Sun.com Customer Experience and Stuff: Notes from the Sun.com customer experience team.

As I was saying the other day, it's somewhat counter-intutive that a design team could be distributed in multiple locations with many team members working remotely from home. But it works really well for us (as well as at IBM and HP judging from comments).  A few days ago our group put together some comments about things they love, things they hate, and best practices for working from home and collaborating remotely.  I'm going to do these installments, because there are so many interesting comments in each cluster.

First, the things that work best. I wasn't surprised to get comments about how people save commute time and feel more efficient... but I was really amazed by all of the other benefits our designers and other team members mentioned: Better collaboration, more effective work setting, better for the environment. Here are some of the things folks in our group really think works well about working from home...

Higher productivity and efficiency:

These themes didn't surprise me too much. I expected people to talk about time saved in commutes, and other benefits. There were some other benefits, such as multitasking, that I hadn't thought of as much. Here's a sampling of comments...

• Better time management:
  
• "Working from home is much more productive!!!"
• "The lack of physical interruptions helps me to better manage my time, hence I am more productive."
• "I can be the one who defines my work hours. I can work as late or as early as needed without dealing with a commute. In fact, when I lived in the Bay Area, I was sitting either in my car or on the train for over two hours each way. That's a lot of wasted downtime. Even if I start and stop an hour earlier than I did, I'm still putting more hours into work without the aggravation. It's a lot better on my nerves too."
• "Much better time management. In the office it is too easy to get sidetracked or sucked into a hallway conversation, that may be useful, but is always a timesink. I don't really miss those."
• "I get much more done - am way more productive. Fewer interruptions and distractions. I don't have to "waste" two hours of my day driving to campus and that also translates into $ savings on gas. It's safer."
• "Multi-tasking is great."
• Commute time savings:
  
• "When you work from home, the drive-time savings, for me 2 hours a day is significant. It is an enormous amount of time I can keep or give back to the company."
  
• "Having the flexibility to work from home enables you to use the commute time for working.  This can be valuable when the schedule is really tight."
• "People can work even when there's a snow storm. Or even when they're just a little under the weather. Or when their car is broken."
• Schedule flexibility:
  
• "Able to react quickly to late-breaking, time-sensitive news [like at night] w/o coming into the office."
• "Personal advantages like: flexibility, no wasted time spent on commuting, easy to work early in the morning or late at night."
  
• "Jumping on your computer when you just had a great idea."
• "I can work during lunch."
• "I take better notes or update docs/pages in real-time. We can edit and be done in the same meeting."
• "My meetings are often back to back. I could schedule for the walk across campus, but why - I like the phone."
• "Allows me to work when I'm most productive."
• "If I am not feeling well, I can still work without infecting my coworkers!"

Better collaboration:

This one surprised me, because conventional wisdom holds that collaboration is much harder when you're not face to face. What we're finding on our team is that global collaboration (which is very important) is much easier, since it's remote anyhow. And, being remote encourages you to reach out beyond familiar circles in your hallway. But, local hallway collaboration is harder, since there's no hallway. In a world where big companies tend to develop myopic headquarters-centric views, I think this might be a good change.  Some comments from our team:

• Broadening horizons:
• "Working remotely disconnects you from the sense of an office space, which seems to make working with others outside your office space easier. For instance it does not seem as big of a deal to work people from all over the globe. Once you are remote, everyone is remote and it seems to break down barriers some people might have about working with others in different time zones, countries and even teams."
• "From a project team perspective, there is much more collaboration with the project group than before when I sat with just UE people. The focus is cross functional and collaborative - In some ways, less of a silo effect. I know a lot more about other groups, other projects, organization, politics etc. because of my project team interaction."
• "Talking with teams of people from around the world and gaining global persepctive. If you have a comfy headset you can be on the phone talking to people all day and not feel alone. OR you can focus on your work and not have the constant walkers-by interuptions - you get to choose."
• "I find myself connecting with people from all over the world more, which is really interesting and enlightening."
• More effective collaboration:
  
