drool, or suddenly you hear "abababdbssaababababab" or the baby grabs your pencil while you are trying to take notes or you suddenly find that your baby has decided that your ear makes for a perfectly good teether or decides to use your head as a drum or wants to participate in a call about budgets. All which has happened to me and its not fun, but there you have it.

 

Having had the joys of home working for the past 12-13 years, I am still not sure if anybody has really cracked the home working situation properly, specially within the financial services world. Also came across this article on the differences between men and women home working. I quote:

Everybody knows that men and women think differently in a lot of ways. But do those differences matter when it comes to working remotely and managing remote teams? According to Sally Helgesen, it matters a lot. Managers who don’t appreciate those distances can do themselves, their companies and those employees a great disservice.

What do you think? What have been your experiences with homeworking and managing output with teams who are homeworking?