Sonja’s budgies clamor in the background. Christopher adjusts his hoodie. Timo has his baby on his lap. Jonas cuddles his dog. And the management’s young daughter babbles happily in between. It’s ten o’clock and we’re in the Daily, our short daily morning video conference with almost all of our colleagues, where we discuss yesterday’s results and today’s tasks and appointments. After that, we will all go to work, each for ourselves
Working from home is also possible
As a global pandemic has the working world firmly in its grip, our team is working entirely from home. The situation is just a little unusual for us. Because working remote has been a standard feature of erminas GmbH for years. The team is equipped with notebooks and everyone has the opportunity to work without having to be in the office.
“Flexibility in terms of working hours and location has been a fundamental part of our working culture since the company was founded,” explains Hilmar Bunjes, CEO and founder of erminas. “We work in an industry in which every single employee contributes a great deal to the success of a company. And we see that the opportunities we give our employees are reflected back positively.”
In addition to the technical equipment provided by the company, there is one thing above all: everyone’s trust that it will work. Especially, of course, the trust of the management personalities.
Trust the team
Because working from home works differently, especially for those who have children. Young children who you would prefer not to place in emergency care at the moment, if at all possible. Schoolchildren who need to be familiarized with the new requirements of distance learning with video conferencing and learning programs such as Jitsi, Zoom, Teams and Moodle. Fixed nine-to-five working hours are impossible here.
This means that everyone works when they can. This also means that work performance may be reduced, especially at certain times. “Then that’s just the way it is.” Hilmar Bunjes says this calmly.
“We trust every employee. It doesn’t matter whether the employee is in the office, at home or somewhere else. Someone can also be in the office for eight hours without working. The results of the work are the crucial point.”
Hilmar Bunjes is aware that many companies lack precisely this trust. “If this is the case, the home office may be a critical point, but not the cause. A solution should be worked out with the employees. We facilitate a very open culture of discussion. The issue of trust has never been a problem for us.”
Good tools are needed for remote work.
Slack: fast communication like in an open-plan office
Common communication tools help us not to lose sight of each other. Probably the most important one for us is the instant messaging service Slack. We are in constant contact with each other via Slack during regular working hours. The Slack window is always somewhere in view on the monitors so that we can see what’s going on. Of course, sounds can also indicate a new message. It’s like being in an open-plan office: Anyone who wants to can write directly to a colleague or simply “call into the room” to reach everyone.
Different topic channels in turn enable collaboration in the respective working groups so that not everyone has to read everything. And of course there are also closed channels for the management if required.
Slack can be linked with other tools from Google, Microsoft or Atlassian, for example, and with clouds. Calls and video chats are also possible.
Teams: The virtual conference room
We prefer Microsoft Teams for video meetings. This is more stable with several participants, we can chat and share presentations in the meantime so that others can also take control. In the team ranking, Teams is on a par with Slack. Because now in the lockdown period, Teams is the channel where we can see ourselves. Our virtual conference room. But also our virtual kitchen.
In addition to the appointments, we also meet every afternoon simply for socializing. Anyone who likes to come in and just wants to talk about something. At the moment, these are often coronavirus issues. But also everything else that takes place in the coffee kitchen: The latest series on Netflix, the latest dentist appointment, tips about our electrical service wheels, everything that doesn’t have to do with customers and projects.
We also held our Christmas party with teams. While the management gave the Christmas speech, we were able to unwrap our packages with Feuerzangenbowle and gingerbread house. As we do every year, we gave out secret santa gifts and then played online games together. No substitute for a Christmas party with everyone at your favorite pub. But the best thing we could do this time.
Tip: Backgrounds in the company design help to create the feeling of working together in the same room. This creates a working atmosphere in the meeting and a certain calmness for the eye.
Atlassian Jira: Project management for workgroups
Agile development teams working with Scrum are familiar with Atlassian’s tools: Projects can be created in Jira and task fields are described in epics. Individual tasks are divided into tickets and subtasks for the tickets. This way, they can be assigned to the people who will then take them on. They can be estimated, timed and prioritized. Once a ticket has been completed, it is returned to the ordering party for testing. He can then close it if everything is in order, or return it if he has questions or further requirements.
Jira is a great help in keeping track of projects and distributing and processing tasks. Our customers can also be involved in the projects, see how everything is developing and comment on it. This saves us having to send endless e-mails to several people in cc
This is why Jira is not only suitable for software development teams: This type of project management can help any company to work efficiently and in a goal-oriented manner, even with employees working from home.
