My experience as a new starter in a post-vaccine world
Like many before the pandemic, I was given the opportunity to work from home (WFH) occasionally. I enjoyed the perks that came with this, such as getting some housework done in the middle of the day, or using the time that I would have spent commuting on a workout or some extra sleep. Many times I didn’t understand why I needed to go into the office at all when I was perfectly capable of getting my work done from home, but most organisations that I’d worked at previously had an unspoken sense of presenteeism and seemed not to trust staff outside of managers’ eyelines.
Like many, I’ve had a career shift due to the pandemic and recently started work at a new company. It is a role that, although somewhat experienced in, I knew I was going to require extra support to get up to speed with. Not only with how this organisation did things, but with how to carry out some of my new responsibilities.
I was looking forward to meeting new people and talking to someone other than my dog during the day, especially with my partner moving out to study further afield. I was excited to get back into an office, and having just moved to a new area. My new boss had explained that I was going to have at least a week of in-person onboarding. Yet, a few days before I was due to start I still hadn’t heard anything about what time to meet, or how to get into the office. I reached out. It turned out that their new policy meant that you could WFH, with no restrictions. No “at least 1-2 days in the office”, just fully remote working if you fancied it, and that was that. So, I set up in the same room that I’d been working in for the past 18 months and switched on my personal laptop on Monday morning...
It was odd. Not only because they frustratingly sent all the calendar notifications and information to my personal email address, but also as those first day nerves and excitement at entering a new environment rapidly evaporated. It has been just over two months now, and some of my reasons for my love/hate relationship with a blanket WFH policy have crystallised:
Even though I can go into the office, no one else from my department/team does, so even with hot-desking, I find myself awkwardly sitting on a different table to other teams who habitually sit in the same spaces.
I really miss the ability to just lean over a desk or walk over to someone to chat for 30 seconds about an issue. Instead, I find myself waiting up to an hour for someone to return a message on Slack. This disrupts my way of working.
I don’t feel connected to my colleagues as I have at other places that I worked at pre-pandemic, and I’m surprised how much I miss the social element of working in an office. The walks to grab a bite to eat at lunch together or a quick pint after work. Even just desk tea rounds. I never thought I’d miss doing the tea round.
I’m worried about my progression. Am I doing this task right? Do they know how much output I’m creating? Is it enough, too little. Am I overworking?
Why have we still not learnt to book virtual meetings in for 50-55 minutes? Everyone is constantly late, or having to eat on a call, because no one has considered the small - but important - time that we had moving about between in-person meetings to collect our thoughts.
Of course, WFH still has its perks. I can get a lot of chores done in the day whilst completing my workload, which frees up my evenings more. Even in a dog-friendly office, my dog is far more settled, as am I, at home together. This way, working from home, I can keep my dog company all day in a more relaxed environment for us both. You can definitely agree I’m doing my bit for the heavily discussed post-lockdown separation anxiety of dogs. A huge benefit to WFH was those awkward first couple of weeks. Instead of being given the menial induction tasks of “reading documents” before you’re assigned your full workload and clockwatching at my desk in an office waiting for home time, I was able to have video calls with my family, meal prep, and even a bit of DIY!
This experience has definitely got me thinking about my future working preferences. I thought I would be content with a fully remote role, but it turns out I need some form of structure with other members of my team: in the office, at least once a week, and especially starting a new role. New starters are a group we flagged in our research as a concern for future hybrid working, who miss out on the daily learning and the taken-for-granted accumulation of organisational knowledge off office life when they are working at home more than they’d like.
I’m not advocating that everyone’s experience as a new starter will be like mine, but noticing that I echo the views of some of our own participants makes me think how we still have a long way to go to figure out this future, hybrid way of working after lockdown.
