Ups & downs of working from home

Anna McCarron University of South Australia

Overall, my four-month working from home stint was relatively positive. As a Digital Marketing Officer within the International Unit at UniSA, I felt comfortable adapting to the technological change that was a big part of the move from the office to home. I was lucky that the IT infrastructure worked well and that I live in a household with a good internet connection.

Initially it was very exciting. It was refreshing to skip the drive into town and commence work first thing in the morning. Our weekly unit ‘Kitchen Catchup’ moved to Zoom and everyone had fun displaying their favourite kitchen backgrounds, both real and virtual. I enjoyed seeing more of my family and having the ability to do the ‘school run’ and alleviate some pressure from my partner who was still required to go to the office.

However, over time, I found it difficult to walk away from my computer and I felt an obligation to be at it throughout the entire day in case a team member needed me. On some occasions it took a stern reminder from my 8-year-old daughter that the workday had ended and that it was time to move onto household activities.

It was also hard not to feel some fatigue at times when participating in back to back Zoom meetings. After conducting a few of these it quickly became clear that these meetings were cognitively demanding and required more concentration than the usual face to face meeting. It was made more tiresome with the Slack messages that continued to appear in the background. It did not help that I couldn’t resist the urge to quickly respond to them even while I was in Zoom.

I found that by following a routine as if I was going to work proved helpful and kept me in the right mindset. I was lucky to have a direct line manager that cared about my wellbeing and made the time to meet with me and check in over Zoom each week. She also made the effort to organise the occasional Friday Zoom social catchup for our team as it was the team culture that I missed the most.

I believe that if anything can be gained from this experience it is that employees can work competently from home.

If the work can be done well then employees should be offered the opportunity to work from home in some capacity if they wish to do so. Hopefully in the future, when we are no longer fighting COVID-19, the University will spend some time reviewing its work from home policy and make some changes that will allow greater flexibility.