Source : www.123rf.com

With the COVID-19 crisis going around, Malaysia Prime Minister, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin announced the Movement Control Order (MCO) which officially started in 18^th March 2020. This has affected many businesses, causing employees to lose their jobs, or even forcing pay cuts or unpaid leaves to those undeserving.

However, if you’re fortunate enough to fall into the essential business line and being provided the flexibility and the convenience to work from home, luck is on your side! Even if you’re thinking that your jobs suck or your colleagues are just full of shit, this isn’t the right time to complain. Because it would be much better to just slave through the months rather than having no income at all. Frankly speaking, now isn’t the right time to be finding and changing jobs, but………

…for the rare ones who fall into the essential industry, and managed to secure themselves a job in black and white, well, welcome aboard! You and I are experiencing the same never before pandemic onboarding experience!

However, as exciting it may be, who would ever know it would also be challenging when trying to adapt to the new company culture and getting to understand how everything works in order to start fulfilling your job requirements.

So here are some of the challenges that I’ve faced when starting my first few days at work during the pandemic crisis:

Internet & Connection Issues

Source : littlefun.org

If you’re using your own home Wi-Fi, you’re much luckier than those who relied heavily on hotspots to do their work. Unfortunately, I’m one of those poor souls that leeches on to my hotspot, and hoping I manage to finish whatever I’m doing before DiGi’s FREE 1GB quota gets depleted or before it reaches 6pm. Worst still, if you’re required to do a lot of con-calls and documents sharing and downloading, it’ll definitely eat in to your data.

But let’s consider if I had my Wi-Fi fixed, the worst that anyone could still experience is disrupted VPN’s (Virtual Private Network), and slow internet connection. It’s definitely a pain in the ass when you need to get things done as soon as possible, but when your line and connection is slower than you trying to figure out what you want to eat, it creates a domino effect on everything else you do.

As being new in the company, I had to figure out their systems and there were many webpages that required me access. What’s worst was that every page took a very long time to load and some of them requires the VPN connected in order to use. As it loads, I think I’ve spent most of the time staring off into my screen, while my brain zones out to another world.

All these wouldn’t happen if you were in the office. With stable internet connection, and a full IT team support, any connection problem will be fixed in a jiffy!

Lots Of Unproductivity

Source : me.me

Remember when I wrote earlier that everything will be affected because of the domino effect? Well, slow internet / connection issues contribute to the major unproductivity especially if your job heavily depends on it.

For my case, I wasted most of my times waiting for solutions and browsing around aimlessly without much of the guide that I need it. I wasn’t clear with my company system, procedure, and its functions. I needed help, hence, I contacted a few of my colleagues to ask for assistance and help via chat, but no one seemed to be available to assist me. Hence, most of the time, I was figuring everything out myself and making lots of trial and error to get myself familiarized with anything and everything. That’s a lot of time wasted there.

On the other hand, let’s say my colleagues do reach out to me and assisted me via chat or call, it still takes a bit of time for your (bloody) page to load and it’ll be a longer time for them to respond to you back and forth. Again, more time wasted. By the end of the day, I had only been able to complete that only handful of things, and none of them are even work-related yet.

If this scenario was in the office, my colleagues would be physically there to assist me right away and getting all the necessarily set up instantly. With a better internet connection, the process of setting up will be much faster and smoother too!

Lack of Face-to-Face Communication

When I say I wanted face-to-face communication. I meant it like this... minus the anger. And nose touching.  Source : empireonline.com

With the absence of the body language and touch, it’s easily to be misunderstood sometimes. The tone of your messages may give out wrong impressions and may also cause confusion and misunderstandings. You couldn’t read the person’s mood and roughly gouge on their personality and working style.

Even with video calls made available, if you have a bad internet connection, it’ll be pointless because you’ll take more time buffering videos and repeating yourself for the 10^th time when they couldn’t get what you say. All these were the exact same case that I’m currently facing.

Plus, I’ve been spending more time trying to find the right people to help me solve my problems. And sometimes I may get the wrong lead to the wrong people, and they may lead me to another person to solve my problem but turns out it’s another person, or another, or another, and so on.

If you compared this to doing it in the office, everyone could attend to you physically and immediately and get it done. You could ask your neighbours’ and they can advise you immediately on who to approach.

But now that you have no one else besides yourself at home, only you can solve your own problems.

Unfamiliar Environment & Culture

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Stated in my earlier point, without much interaction with the people in your workplace, it’s difficult to understand the work culture and how you should adapt to it. While the term, “work at home” sounds very convenient and comfortable for everyone to work at the comfort of their home, it’s hard to know your limits when you are required to work around the clock.

I couldn’t have a peaceful evening without my chat going off during dinner time and during boring weekends. With the group chats happening so often, I wasn’t sure if I’m obligated to check from it from time to time. After all, there’s an obvious reason why they installed our internal chat systems via phone and laptop.

And while during MCO, everything is just a laptop and a phone call away. Besides, there are not many places that you can go to during the MCO, so you definitely can’t give excuses to not deliver the project on time. Hence, I felt the sense of workaholism seeping into my life, and I can foresee that I will have no peace of mind as long as I have a laptop with me at home. Oh, geez.

Also, it’s difficult for me to approach anyone to talk about the work culture in my company given that I basically didn’t get to talk or get to know anyone at a personal level. But if this happens in the actual office workplace, it would have been different. I would whisper away my curiosity to the neighbor next to me, or seek advice from a random person I met at the pantry, or quietly observe the first few people dashing out the office at 6PM sharp. Check-in if anyone leaves punctually for lunch and weather people are on their social media from time to time. These would probably give me a better understanding of the culture at work, but unfortunately, the only culture I know now is work.

We wouldn’t know how long this work from home will be extended to, but as long as we’re working at home, no matter what, these are the challenges that we have to learn how to overcome over time before it consumes us mentally and affects our productivity. To get ahead of the game, our actions depends a lot on us to take the first step to clarify, confirm, and communicate the necessarily when dealing with any task or uncertainty. Hence, only time can tell weather things will get better while we strive to make ends meet.