By RYLIE KLAIN

Beginning in March 2020 there was an abrupt closure of schools as well as workplaces forcing everyone to switch to online learning and working due to the growing actions of the Covid-19 pandemic. Even now, over two years since the initial shut down, some workplaces have decided to switch to remote working indefinitely. How has this made an impact on those it affects? Do those affected miss in person working? The following interview discusses these very questions in which Kimberly Klain went from working in person  everyday to indefinitely online.

Interview with Kimberly Klain

Transcript

RK: What is your name, age, and occupation?

KK: Kimberly Klain, 49, Finance Manager

RK: We are going to be discussing the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and the transition to remote working and learning. At the start of the pandemic when you were forced to work from home, were you expecting to be home for just the base two weeks or did you have an inkling that it would likely be a lot longer than that?

KK: No, I definitely didn’t think it would be a lot longer than that. If anything, two weeks to a month, at most.

RK: Especially being a parent of three school-aged children, what would you say was the biggest challenge of balancing your own remote working alongside your children’s remote learning schedules?

KK: I would say the most challenging part was trying to find a space where everybody could be working where they would be on video and on audio with no interruption. So everybody had to be in a room that was kind of closed off.

RK: As things have started improving with the Covid-19 pandemic, thanks to vaccines and such, now we have returned to in person for school, when you were given the option of staying home indefinitely for work, why did you choose not to return to the office?

KK: My group is not going back to the office permanently at all. Once we went home, they saw how smoothly we worked and how well we transitioned and they decided that the majority of the people were able to work from home 100% of the time with no issues. So they decided to take the building we had and scale down. So they sold the building we had and are in the process of purchasing a building that is much smaller. Only the people that have to be in the office will return to work 100% of the time and our department and other departments who are able to work from home 100% of the time will only be able to go into the office when it’s absolutely necessary. For team meetings or maybe once a quarter to do something as a team but we won’t have dedicated desks, we’ll have to reserve a spot to sit, which may not be the same place every time so we’re sort of being forced to be home. It saves the company a lot of money and over the last two years they saw we were able to get a lot done so there really is no need for us to be in the office anymore unless it’s maybe to do some sort of team training or maybe once in a while just to get together as a group but the job can be done at home so that’s what’s going to happen.

RK: Going off of that, do you prefer being at home working, or do you miss the office?

KK: I really enjoy being home and prior to covid everyone in our group did have at least one work from home day, so we would be home working one day a week and four days in the office. Everybody had a different day. Although I enjoy being home, I do miss seeing people in person. Not that I would want to do it everyday again because I kind of enjoy being home but I do miss especially when its holiday times or celebrations; we’ve had to sort of have holiday virtual parties; one of the girls in our group is going to be retiring at the end of the month and it’s kinda sad that her last two years we weren’t all together. We will be meeting up to go to a restaurant to just have dinner with her. In the office you get to celebrate everyone’s birthday; like bagels for everyone’s birthday, for the holidays we would have a grab bag; we would go out to lunch every once in a while; at the end of the quarter we would have a celebration where we would go out to eat together and have a lunch. So those are the things that I miss. I feel like when you’re home you only communicate with someone if you need them. It’s not like, “let’s just catch up and see how your life is going.” I feel like we miss a lot of the personal stuff because we just contact them if we need to do work or have a question about work.

RK: In the past, as stated you did have a single day of the week in which you worked from home (Thursdays), how do you think that this prepared you for the idea of working from home indefinitely?

KK: The good thing about everybody having a work from home day prior to the pandemic, we already were prepared to do things only virtually or online, meaning we had already gone away from doing things on paper. A lot of what my group does is prepare reports and packages. Penalty packages are a good example. My team would prepare a penalty package when we were in the office and then hand me the paper copy and then I would review it, make my corrections, and sign off on it. But prior to the pandemic, our company was pushing us to be paperless so in the year before the pandemic we were already pushing everybody to do everything virtually. So no more did I get a copy of the package in paper, they were sending a file to me electronically and even though I was sitting next to them in the office, I never got the paper, I reviewed everything online and did an electronic signature. So that helped us because on those days when we were working from home, it didn’t inconvenience us, like that package wasn’t waiting on my desk for me to come back the next day, they would just email it to me. So that definitely helped in preparation for us being home because we didn’t have anything paper anymore; we did everything online anyway, but one thing we had to get used to was having meetings virtually. That we had never really done before, we would usually only really have a meeting if everybody was in the office. Usually Tuesday was the one day that nobody worked from home, so that’s when we would have our staff meetings. But once we went virtual, we had to have meetings, so that is the one thing that everybody had to get used to, being on camera at your house and its kind of awkward at first because especially with a lot of people in the meeting, it was kind of like a brady bunch thing where you are seeing everybody in teeny tiny boxes. But now we’ve been doing it for so long that we’re used to it. But definitely working from home one day a week prior to the pandemic and going paperless before the pandemic definitely helped put us in a better situation.

RK: Regarding the topic of the challenges of going remote, is there anything else you would like to add?

KK: What I really do enjoy about working from home is not having the commute because the one thing it allows you to do; you can work extra in the morning and the evening but not really feel it because you are not taking any more time away from your day. So what I do feel is that now that I’ve been working from home, I feel like I actually do work more. But it’s not impacting my life because I don’t have the commute anymore. What I will say is that I feel like it’s a little hard sometimes to stop working because you feel “well i’m home” you know if you normally have to sign off and get home and do your chores and stuff like that, well you’re already home so if you have to put in a little extra time to finish what you’re working on, most times you do that, so I feel like the work-life balance is a little kind of screwed up because I do think that you work a little bit more when you’re at home.

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