Covid19 has affected many job lives.People are unable to go to the office for work. People are forced to work from home. Working from home is a new experience for most of the workers who work in the office. COVID has made the WFH culture a necessity. Work From Home is much more efficient in IT as the requirements are easier met. Physical meetings with clients and teams can be replaced with online via various platforms like Zoom, google meet, Microsoft teams. I started my new job at the beginning of lockdown when everybody was losing their job and being replaced. I find myself very lucky in that case. Although working remotely is not a new concept, many of us have never thought of working from home. When I was starting to work from home, I was wondering what employees experience with other people who are working from home.

1. This COVID 19 pandemic has affected all facets of our lives. The work place has not been
an exception. Many organizations have adopted the Work from home (WFH) culture.
Share your own experience on WFH. And as a future manager, how do you recommend
your employees to properly manage WFH so that they remain as productive as possible
and at the same time the work life balance is also maintained.
Covid19 has affected many job lives.People are unable to go to the office for work. People are
forced to work from home. Working from home is a new experience for most of the workers who
work in the office. COVID has made the WFH culture a necessity. Work From Home is much
more efficient in IT as the requirements are easier met. Physical meetings with clients and
teams can be replaced with online via various platforms like Zoom, google meet, microsoft
teams
I started my new job at the beginning of lockdown when everybody was losing their job and
being replaced. I find myself very lucky in that case. Although working remotely is not a new
concept, many of us have never thought of working from home.When I was starting to work from
home, I was wondering what employees experience from other people who are working from
home. My company was already working with the system to keep all the records of employees
working on projects and spending the number of working hours on it. As the company is an
international company operating in Australia, Nepal and Philippines, every employee has to log
their daily working hours on the system, namely Teamwork. The great advantage is flexible
working hours. We can work anytime depending upon the task priority and work for 8 hours per
day.
Necessary things to adapt WFH
1. Designated work space
A designated work space with desk, chair and power supply if possible is required to
work properly from home. Without these you may face some problems working from
home. Desk and chair are necessary in order to keep you in good posture while working
and reduce possibility of future body pain issues
2. High quality or high speed internet
The Internet is the most essential item to get work done from home. As, everything will
be conveying between co-workers with the help of internet WFH is nearly impossible
without internet
3. Desktop or Laptop
A device, desktop or Laptop is obviously an essential to work on.
4. Power Backup
Power cuts may break your workflow or sometimes erase all the work done. So, power
backup is necessary even if it can hold your electronics for a few minutes of time.
5. Time table Manager or System
The system to manage the time table is also required. It notifies us of the time we have
been working and taking breaks. It will prevent us from taking too many breaks and
make sure to work as much as required.

2. Advantages of WFH
1. Saves time
Working from home saves time to travel to office from home and home from office.It also
excludes traffic time we spend on traffic jams as well
2. Flexible working hours
Working from home may give flexibility to working hours in most of the sectors which
help us to take power naps or break and boost up with more energy.
3. Balance time for work and family
We can balance time for work and family as we save time for travel and other work.
4. Complete household work on break
We can take breaks to do some household work and complete the given task by working
late.
5. Location Independence
We can work remotely from any place of the world which gives us the facility of location
independence.
6. Improve productivity
We can take more time for research as there is no pressure for time and increase
productivity.
7. Save money
No need to travel so it saves the transportation cost and home made lunch also saves
lunch cost.
8. Independent, Self-motivation
We have to work alone at home and give our best on our own, which makes us
independent of work and keeps us self motivated.
9. Improve communication skills
While working from home we will need to communicate more verbally or in written format
and hence it increases and improves communication skills.
10. Improve new technology skills
This pandemic has made it necessary to adapt new technology skills as real human
interaction was not possible.
11. Cosy clothes
Stay on our cosy home clothes and look however we want

3. Disadvantage of WFH
1. No human interaction
2. Cost of necessary things: If the required items are not available, the cost to buy the
item is needed. And if we are not able to buy lack of item may cause more problems
3. Lack of necessary things: The available items might not be available which might
cause problems when working from home.
4. Family Distraction: WFH with family around may cause Family Distraction.
5. Risk of over working: Office might assign more tasks while working from home taking
benefits of flexible working hours
6. Lack of focus on work: There is no one to monitor work realtime which might cause
many more distractions. It causes a lack of focus on work.
7. Co worker may accuse of slacking
8. Boredom: There will be less interaction with the team and may cause boredom working
alone.
9. Internet and power issues: Sometimes power cuts and internet issues may occur
which hampers work.
To reduce disadvantage of WFH the company has implemented tools. We use slack as the
communication tool within the organization to keep everything in track. We can add different
apps in Slack to increase productivity as well as exclude boredom. For example:
We use Bored to play quizzes in different categories which only takes a few minutes.
This game time gives us some breaks and boosts up our energy.
Another interesting app is donut which pairs up random team members every week so
that we can share our personal views and have a casual talk with members inside the
organization.
Bonusly is another app we use within our organization which provides the facility to
reward each other for their great work. In many cases we work with a limited number of people
so other members in the organization may not know about his/her achievement or progress.So,
this app helps us to give recognition to each other.
QuickQuiz is an app where one can create a quiz for a team and evaluate their
knowledge or help them learn more on the basis of it’s result. Here, results are abstracted to the
respective individual and the quiz creator; it won’t hurt anybody's self esteem as well.
On Christmas we used the Secret Santa app to play secret santa and deliver gifts to
respective persons.
Other technical apps we use for flexibility and keep notifying are CircleCI, Teamwork,
Google Calendar and many more.
Every Friday we organize TechTalk sessions where one department shares their
knowledge of expertise to others so that everyone out there is using it within their department to
make things easier.
As a manager
1. Make regular interactions between different team

4. 2. Provide employees with necessary items
3. Organize different types of programs and sessions in order to keep employees fresh and
entertain
4. Give authority and set clear responsibilities
5. Keep record of daily activities of every employees
6. Use two way authentication to secure data
7. Use tools to track employees progress and reward accordingly
8. Motivate and encourage team with proper appreciation and rewards