Working remotely: How do you adapt to something like a pandemic?

This was written by the The Language Centre Management and Administration Support Service (Siân Owen, Lisa Grant, June Parsons and Helen Whitelaw).

We’re adaptable.

We, as a team, take pride in being adaptable and doing the best we can to support staff in any situation. These situations have usually involved adapting to surges in staff and student numbers, refurbishment of Centre premises, changes in guidance and regulations from University services, the usual “stuff”.

It’s not usually adapting to the context and circumstances of a pandemic.

We thought communication about changes to the way we work were on their way, but we didn’t know the specifics. We tried to pre-empt it the best we could. We had plans in place to work in the office on a rota basis so we could practice physical distancing and adapt processes for remote working. We were still expecting several teaching staff to start with us on 23 March to deliver teaching, still expecting furniture deliveries and contractors after the refurbishment of our premises, still going through recruitment processes for our busy summer period. Our colleagues frequently asked if we knew what was happening. Our constant refrain: “At the moment the situation is ‘x’, but it could all change at short notice.”

And then it did.

Cue frantic communication with colleagues (both new and current), contractors, candidates applying for roles with us. Cue trying to decide what you would need for working from home for a prolonged period: Monitors, footrests, chairs, keyboards, headsets, personal belongings, stationery....one team member was glad it wasn’t raining that final day as the only way she could get her chair into her car was with the roof down; she got some strange looks driving along with the legs of an office chair sticking up out of her car.

So, what have been some of the challenges we’ve adapted to/are still adapting to working remotely (in no particular order)?

Contact with other people

If you read our job descriptions, it says something along the lines of supporting staff in the areas of facilities, financial management, health and safety, human resources and purchasing. What the job descriptions don’t tell you is just how much contact we have with people ‘face-to-face' and how much that is a part of what we do. How to be a Personal Assistant to someone when you don’t ‘see’ them on a regular basis anymore? How to effectively support your staffing body when you can’t ‘see’ them or other services you rely on and the turnaround on queries takes a lot longer than it normally would? Sometimes you just want to be able to pop along to see someone or pick the phone up to ask a quick question, and it’s been quite sobering to realise how beneficial the seemingly innocuous activity of communicating with others face-to-face can be. MS Teams is great, but we miss seeing our colleagues.

(What feels like constant) Changing guidance and processes

One of the biggest things that we have to get our heads around is (what feels like) almost daily changes to guidance, processes and procedures as other services adapt to the circumstances and we adapt ours in turn. I’m sure it’s not really been daily, but at times it has definitely felt that way and over the last 6 weeks or so, it has sometimes truly felt overwhelming at times trying to keep up with what we’re being told, to understand the changes, interpret them, what does this actually mean for us? How do we communicate this to our colleagues? And then once we have communicated this to our colleagues....it changes all over again.

Sudden changes to roles

The role of another team member changed overnight as the majority of their duties are carried out on campus (facilities and purchasing), leading to confusion about what that meant for them, for their role in the team. We adapted. She is now providing assistance to our colleagues in the Language Zone, working on “Let’s Chat” sessions with students who benefit from conversing with a proficient English speaker to improve their language skills. Topics for the sessions are varied, and it’s been really interesting to talk to the international students about their point of view on learning remotely and how they view the impact of COVID-19.

Technology

I think we can all agree that in many ways technology has been both a gift and a frustration at the same time. From slower (and at times intermittent) internet connection to slower (and also at times intermittent) access to systems essential to our work (in the first few chaotic weeks of working remotely being able to access these sometimes only at either 6am or after 10pm), I think our IT equipment has borne the brunt of rather “choice” words at times. However, it is an amazing thing that still allows us to connect with people and we have had to remind ourselves of that at times.

Balancing work with home

Every member of the team at times struggles with the balance of work and home when your home has become your workplace. As a team we recognise and respect that as individuals we all have other commitments at home, from home-schooling primary school aged children to caring responsibilities for older relatives. We try to catch up every day in some way whether that’s by Teams video call or chat, providing support to each other as much as we can in the circumstances. There are the light-hearted moments too, watching children suddenly burst into a video call, partners walking across the room in dressing gowns in front of webcams forgetting we’re in meetings, or cats walking in front of the webcam/walking across the keyboard and sending random messages to the team. We try to remember that we are fortunate in a lot of ways and are mindful of this: we know that not everyone has a house with a garden, that not everyone we know can work from home and have lost their jobs.

Working remotely and lockdown for a long period of time has been a learning curve for everyone in the team in different ways. It has, and will continue to have, its challenges not only as lockdown continues but also as we come out of lockdown. However, one thing we know: we are adaptable.