Telecommuting Experiences: Voices of TeamSpirit Singapore Members
As Singapore prepares to move into Phase II, we want to reflect on our collective telecommuting experiences in Circuit Breaker and the current Phase I.
Today we are delighted to have four TeamSpirit Singapore team members to join us in a roundtable discussion on their remote work experience. Enjoy the read!
Introduction of Members
Member #1: Watanabe Satoshi
- Role in TeamSpirit: Product Manager of Professional Service Automation (PSA) Team
- Joined TeamSpirit since 1st April, 2019
Member #2: Liu Qinyuan
- Role in TeamSpirit: Frontend Developer of Expense Team
- Joined TeamSpirit since 18th February, 2019
Member #3: Juno Wang
- Role in TeamSpirit: Frontend Developer of Expense Team
- Joined TeamSpirit since 25th February, 2019
Member #4: Franzy Htoo
- Role in TeamSpirit: Frontend Developer of PSA Team
- Joined TeamSpirit since 1 November 2019
Facilitator: Soh Wan Wei, Marketing Manager
Theme 1: Difficulties of Remote Work And Creative Ways of Overcoming Challenges
Wan Wei: To kickstart our roundtable, would you like to expound on some of the difficulties you have encountered in remote work thus far?
Qinyuan: One of the difficulties of remote work for me is to manage my emotions well during this unprecedented period. You see, this is a really unique circumstance that we are currently living in, experiencing a “lock down” at home.
Some people will feel very bored, and some people will feel stuffy. Therefore, if your mood is not very good, then it is likely that your work productivity and efficiency will be lowered. And this is a vicious cycle– when the work efficiency is lowered, it is likely to lead to a worse mood. So this is one of the top difficulties for me.
I maintain a good mood at home by doing regular and simple home exercises, since May. After work, I make it a point to do 30minutes exercises 3-4 times a week. After exercising, I’ll feel really good and for the next day, I will be able to start my work day with positive emotions.
Satoshi-san: One of my greatest difficulties is to switch “on and off” work. Usually in my house, there are children playing and studying. I need to switch “on” when I start to work– initially, I don’t have a good desk or a good space to work. Therefore, I spoke to my daughter to ask if she can lend her room to me, and she agreed. Now I’m working alone in this room, and there isn’t much disturbance which is pretty good for work.
The important thing here is to seek understanding from the family– it’s all about the collaborative effort!
Wan Wei: So how did you seek understanding from your family?
Satoshi-san: Just ask! I basically persuaded my daughter nicely that I’ll need a room so that I can concentrate. And my family members were understanding! My daughter even handmade a “Do not disturb” tag for me.
Juno: Oh, that’s so lovely, it looks like the “Room Cleaning” tag that we always see in hotels. Such a caring daughter!
Franzy: Do you hang the tag on the door knob?
Satoshi-san: Yes!
Wan Wei: Haha thanks for sharing, what is the top difficulty you faced via remote work Juno?
Juno: I think my greatest difficulty is the feeling of isolation, and the feeling that this COVID-19 situation has no end. For example, every morning we wake up, work, eat, sleep, and this routine repeats. This sort of situation does cause some negative emotions, and it is essential to manage these emotions.
On some days, I will feel certain negative emotions and become less efficient as a result. During those times, I will start to blame myself, thinking “Why can the rest of my colleagues keep up with their productivity and yet I am the only one who cannot?”
This, coupled with perhaps the lack of communication with the rest of the colleagues, might result in even more negative emotions, and our stress levels may be doubled as a result.
Wan Wei: So how did you overcome this difficulty?
Juno: Well, one tip — like Qinyuan mentioned–is that we can just do some workout. In particular, we can use the commuting time that is saved to exercise!
In addition, in order to avoid the routine where there seems to be no difference in days, I’ll make it a point to randomly youtube interesting videos, subscribe to channels, or find things to learn. The idea is to keep everyday fresh and new daily so that we feel more okay.
Last but not least, I find it helpful to keep and nurture one-on-one connections with people. We can call and chat our friends and colleagues– the key is to keep the communication channel going, so that we don’t feel isolated.
Wan Wei: Thanks for sharing, Juno! How about Franzy?
Franzy: For me, my top difficulty is on how to keep boundaries between personal and work time, perhaps similar to Satoshi-san. Initially, for the first month or so, I was not too conscious about the time, even working till 9pm or so.