• "The web medium is very conducive to distributed, electronic work modes; sharing work, etc. the medium is the medium."
• "Everyone has a monitor in front of them during meetings so each person can look at web pages and documents easily.  [As opposed to sitting in meeting rooms and the prep, setup work, and squinting to see what's on the screen.]"
• "IM helps to be spontaneous like you would if you say someone in the hall - except it's global"
• "Conference calling and IMing the same team members helps get through some conversations better."
• "I've used email and IM, even a second line, to get info from someone not on the call to bring to the meeting. In an in-person meeting, by contrast, we'd have to wait until that off-line work was done and loose a week in the mean time."
• "In some ways, like working with IM, it's easier to get people while not disrupting them as much as I would if I just stopped by or called."
• "Since I'm an introvert and really pretty heads down, I think I actually connect with people more using technology that I would if I was on campus."
• "I find that people listen more and attune to discussions via teleconference more than sometimes in meetings. We have to - we don't have the body language. (There are downsides, too, of course.)"
• "Anyone can meet with anyone anywhere almost any time and with a well planned event, be productive."
• Timezone leverage:
  
• "Able to pool talent from across regions, and even exploit time-zone differences. [Getting folks in Europe and Asia to do stuff while we're sleeping in the US, and vice versa.]"
• "We are very global and it is much easier for me to take a 5pm call with China from home than staying late at work."
• Better relationships:
  
• "It's interesting because you get to know people based on their ability to deliver good work and communicate well by email and phone. You don't have any preconceived judgements based on appearance."
• Hmmm:
• "I often stand and wave my arms with my headset on. I don't do that in meetings face to face (unless you give me a whiteboard!)"
  

Better for the environment

• "Reduced traffic and pollution."
• "I print less out. [Since everything is online.]"
  

Better work setting, better focus

• "Parts of design process can require contemplation, focus over long periods. Working from home can make it easier to "get in the zone"
• "Higher productivity; fewer distractions, focused work environment."
• "For someone who would have a cube at work, the advantage to my home situation is I can have private phone conversations, unlike in a cube environment. I also get a window office at home."
• "A fair variety of configurations are in use across remote teams. makes for decent quick "performance" testing [e.g. odd OS and browser combinations]"
• "I really like having sunlight!  (my on-campus office isn't near a window)."

Great for morale and work/life balance

Not every job can work remotely. but in cases where it's possible I think it's a bin win for families and lowered stress levels. It's important for people to be connected to their families and it's also ludicrous for anyone to waste hours of the day commuting or stressing out when they need to be able to disconnect for a few minutes to run an errand or attend to a school issue. Judging from comments our group really appreciates this aspect of the iWork program.

• Less stress:
  
• "The time flexibility, is the #1 best thing for me."
  
• "Flexible time management just makes life easier"
• "The flexibility is wonderful"
• "I can multi-task: I can do all the chores and exercise etc. that would otherwise take my evenings and weekends and exhaust me between working, driving, eating, and choring. Again, my attitude and stress levels are much better now because I don't feel like I'm constantly on demand. I truly believe this makes me an exceptional employee because I can work more and am happy to do it."
• Saving money:
  
• "Less expense due to higher gas prices (since I don't commute so much)"
  
• "No commuting-saves money, time and aggravation."
• "Spending more time with my pets."
• "No commute time, dry cleaning, gasoline bills; time to get ready, etc."
• "I spend a lot less on lunch since the kitchen is just steps away. (I wasn't too good about packing a lunch)."
• More family time:
  
• "I can hug my kids when they get home from school or have lunch with my wife anytime I want."
• "I think I'm one of the few that really took advantage of the ability to work anywhere. I moved to a rather sleepy little tourist town... very much" the antitheses of the Bay Area. My kids are safe playing outside, there's virtually no crime, no smog, no traffic... And best of all, I can afford to pay the rent!"
• "Personal balance - with a young family I have numerous times where I have to run and pick up an ill child. I am able to continue my work while they rest in bed. Also, there are a lot of personal appointments that happen during a work day and it is nice that I can take care of those and balance my work to later in the day. The work/family benefit is the best part."
• "I also enjoy being able to wear whatever attire suits my mood for the day.  (Let's just say I hope videophones don't become standard home-office issue)"
  
• General job satisfaction:
• "Higher job morale; I can live where I want to live and still work at Sun"
• "I love my system and my at home office"

Or, as one person summed up: "[I love] just about everything, really. I love the work at home program and would find it difficult to have to go into the office everyday ever again ;-)"

Next time: Things that don't work so well remotely.
Tunes: 73: Wynton Marsalis: Blue Porter Stomp

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