Posted on Mon, Aug 02, 2010
By Erin
In March -- when we found out that my husband’s job as a law clerk would land us in Honolulu, Hawaii for the summer of 2010 -- I was unsure of where this opportunity would lead with my current job in public relations. So, I was pleasantly surprised when my co-workers didn't flinch once at my request to work remotely. I thought, “What could be better? Telecommuting with the blessing of all my teammates and remaining in the loop with my company, all while living in paradise for three months.”
Now, it sounds all peachy-keen, but this was no easy task at first.
After arriving in Hawaii in late May, my first challenge was the massive time zone difference. People, we are talkin’ a difference of six hours; this was not easy! When I was waking up, my co-workers in Boston were finishing lunch. Second challenge: communication. Before I left, I was convinced that this wouldn’t be a problem. But without the daily face-to-face interaction with my colleagues, I felt a little out of the loop.
After a few weeks, I overcame this challenge with a few simple tips. I also used this great article as a reference to help me adjust to working remotely.
- Open up all channels of communication: e-mail, Skype, phone or whatever else you need. Thoroughly communicate your schedule via these channels on an ongoing basis.
- Read ALL e-mails thoroughly, respond promptly when needed and file correctly so you have easy access to all information. When you are working remotely and you miss an important note via e-mail, you may cause a delay with your team. Read, read, read!
- If you have a question or don’t understand a task, first read through past e-mails and information to figure it out. You may have missed something when you were scanning messages. If you are still having problems, do a quick video or IM chat via Skype or AOL IM, and/or call your teammates. This saves everyone time, and time is money, my friends.
- Write everything and anything in your handy PR notebook. Writing items down and checking them off not only helps you stay on task, but it feels great when you finish everything for the day. However, remember to always double check yourself and your notebook. Did you miss something? This is easy to do when you are working alone.
I would also like to point out that working remotely from Hawaii, not in the typical 9 to 5 manner, has some great perks...Check out more photos from Hawaii here on our Flickr feed to see some beautiful views.
Posted on Wed, Mar 03, 2010
By Cathy
If you have spent longer than one or two years living in New England, you learn how to live and work through the long, cold winters. You make extra time to get up, warm up the car, wear layers, etc., but even the most winter-tested individual is challenged when Mother Nature takes an unexpected turn and the phrases“ disaster area” and “National State of Emergency” start popping up hourly in your vernacular.
While Metis is based in the South End of Boston, I live and commute into the city from Southern New Hampshire. One of my favorite blogs, Workshifting, pretty much sums up how I operate on a daily basis. Last Thursday I experienced one hell of a windstorm, along with the rest of Northern Massachusetts, Southern New Hampshire and Southern Maine. As of today, we still don’t have power. Not only did we lose power at the house, the entire town and all the surrounding towns for 150 miles lost power. In total, more than 250,000 people were sitting in the dark. Imagine that many people without gas, credit cards, heat, hot water or cell phones, and you can expect that the phrase “all hell broke loose” comes next.
This was a powerful weather event that stopped life as we know it for several days and left people scrambling for alternate ways of doing the things we take for granted each day. It was a forceful storm -- not one that moved the earth, tore down cities or left thousands homeless, but a near-hurricane that significantly shook up the way you view the reliability of the tools you rely on to keep your business moving.
Losing complete connectivity last week taught me some valuable lessons in how to really work SHIFT.
Here are five lessons I relearned during the 2010 New Hampshire Windstorm:
1. You are only as strong as the network that supports you – my team jumped in and helped out with everything I was working on and helped me shift assignments to ensure that our clients wouldn’t be affected by my absence. Life and work definitely goes on without you, so set yourself up to be as replaceable as possible.
2. Plan for the worst and expect the best – Create a contingency plan. If you don’t have a team, then work with partners that can easily help you if needed. I learned some valuable lessons about being better prepared for the future, and am implementing them now to ensure that when the next natural disaster comes my way, I am even more prepared.
3. Be upfront about your personal needs – I was in a complete state of shock. We had trees down everywhere and neighbors in need. I had to be honest with myself and my team to help them understand exactly what I was facing. Not having power at the house is a total nuisance. The entire town(s) or an entire region not having power is truly a different matter.
4. Create a true workshifting environment – being able to work anywhere at anytime is really lip service unless you act on it. I learned that I was not as prepared for workshifting as I had thought, so I am setting myself up with the right technologies – extra batteries, new generator, satellite phone, etc. – along with the other applications I use (Box.net, Carbonite, Google Wave and more) and processes (updated phone lists, calendar updates, etc.).
5. You can always disconnect, even when you feel you “can’t” – Receiving such a forced disconnect was shocking to my system, but taught me a valuable lesson that it’s good for me to get “off the grid” more often. Being available 24x7 or on-demand for my team, clients and partners takes its toll. You always promise yourself that you’ll take a break but it’s easier said than done. The realization that taking off for five days is not the end of the world, especially during a natural disaster.