"Working Remotely" (beyond COVID-19)

[rob_s]

I'm curious as to people's thoughts on "working remotely". Not so much as we deal with the kungflu and associated issues (although that's what has me thinking about it) but moreso in times of normal operations. If you company has a policy on this that you can share, even through PM, I'd love to see it.

It probably matters what you do, if you want to include that. I'd like to know if your company has an offsite hardware policy (they provide it? reimburse you for it? you're on your own?), if they require a certain amount of "come to the office" time for every so many hours of "work remotely time" or if they just never see you and you don't even have a desk there, etc. Are you a "snowflake" within your company in that you're the only one or one of only a couple allowed to work remotely, or is it a company wide policy? Role based? How, if at all, do they keep tabs on you or check in with/on you?

Anything else related to working outside the corporate office during times of normal operations.

[Grey]

I'm curious as to people's thoughts on "working remotely". Not so much as we deal with the kungflu and associated issues (although that's what has me thinking about it) but moreso in times of normal operations. If you company has a policy on this that you can share, even through PM, I'd love to see it.

It probably matters what you do, if you want to include that. I'd like to know if your company has an offsite hardware policy (they provide it? reimburse you for it? you're on your own?), if they require a certain amount of "come to the office" time for every so many hours of "work remotely time" or if they just never see you and you don't even have a desk there, etc. Are you a "snowflake" within your company in that you're the only one or one of only a couple allowed to work remotely, or is it a company wide policy? Role based? How, if at all, do they keep tabs on you or check in with/on you?

Anything else related to working outside the corporate office during times of normal operations.

Are you trying to crowd source info to make a case for offsite?

Just interested in what you're doing with the info.

[rob_s]

Are you trying to crowd source info to make a case for offsite?

Just interested in what you're doing with the info.

I'm working on recommendations for our company for an offsite policy to roll out after this is all over (we can't start changing things now). I'm breaking them down into policy (e.g. "commit to paperless", etc.), hardware (e.g. do we offer external monitors at company cost?, do we expand our issuance of iPads? etc.), and software (e.g. move/update our last legacy local server to a cloud-sync'd solution, etc.) recommendations. I will probably add a fourth category of "training" to my report/memo.

[helothar]

I do software QA automation for a consulting company. We are currently 100% work from home, during normal times you can work from home two days a week (not Monday or Friday). Additionally we can work from home due to snow. We have a laptop provided by the company, and frequently we will have an additional laptop from the client. While we have monitor/keyboard/mouse etc provided in the office, anything I use at home I have bought myself.

Sent from my Pixel 3 using Tapatalk

[mtnbkr]

I'm curious as to people's thoughts on "working remotely". Not so much as we deal with the kungflu and associated issues (although that's what has me thinking about it) but moreso in times of normal operations. If you company has a policy on this that you can share, even through PM, I'd love to see it.

It probably matters what you do, if you want to include that. I'd like to know if your company has an offsite hardware policy (they provide it? reimburse you for it? you're on your own?), if they require a certain amount of "come to the office" time for every so many hours of "work remotely time" or if they just never see you and you don't even have a desk there, etc. Are you a "snowflake" within your company in that you're the only one or one of only a couple allowed to work remotely, or is it a company wide policy? Role based? How, if at all, do they keep tabs on you or check in with/on you?

Anything else related to working outside the corporate office during times of normal operations.

I work for a foreign (to the US) telco who also provides various telco and non-telco IT services. I currently work on the security services side of the biz in pre-sales Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC). Prior to this role, I worked in various Security Operation Center roles (client management, team lead, and ultimately a SOC manager with teams in the US and UK). For the entire time I've been with this company (10 years) remote work has been supported and even encouraged in certain circumstances. The BCP I developed for my SOC depended on our ability to work remotely. The company has always provided us with the hardware we needed and various remote access solutions (IPSEC VPN and a lighter-weight service that didn't grant access to the entire Org).

I've personally worked from home (or other non-office locations) for the past 3 years non-stop. Prior, even when I was a SOC manager, I worked from home 1-2 days a week and allowed the teams under me to work from home an equal amount as long as their duties allowed it (hard to work remotely when you need to do physical stuff).

There are people who either can't work from home or are limited in their ability to do so, but that's mainly because they do physical things or work in a secured location where the customer has dictated the necessary security standards of the location a service is delivered from. Neither affects me or most of the people I work with regularly.

Policy-wise, it's mainly to the discretion of the line manager within the constraints of the job being done.

Chris

[peterb]

Sales and field service -- the road warriors -- work remotely. They are rarely in the office and use a guest cube when they come in. Company supplies hardware.

For most of office staff(the CAD folks being an exception)a laptop with a docking station is the standard issue PC. We're expected to be in the office during normal business hours, but most managers are fine with an occasional work-from-home day. My group does some hands-on lab work so 100% remote is not an option.

We're hoping that this experiment goes well and we'll have more flexibility, especially for winter "snow days" when driving in is slow and hazardous.

[HeavyDuty]

I work for a small (160 people) software company. We have encouraged or at least tolerated remote work for a few years now, about 20% of our staff are 100% remote and only come in to the office a few times per year. Some of those are local or localish, and others are long distance. I’ll be joining the second bunch once I move to NH, but I suspect that move will be put on hold until after the current emergency passes. Of the local people, most work at least a few days per week from home with the company’s blessing.

My company generally only supplies major hardware to people who travel for FTF client contact. Employees like me who only have distance contact with clients are generally on our own, but there are exceptions. In the past we also subsidized internet service, but these days it’s not needed since almost everyone has high speed at home. I set up a workspace at my partner’s home in MA with a pair of monitors and a generic docking station, my total investment was around $300 and the gear will go to our new home in NH. I already use a dedicated personally owned laptop for work when I’m not in the office.

Right now we are on 100% remote work companywide, with only a few IT monkeys in the office.

[hufnagel]

Wife's current company has slowly come around to the work from home idea. They already provide laptops as primary devices, have VPN access already up and running. They allowed her to take home a spare monitor, and I had another here, so she has an identical setup at home as at work. She had a "practice" run of extended stay home work late last year due to kidney stones, so we knocked out all (so far) of the kinks in the setup. One thing that was unexpected, was the need to get her a better office chair. Several of her co-workers during this current incident, have returned to the office to "borrow" their monitors and their chairs.

In general, i tell most people: think about what you sit in, what you touch, and what you look at for 8 hours when at work. If you're going to work from home regularly (by design or by stupidity) you'll want to make your home setup as workable and comfortable as your office one.

[mtnbkr]

Forgot to address the "keeping tabs" part.

As a manager, the only tab keeping I did was to insist that my employees were available during core business hours unless previously agreed otherwise, be logged into Skype, be available for meetings, and get any work done during their normal work day that was required.

In my new role, I have continued the same tactic with my DRs and my manager has a similar approach with me.

So, not so much keeping tabs, but an expectation of output and availability.

Chris

[hufnagel]

Wife's bosses have in the past been adults; as long as you get your work done on time and on budget, they didn't really give a shit. Not sure any have ever mandated being available during "work" hours (since a couple of her roles have been dealing internationally, which a-periodically involved 3am calls to China and Taiwan, so how do you put the quotes around times like that) but again it's about being a responsible adult.