Working from home: Around Family Events and Festivities
By: Gautham Nimmagadda
Tags: India, Work Life Balance, Festivals, Diversity, Working From Home

(for Indian IT employees)

I took off from work last week to take care of a few family things and events in my hometown, which is about 700 km from Bangalore. I had a busy but great time with family and friends. What prompted me to write this little story is an (impromptu) presentation/demo that I had to give during my vacation time and my experience/thoughts on how to balance.

As I was preparing material for the presentation and demo, a few enthusiastic relatives got interested and started watching over my shoulder as I was typing some random words(for them)on my black terminal, they were hoping that some magic will happen but soon got disappointed and retreated after they got bored with a bunch of repeated kubectl commands ;-). Finally, when I was happy with the dry-runs of the demo, I was late for lunch and almost every one of the extended family gave that look… but they let me alone for the day, somewhat unwillingly.

This along with a few requests for unplanned day-offs in our team recently made me think, how remote colleagues can balance their work, life, festivals, participation in family events and have a true balance and not continuous struggle to balance. Here are my thoughts:

At a broad level, we have the following remote working environments:

In/around physical workspaces: These are generally in large cities and employees usually have fewer distractions except an occasional delivery person or handyman. Work-life balance is manageable in these scenarios and people take off for travel/vacation etc. Apart from regular engagement with the team, and taking care of any young children at home, they can balance it well and typically take a week or so off for travel to their hometown or a vacation place. So, there is by and large clear demarcation between work and rest of the life.

Remote Tier-2/3 towns and villages: Life here couldn’t be more different from big cities. The group of people here typically live with parents, extended family, and distractions can get quite high at times. With the pandemic running for so long (and so is remote working), by now, they most likely figured out a space that works for them in their homes most of the time. But occasionally (or somewhat frequently, depending on festive season and events), the distractions can be very high, following are the tips for individuals and managers in those situations:

Individuals:

When any such events or festivals are there at home, inform your manager and take a day off, believe me, you will enjoy it more and will come back energized If you know these ahead of time, inform your manager as soon as you can and apply for a day off, block calendar etc. Based on your condition, inform your manager about your reachability in case of any work-related emergency Don’t try to balance with a couple of hours away kind of agreement, as we know these rarely finish within that time and create that unnecessary struggle in the mind, and you can’t make justice to either

Managers:

Encourage your teammates to take some time off, enjoy the festivities and events. In most cases, work can wait for a day or two Don’t bother them unless absolutely required and no one else can cover for them When they return, ask about how was the break, learn a bit about the event/festival, India is such a diverse country, we can learn new things by asking and can help in establishing the bonding along the way

One Team, One Work, Many Environments… Interesting times!!!