Corona Fight: How IT guys can manage in Pandemic Situation

Coronavirus Or COVID-19 has created a massive problem for the whole world. I don't want to spread any negative thoughts at this time because everyone is pancaking and everybody knows how we can protect ourselves from this virus. Here I am going to share my company's experience that How we are still positive in this epidemic circumstances.

Being an IT person, our company has offered to work from home facility; so that all the team members can work safely and fight with this pandemic situation. If any company has not taken steps about it for their employees then you should because anyhow you are going to get infected if you are outside in the crowd; only one infected person is enough to spread the virus. Eventually, you will end up infecting yourself and your family members too.

So, Today is the 2nd day of working from home and I thought to share it through a blog that how I and my team is working so calmly by staying safe; delivering work to our clients  and if you are a newbie to WFH; this blog might be helpful to you.

Before commencing our daily work routine, we start with greetings to each other through Skype group. Some people share encouraging quotes, pictures so that morale should not be down and team members can work from home at the same pace and enthusiasm as they were doing earlier in the offices.

We share daily updates related to work in the scrum meeting with the managers and team leads. Meetings are also taking place with the clients to share daily updates on their projects. All the team members are delivering their work to the clients according to the milestones assigned to them therefore timelines and guidelines are following properly. In fact, Our team leaders are working proactively and providing instant responses to the team members in case they are stuck with any kind of problem. There is a saying “Of all the things I’ve done, the most vital is coordinating those who work with me and aiming their efforts at a certain goal.” – Walt Disney, founder of Disney. Therefore, co-ordination is imperative while working remotely.

Most of the Companies are embracing the change of working remotely. You may have seen pictures on social media that how Bluebash team are setting up their system at home and enjoying too because they are also spending time with their loved ones. Me and my colleagues are also sharing some pictures while having lunch and evening snacks with each other ( You can see one of them below). One reason is the flexible schedule to do the work and the other one is freshly home-cooked food!

During breaks, I and my team members are also playing online games such as Ludo, Call of Duty, PubG etc. together to relieve ourselves from work and corona stress ?. Anyhow, we are handling our work with full efforts. You may think that work will be slow down because you are not finding any manager or team leader around you while working at home, however, this should not be the case, you should work honestly and track everything to work smoothly so that your productivity is not impacting with little fun.

We all need to handle this situation personally by taking all the mentioned precautions and for some time should try to avoid contacting your friends, relatives, and another crowd for the sake of safety. So that the virus could not spread from an infected person to others by any means.

If you haven't worked from home earlier and novice to such a situation; you should not panic because things can be managed and you can follow the same routine as you were following in the office. While your employer has trusted you and provided work from home facility then you should also take care of the productivity and manage the tasks accordingly. What are the things you should know while working from home:

1. Record your regular hours, you can make a schedule and follow the same. In this way, you can follow the clear guidelines and easily manage your productivity. You can set priorities to delivers. You can manage when to work and when to call it a day.
2. Highlights your priorities, in your daily routines you can highlight the priority tasks and deliver accordingly. Task should be managed according to the breaks you are taking because in this way; productivity doesn't hamper and you can deliver most of the tasks.
3. Set some ground rules, you can set some rules with the persons around you. Like you have children at home you can inform them of what can do and can't during your working hours. Other non-working members can indulge in other activities. These rules are really important if you do not want to hamper your work.
4. Breaks should be scheduled, break timing should be scheduled as office timing. You can set some reminders to remind you that break is over. Instead of taking longs breaks as an office you can take some short breaks however time should be tracked or you can follow the same as office. You can use software to track your breaks if you are not able to track your break by your own such as TimeOut for Mac and Smart Break for Windows
5. Ask your employer if anything is required, you can ask for the required equipment such as keyboard, mouse, internet dongle, monitor or laptop because you and your employer both doesn't want to hamper the working situation. They will provide you each and everything is required to run the operations.
6. Create Dedicated space, you can also set up a particular space for your office work so that nobody can disturb you and you can properly concentrate on your daily routine.
7. Update sharing, for sharing updates with your team members meeting can be set up through various applications like Skype, hangouts, etc.
8. Project management, Projects can be managed through various project management tools like Trello, Zoho, Asana, Basecamp, Jira. Related read- Best Project Management Tools
9. Be Positive, this is the most imperative thing because patience is always required to deal with every situation and let you out easily from those circumstances. Anyhow this shall pass too. Pancaking is not the solution to every problem, you should keep calm and take decisions accordingly.
10. Pamper yourself, you are working from home and you should not indulge yourself too much into your work that you are not giving time to yourself. You should spare sometimes and spend it with your family members.
11. Pack up, Update your work to your leads or whatever the policies you are following. It will ease your way of working style and set up goals for tomorrow so that you should not waste another time in the morning to remind the tasks you need to complete. It will result into increment in your productivity.

In conclusion, I would say that despite we are working from home, you should not give a chance to your employer to raise a finger on your productivity. With proper balance, you can easily manage the worse to worse situations. Stay safe and stay productive