This week our small community health discovery team met up in London. It was hugely valuable to share stories of past work, to do some detailed planning, to do a retro and think about how it’s worked so far, and to start thinking about the best ways to get more out of our future work.
I loved the day, I thought it was nice and productive. The team is lovely and I’m happy to be a part of it.
I have got a problem though.
In the last couple of weeks I’ve started to see a new mentor. Well, we’ve had one session. But already I’ve got so much out of it to think about.
One of those things is about hybrid working and being effective. I’m pretty sure a lot of people are thinking about this issue.
For me it boils down to this: how do I keep all the benefits of working from home (flexibility etc) with the benefits of being in an office where I get face to face engagement?
This is a simple question for many, but my specific problem is that I live in Portishead, and my local office is Bristol. I can go there, but no one else in my team will be there. So while it’s useful, I’m not getting much benefit from it.
If I want to spend more time with the team, it means London or Leeds, which is a huge faff and not something anyone would want to do too often.
Because of this, my default is to remain at home, but I’m sorry to say that I think I’m missing out. Not only on a better work experience, but also doing better at work.
And I also think that it’s isolating personally.
This has sadly become a bit of a culture war issue rather than a common sense one, so I should say that I’m hugely pro working from home in general — I don’t like commuting, and in many ways work better at home — but the point around personal contact remains. There’s a balance I need and I’m not quite hitting it with my current set up.
I don’t want to move (next to children’s school, cost etc), so how the hell do I make that work?
How do I get more of the team stuff this week, the ad hoc conversations, the smoother work decisions, the fun of it, without committing to a huge amount of commuting?
I don’t suppose anyone has the answer for that, but if you do have any ideas, or do it yourself in a certain way, let me know.