Home working is the future of work

19 Apr 2020 33047 views 0 minutes to read Contributors

future home working

The Corona virus pandemic has triggered an experiment in mass remote working. Already, many managers and employees are realizing that smart solutions exist to just about every perceived difficulty of doing business at a distance. That’s good news, because a Harvard professor has warned that many physical distancing measures may need to be in place intermittently until 2022.

SQLTreeo has always been a fully remote company and we’ve designed all our tools and services specifically with remote working in mind. We use Slack and Microsoft Teams to collaborate with each other and with our customers. Over the years, we’ve developed robust project management processes that work effectively wherever we, or our customers, happen to be.

Can people ever return to office life as usual?

The big change we have seen in recent weeks is how quickly all our customers have also settled in to working from home. Any previous reservations about DBAs working remotely on their database environment have disappeared. Now, they have first-hand experience that this way of working is extremely effective, efficient and reliable.

For example, we have recently completed a database audit project while working completely remotely. We set expectations, agreed deliverables and defined communications protocols with our customer at the outset. We collaborated using Microsoft Teams and set a specific time for our weekly project update call.

The project has been a great success. Our team quickly identified and resolved several database performance issues. The customer (and their customers) noticed the improvements almost immediately.

We have always loved this way of working. Our whole team benefits from the flexible and healthy lifestyle. We also feel our customers benefit from our focused work and fast, reliable turnarounds.  Not only can we deliver projects quickly, we can also solve emergency database issues at short notice.

What does the road ahead look like?

More businesses are now noticing the benefits of home working. Their teams work with fewer distractions and more focus and energy. Trust is, of course, a key element. But, our customers are quickly finding that as long as you have effective communications in place, home working works.

Managers tasked with leading home-based teams working in a database environment also have the benefit of a digital trail. They can clearly see what is happening in their database servers and monitor that everything is working as it should. That makes it easy for them to keep up-to-date with how their team is doing each day and to offer support where necessary.

Many  are also finding that running their databases remotely is giving them better insights.  For example, they have a more complete picture of what is going on in their business because, with just one click, the data is available to them wherever they happen to be.  

The Corona virus crisis has forced many businesses to shift to home working. Some may be longing for things to ‘return to normal’ but others are finding it difficult to imagine going back to how things were. It’s likely that some traditional ways of working will (and probably should) change for the better.

 

These strange times can be dark but they are also a chance to reset; to realize that a lot of our work can be done productively at home. For the foreseeable future, some form of physical distancing is not going away. SQLTreeo has the tools and remote-working experience to ensure your database environment remains strong and reliable – and we’re always  here for you.

 

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