Tag: COVID-19

Pop It for Work from Home

~ Danny Kwok ~ Leave a comment

Work from Home (WFH) or Remote Working is back to default for Singapore Phase 1.5. I recently learn about a new destress toy call Pop It from my son. This toy may help those working from home especially those with kids. Its purpose is similar to fidget spinner or the traditional popping with bubble wrap. It helps you to relieve stress and anxiety and also to keep your kids entertained as well. Why is stress easily build up during WFH?

Photo by Ethan Kwok
Managing WFH

Work and personal boundaries will blur during the period of working from home. Time and space coexists with your family, in-laws or housemates. In the initial start of WFH, I often flared up due to interruptions and overlapping tasks of home and work. It is even more challenging with kids “Home Based Learning” (HBL). Knock off and Paid Time Off become meaningless as you are constantly within the working location. Gradually, stress and anxiety build up among those WFH or HBL at the same time.

Pop It and Time Out

An important aspect of WFH is division of time and space among the occupants of the home. Usually, this comes with trial and error to work out the area with your housemates or family. Hopefully, you can get a room with a door! Setting working hours break period and lunchtime is good for everyone to proper time out. If all fails, hide yourself to pop it. You can also get your kids distracted with pop it as well.

Singapore Phase 1.5

~ Danny Kwok ~ 3 Comments

Papa, Singapore is in Phase 1.5.

Ethan Kwok

Today, I have an interesting discussion with my little son over dinner. He exclaims on how he and his friends name the new tightened measures on COVID-19 “Phase 1.5”. Just a week ago, Singapore went back to Phase 2. Yet, the numbers keep increasing despite many had been vaccinated on the frontline. What goes wrong?

Photo by Ethan Kwok
Cracks in Phase 3

A rollback is typical of system deployment. We can view virus like bugs in the system. Another example is Matrix where Neo mutated and evolve. Vaccines are usually developed on known virus. Many become complacent when vaccinated and goes back to business as usual. Unknowingly, vaccines becomes a two way sword for human mindset. The vaccines are working. The implemented phase 3 is successful. Humans are the variables. Cracks are formed and this seeped through via humans.

Lesson from Deploying New System

Like all new systems, users will challenge the new system with old ways. COVID-19 measures are designed with fixed assumptions, rules and laws. However, it is obvious that some measures are vague in nature and leaves room for interpretation. Working from Home is such measure which have been always subjective and interpreted very broadly. With new processes, human behaviour will naturally select the shortest and most convenient methods. Ironically, the cracks appeared in places with “stringent checks” like hospital and airports.

The monitoring phase after Go Live is the most challenging part of system deployment. We will always aim to let go and get to steady state in the shortest duration. However, can the vaccines turn around fast to solve new bugs that evolved? If no, what is the contingency? The end result is a rollback until new measures comes in place. Vaccines 2.0!?

Back to Phase 2

~ Danny Kwok ~ 1 Comment

Singapore is back to phase 2 from 8 May to 30 May with the spike in COVID-19 cases. This time, our workforce is more adapt to remote working or work from home (wfh). It is always great to see how well we switch to working anywhere. Elsewhere, we are also seeing spike and result in travel ban from certain countries. How should the management adapt to changing government policies on the pandemic?

Adapt and React

By now, most organisations are resilient to adapt and react to different phases of government responses to COVID-19. The infections can be unpredictable with waves or cluster of infections. Business continuity remains top priority to ensure service level are similar. In some cases, we need to slow down or de prioritise certain tasks or projects.

Self Organising Team

The pandemic have result in an importance of self organising team. Centralised management of team will be obsolete in face of empowerment. As our workforce becomes remote, decision making must be empowered and teams need to be self reliant. Teams become autonomous and accountable to their projects or job scope.

For all old management, it is time to face the change from the pandemic. Management needs to create self organising teams and empowering staffs. On the other hand, workers must play their part to be accountable to their tasks without decentralise management.

Why Remote Working is the New Norm

~ Danny Kwok ~ 3 Comments

Looking back to year of COVID-19, there comes a few plus point that have happen to the dynamics of working. The one good thing I can think of on top of my mind is the chance of working remotely. This method of working will have never be realised in many Asian countries if not for the pandemic.

FaceTime is a Thing of the Past

In Asia, cultures plays a an important part of everyday working life. FaceTime and long working hours is an indicator of “hardworking”. We are often told to be on time at work. Knocking off on time is frown upon and you are encouraged to clock overtime. There was even one instance where I was assigned more tasks because I was seen leaving work on time constantly (to fetch my kid).

Remote Working Gives Work Life Balance

As many found out, remote working allows each individual to gain around 3 hours of personal time. These time would have been used to spend on getting ready for work or traveling to work. We can now achieve better work life balance by investing these extra time in personal well being like going to the gym.

Working Remote can Maintain Productivity

The pandemic have shown that working remotely does not give rise to a reduction of productivity. In some cases, the productivity increases as workers are much happier with the increased flexibility and work life balance. There are also times where schedule can be easily planned with adequate rest to connect with colleagues across different time zone.

Working remotely is the new norm. Traditional organisation and management will need to acknowledge and adapt to new way of working. If not, good resources will be lost to the new norms.