Working Remotely – How’s it going so far? Week 1

Our CEO, Murray Brack is blogging about the challenges and surprises as we transition to remote work.

Working Remotely – A Skeptic’s View

With everyone affected by Covid-19, some more than others, we’re all taking measures to ensure the health and safety of those around us. For us, at SeisWare, this means we transitioned almost our entire team to work remotely. Quite frankly, I am not a proponent of a remote/distributed workforce, but here we are in an extraordinary situation, and this is now a requirement.

I have several personal biases about remote work that I’ve been forced to set aside.

• You won’t really work when you are at home, there are too many distractions.
• I won’t be able to walk down the hall and have an impromptu meeting.  How can we be agile?
• Our company culture will diminish.  How will we be able to maintain a strong team and our values?
• Worst of all, for me, I am a social person and I will miss being in contact with my co-workers.  I will feel isolated.

These are just a few, off the top of my head.  After considering them again, I need to hold myself accountable.

I lack trust that our team will be professional and get their work done.
Impromptu meetings are a time suck, and I should be using other tools for these – book a meeting if it is important, send an email, use MS Teams to communicate, and most importantly, respect my co-workers’ time.
I have a hard time with culture.  We have a strong culture at SeisWare already.  Is it possible to build a strong culture remotely?
As for feeling isolated, it’s still early, so I haven’t felt that yet.  I am home with my family, and technology has allowed our company to stay in regular contact. The longer I’m working remotely, I might feel the effects more, but perhaps this is an opportunity for me to reach out to others like family and friends that I haven’t connected with in a long time.

How is it going so far? We’re three day in and counting, and it is going better than I expected.  Our team is communicating very well using MS Teams.  It makes me feel like we’re still connected, getting our work done, and having a few laughs along the way. So far, I’ve found this to be productive and surprisingly fun.  I trust our SeisWare team, and it makes no sense that I would question what could be done remotely.  I am looking forward to seeing how it plays out over the next while.

If anyone has experiences to share, I would sure appreciate your input. How are you able to maintain a strong corporate culture remotely? What tools are you using? How often do you communicate with the whole team, smaller groups?

Please take care of yourself, your family, and if you’re able, those that are vulnerable.

Regards,

Murray Brack, CEO
SeisWare International Inc