Our current intern Ibrahim Okedina hast joined the team in November. As the whole team has been working from home since the end of October and so far there´s no end in sight, Ibrahim´s internship with us will be on a fully remote base. He reflects on the pros and cons of this construct and points out how we at epap are trying to overcome isolation and communication barriers in the not-so-new-anymore situation.:
“You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them”, Maya Angelou.
“It is without a doubt that we have not been able to control the events that have taken place because of the pandemic but instead we have learned to live with the virus. Working from home has been one of the adaptations we have had to succumb to because of the restrictions placed on us by COVID 19.
Working together is something we are all accustomed to and being social is part of our human nature, we are of course social beings! This is probably what I miss the most about working face-to-face, being able to interact with other people on a face-to-face basis. As I recently joined epap, the feeling would be to meet the team in person and just get an aura of the work environment. Yes, we have been blessed with technology that allows us to interact with each other despite the distance, but human interaction is always best.
However, working from home has brought about a new perspective on how I view the work environment. Working in a comfortable space allows one to be more creative and to make “lemon juice out of lemons” when faced with challenging situations. It allows one to work flexibly and according to a setting that suits oneself with fewer interruptions from meetings and chitchat.
Working from home also has its perks. Sometimes it is difficult to physically separate work and leisure time. You can find your work time feeding into your leisure time which then seems as if one is working round the clock. It also forces one to be more self-disciplined, motivated, and focused which may involve a change of scenery.
Though measures to counteract the challenges faced by the pandemic have their pros and cons for the individual, epap, makes working from home with various tools as easy as falling off a log. These tools include slack which is a communication platform that is more secure than email and allows team members to communicate in a faster, better, and organized manner. Home office has opened up even more flexibility than before — enabling people to create their very own working shedule. Due to that asynchronous communication has become an important topic that we are tackling with different topic-related channels. Doing so we are trying to keep everyone informed about important ongoings as well as to create a virtual office space. Another important workspace at epap is notion, an application that aids the worker to manage themselves and work-related projects in terms of note-taking, project management data management, among others.
Last but not least, there is tandem. Tandem is a platform that allows workers to feel as if they are in „an office away from an actual office“, a virtual office. On this platform, we at epap easily interact with each other as if we were in the same space but virtually of course.
In conclusion, working from home has been simple and straightforward with the measures epap has put in place, not only for me but the company as a whole.”
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