AdNews brings the stories of those working from home (WFH) in the advertising and media industry during the coronavirus crisis.
Travis Tyler is chief product and marketing officer at 86 400.
How are you dealing with the silence?
It depends on the day. My two and four year old are home two days a week, which eliminates silence for those days. It definitely adds a different dimension to our overseas capital raise calls when my two year old son wants to ‘help with the meeting’. Presenting to investors is far easier than convincing a two year old to leave the room.
Traditionally, I hadn’t worked from home that much so I’ve relished the chance to break old habits and adapt to a new way of working. Without the commute I’ve found the mornings incredibly productive, I’ve been more deliberate and disciplined with my time and oddly I’ve found one-on-one interactions more effective via Zoom than face to face as there are less external distractions.
What’s the upside?
I’ve found three key benefits:
- I’ve increased my productivity in many areas.
- I’ve become more focused on communicating priorities and ensuring alignment across teams, which has helped us deliver better outcomes and go even faster.
- I’ve learnt how effectively we can run the business from home, which has opened my eyes to ‘true remote working’. As a result we can structure the business and operate in a way that will require less face to face going forward and provide the team more flexibility. E.g choosing where they live without having to worry about commute times and deciding how they spend their time savings outside the traditional 9 to 5.
The downside?
Many of the team have shared outcomes that require collaboration and/or creative thinking where we build off each other’s ideas, which is proving to be more challenging in this remote environment. Working from home has been great for deep individual work and more transactional activities, however, more creative and group problem solving activities have suffered.
I also miss the banter and hanging out with the team. We have an eclectic bunch of people that get along really well and have a lot of fun together, so I definitely miss that. With so much time alone it is very apparent that I am not that interesting.
How are you using the commuting time saved?
Previously I didn’t get to see my kids much during the week so it has been nice to do bath time with the kids and then get back to work after they go to bed.
I am looking forward to being back in the office because…
I am excited to do some ideation and problem solving with the team in our new office, and working on the long term plans of our business. Plus having a sneaky beer together!
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