In general, I would classify myself as a night person, so the morning isn’t exactly a very productive time for myself. Even when we are present in the office, usually we have meetings in the morning and only coding in the afternoon.
Nowadays, I try to put alarms for every two hour interval of coding. This is so that I can discipline myself to take ten-minute breaks.
Another way of overcoming this problem is to do your best to cook your own meals. In the first few months, I ordered a lot of food online. The problem with this however, is that people do tend to become lazy. Because once the food arrives, I will just eat immediately and stay in my room. So in this way, the convenience made me lazy.
To overcome this, I try to order groceries now and cook at home.
Satoshi-san: Hmm…that’s interesting! What is your best cooking tip that you have for us?
Franzy: I try to cook in Myanmar style– usually we stew. My housemate cooks a lot, even daily, so we cook together. So the two guys will cook together, and his wife will do food tasting.
Juno: Wow, how lovely! She’s a lucky lady– a food tasting judge!
Franzy: Yeah, in my flat there are only the three of us, so it’s a pretty good situation.
Another tip I have is to be comfortable in the working environment. For example, I bought a new chair, a monitor, a laptop stand, a new phone, a wireless charger, a wireless keyboard…
Juno: Wow, you upgraded all your furniture!
Franzy: Yeah! Having proper equipment is very important to overcoming the difficulties of remote work, because you are then comfortable in the environment you are working with!
Qinyuan: Actually, now that Franzy mentioned, food is one of my top difficulties. Because I need to think of what to eat everyday. Because sometimes, the time to order the food takes even longer than the time to physically visit the store. That forms one consideration when it comes to deciding what to get.
Also, ever since GrabFood cancelled the subscription package, now we have to pay an additional $3-$4 per delivery. And assuming we order twice a day, that is the cost of a meal already.
Juno: Haha, so the question is therefore, how can we overcome this?
Qinyuan: I can’t overcome it– so I just pay more! *everybody laughs*
Wan Wei: I have a question here, now that spending is mentioned– do you personally feel that you spend more after we all started remote work, or less? Personally, I spent less, because I moved out of the rented apartment near office, completely stopped eating out since my parents cook and saved money on transport. So suddenly, I have more savings that I used to have. How about you guys?
Qinyuan: The thing is nobody cooks for me… *everybody laughs*
Wan Wei: How about your husband?
Qinyuan: I’m a better cook than him, so…
Wan Wei: Haha, okay that’s really too bad! That being said, it’s evident that we all face difficulties with remote work. Have you ever heard of any creative tips that help solve other people’s difficulties with remote work?
Juno: I can share about cooking! I actually prepare my cooking ideas on weekends for the entire week, so that I don’t have to think about what to cook every day. In general, I prepare my cooking ideas twice a week, so that I don’t have to stress about what to cook or eat daily.
Qinyuan: Yesterday, I faced difficulties in deciding what food to eat. So I just ate two ice creams for dinner. That might not be a sustainable solution in the long run though…
Franzy: I think one other tip is to maximise the current capabilities of technology. For example, video calls nowadays are very easy to make. For example, if you don’t know how to cook something, you can always call your mother and ask for the recipe. Nowadays, I even try to keep in contact with friends whom I never really spoke to regularly, via zoom.
Basically, it’s probably a good time to do remote work right now, instead of perhaps three years ago. Right now we have various user friendly tools and the internet speed is relatively faster for more people, and when combined, both are great for communication.
Satoshi-san: I don’t really have a particular creative tip, but in the PSA team we have an issue of how to communicate or design visually. So Ryan is exploring the type of online collaboration tools that are useful for our purposes. There is no conclusion yet– I just found that this is worth a mention since there are many online collaboration tools out there, so we need to explore.
Theme 2: Myth/ Misconceptions of Remote Work
Wan Wei: What is the one biggest misconception or myth that people have when it comes to remote work?
Franzy: I think one of the biggest misconceptions when it comes to remote work is that productivity will necessarily decrease. The other most common misconception is probably that we have more time because of remote work.
Regarding productivity, I don’t think it will always decrease due to remote work, because we are merely transforming how we do things– from face-to-face interaction, to digital communication. In my view, our productivity actually remains the same. In order to do any form of online meetings these days, we have to do the preparation beforehand.
In our PSA context, prior to COVID-19 we can just have face-to-face meetings where we can simply go into a meeting room to sketch on a whiteboard, and everyone can understand what you are trying to say immediately. For online communication however, we have to prepare beforehand.