More tools
Of the Atlassian tools, we also use Confluence as our company wiki. The tool Moco helps to keep track of working hours and projects, and we use Retrium for a regular team retrospective. The main focus is on the well-being and satisfaction of the team.
Team satisfaction - even at home
CTO Dr. Yvette Teiken finds real contact with the team more pleasant than working from home all the time. “But what must be done, must be done!”
It is important to Hilmar and Yvette that everyone is doing well and that no one slips through the cracks. “If the team is doing badly, we can’t be doing well as a management team,” says Yvette Teiken. “In that sense, it is pure selfishness when we take care of the well-being of our employees,” she adds with a wink.
The hierarchies are flat at erminas, the tone is always friendly and relaxed. This also contributes to the feeling of shared responsibility in the team.
Perhaps this is the relevant difference to many other companies where working from home is not possible even now during the coronavirus lockdown. DIE ZEIT was not the only one to come across irritating statements during its research. We also often hear resignation and anger from employees in our professional and private environment when we ask about the reasons given by employers for rejecting the desire for remote working opportunities.
Are there really any good reasons not to work from home?
At a large health insurance company, which advertises digital medical records and particularly secure apps to attract customers, employees cite data protection reasons.
A cosmetics manufacturer clearly tells its employees: “We don’t trust you. Last time, some people took advantage of the home office and simply went shopping and were no longer available!” Flexible working hours? Excluded.
At another insurance company, analogue mail is already being digitized and sorted with the help of IBM Watson. One or two employees still have to go to the office, at least once a week: “There are often no digital processes for invoices that the company has to pay. Unfortunately, many companies rely on a signature as a payment instruction.”
“Of course, you first have to check whether the workplace in question can be moved to the home office at all,” admits an IT service provider who looks after company networks. “But in my experience, in most cases where working from home would be possible but has so far been implemented poorly or not at all, it is due to missed and unrealized opportunities in IT. And this applies to practically all areas, from the employer’s 16 MBit Internet access, which is not even capable of serving several external employees upstream, to a generally outdated IT infrastructure, non-Internet-capable company software and, above all, a reluctance to invest.”
Advantages of working remote for employers
At a large health insurance company, which advertises digital medical records and particularly secure apps to attract customers, employees cite data protection reasons.
A cosmetics manufacturer clearly tells its employees: “We don’t trust you. Last time, some people took advantage of the home office and simply went shopping and were no longer available!” Flexible working hours? Excluded.
At another insurance company, analogue mail is already being digitized and sorted with the help of IBM Watson. One or two employees still have to go to the office, at least once a week: “There are often no digital processes for invoices that the company has to pay. Unfortunately, many companies rely on a signature as a payment instruction.”
Ein oder zwei Mitarbeiter müssen immer noch ins Büro gehen, mindestens einmal pro Woche: “Für Rechnungen, die das Unternehmen bezahlen muss, gibt es oft keine digitalen Prozesse. Leider verlassen sich viele Unternehmen auf eine Unterschrift als Zahlungsanweisung”. “But in my experience, in most cases where working from home would be possible but has so far been implemented poorly or not at all, it is due to missed and unrealized opportunities in IT. And this applies to practically all areas, from the employer’s 16 MBit Internet access, which is not even capable of serving several external employees upstream, to a generally outdated IT infrastructure, non-Internet-capable company software and, above all, a reluctance to invest.”
Closing offices to achieve ZeroCovid
Because there is still not stable Internet coverage everywhere, even in rural areas, because it is sometimes unavoidable to be present in the office at least sometimes, because the traditional middle class is sometimes still very inflexible when it comes to fundamentally changing things, and because employers do not trust their employees, many people have to travel to their workplace every day in these dangerous times. And they expose themselves to the risk of infection, which they pass on to their families.
While retail, catering and cultural businesses have to close, the virus continues to spread because people have to meet many other people at their workplaces every day. This will inevitably lead to further tightening and extension of the containment measures.
We are happy to support you in setting up the necessary infrastructure and advise you on communication processes, even if this is not part of our core business.
We therefore urge employers to close their offices wherever possible.
“In the last year, we have seen a rethink and restructuring at many companies where working from home was unthinkable a year ago,” says Hilmar Bunjes. “I dare you. You can only win.”
