AdNews brings the stories of those working from home (WFH) in the advertising and media industry during the coronavirus crisis.
Matt de Groot is the breakfast newsreader for Nova 96.9’s Fitzy & Wippa.
How do you deal with the silence?
Mercifully there is no silence as my beautiful wife works the same breakfast hours for news.com.au. She’s also WFH, so from dawn til dusk she is there beside me. All day. Every Minute. Of all the days. There she is. Again. (But I love it). So between that and the show being on, some silence would actually be nice.
The good of working from home?
The extra sleep. Rather than leaving home at 3.50am to be ready to be on-air at 5am my commute is 6 seconds, and prep time about the same. Once off air I can then be on the first tee at the golf club about 8 minutes later.
The bad?
Chats on-air are just that beat behind. We’ve all grown to make it work but there is nothing like the chemistry of being in the same studio and bouncing off each other. When you make a gag there is now that half second of uncertainty of whether it hasn’t arrived yet or it was just a rubbish gag. The other is that the garbage collection outside my window seems to be every morning, exactly when I turn the mic on.
Tips for making WFH work?
Getting changed out of my pyjamas seems to switch the mindset into work mode. And maintaining a regular exercise routine; the fridge is very nearby at home and with no pesky colleagues there to judge how many times you access it, it’s pretty easy to just give it all away. Making sure I work out regularly(ish) has really helped.
I am looking forward to getting back to the office because…
Despite their best intentions, I actually quite like who I work with, so I look forward to getting back in the studio with them. I also look forward to coming home to my darling wife and sharing what happened in the day rather than knowing everything that happened, as it happens, which is generally that nothing’s happened.
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