For example, if Satoshi-san has a new idea that he wants to discuss in a meeting, he will sketch beforehand. And if we want to expound on that idea, we will then draw during the meeting using that idea as a springboard and thereafter we will come to a conclusion. Sometimes it is indeed difficult to have other people understand your idea without a visual representation, so it might be best to do some preparation or demo prior.
Juno: I totally agree with Franzy that productivity decreasing is a myth. For the expense team, our team’s productivity actually increased. There is one other myth I would like to debunk, which is the common perception that the team’s communications will worsen with remote work.
Personally, I find that our team’s knowledge sharing has actually increased. Let me illustrate with an example– While working in office, and when I am not sure about something, I’ll ask Prashant and Prashant will give me an answer. This answer will not be the same as if I were to ask Qinyuan to explain to me a part of the system which I do not understand, according to her understanding.
Since we currently work from home, we will just post whatever questions we have into the group chat, where everybody can participate in a discussion. Therefore, there is knowledge pooling, and through the individual contributions of knowledge according to their understandings, a better and more robust image of the situation can be created. This is how teams can also be on the same page. I certainly did not expect this, and this is very interesting to me.
Satoshi-san: There are always pros and cons to online meetings. One of the good things that came out of remote work is that team members globally can actually feel more part of one unified team, instead of separate Singapore and Japan teams.
For example, the team in Japan is pretty big, so before COVID-19, the phrasing is usually that “The Singapore team will be joining the Japanese team’s meetings”.
However, now that we are all telecommuting, everyone is equal in a way, because everyone is joining in the same conference room. So I personally feel more part of the team.
Qinyuan: For me, I agree with Juno. According to Ace, ever since we started remote work, our team’s velocity also increased.
Another point is that some people may feel that we will have a better work-life balance due to remote work. However, this may not be true especially if the boundaries between work and lives remain blurred. For the expense team, even at 7pm or 8pm, I will still see many people online. This is quite different from what I’ve imagined before.
Wan Wei: I just want to clarify the point on the team’s velocity– wasn’t it because of Chinese New Year?
Qinyuan: Haha, I didn’t check the details, I just reported the data, haha!
Theme 3: Personalizing Remote Work/ Memorable Moments
Wan Wei: What is the most memorable moment you have had so far via remote work? It can be funny, unpleasant, surprising, scary or something unexpected.
Qinyuan: I remembered a Monday in May when we had a public holiday, and on that day only Juno and myself were expected to work. However, at the last minute there was some urgent release issue for the release package. So when I started working in the morning, I saw most people started working online too.
That was pretty unexpected to me– I was expecting my colleagues to relax at home on a public holiday and not use the laptop! However, everyone was working, and I felt quite touched by that.
Perhaps, this is one of the benefits of working from home. Before as we were working from home, we don’t really bring our laptops home. Now we do, and perhaps we have gotten into a habit of checking slack notifications regularly. So that incident was pretty unexpected and memorable.
Juno: For myself it would be some time around in May as well, when I had to take a sick leave before the release. I had quite a heavy role in the release, and was worried that I couldn’t fulfil my part. So I told my team what I had done, and everyone started to contribute by assigning tasks on their own to the remaining work. And I can see on slack that the messages were coming in, responsibilities were being broken down and allocated.
Because of the team work, we could create the feature as planned, and the release could be made according to the timeline. That moment was a very sweet moment to me, and I am still very touched to date as I recall the experience.
Franzy: I think the most memorable time to me during telecommuting was when Shinobu-san just joined TeamSpirit and we did the online lunch and greeting with her. Shinobu-san even showed us her pet dogs! I found that memorable because usually when a new member joins a company, the greeting will be in the internal physical office.
Also, sometimes after our knowledge sharing session on Friday, some of us will stay on the call to casually speak about our weekend plans. That is pretty memorable as well.
Satoshi-san: I don’t really have a particular memorable incident. Having said that, in general I feel that because of the common challenges in COVID-19 faced in both Japan and Singapore, the communication between cross-border teams and within each team became gentler.
For example, when we ask something to the Japanese team, the response would be quite quick and more thoughtful as compared to before COVID-19. It seems that because of the common difficulties and circumstances we are now forced to be in, there is greater empathy and our teams’ communication became better.
On a parting note, here is a fun shot of our roundtable discussion:
We love to hear your feedback and thoughts on remote work– leave a comment and share this post!