Community culture in a time of crisis

Many of us working in software development take working from home for granted. For a large chunk of us adapting to the current crisis has been relatively simple from a “how do I work remote” point of view. However this isn’t a simple working from home scenario, and it comes with many new challenges that we’ve never had to deal with before.

A new environment

Quite simply working from home alone is not the same as working from home with a family. Without being able to go outside. For a month. At least. I don’t have any children, but even working in the same room as my partner all day has been an eye opening experience. Apparently I’m with a “we can think blue sky on this” kind of person. It also impacts my usual work from home routine. Her job requires her to be on the phone with clients at a moment’s notice, and so watching shit TV to relax at lunch time isn’t an option (I know, I’ve got it REALLY bad).

And then there are those with young children. One of our team has a two year old daughter. In our team’s daily social meeting she seems to delight in making as much noise as possible. We all find it quite cute and entertaining, but I can’t begin to imagine what working with that all day is like.

Mental health is going to get worse

Some countries have been in lockdown for a while, but for many of us this is just beginning. Today is the first official day of lockdown in NZ, though many have been practising it all week at least. We’ve likely got a long road of this head of us. A lot more stress and anxiety is coming. Uncertainty, sick loved ones you can’t visit, being stuck a long way from friends and family, cabin fever, the list goes on. It will be different sources for all of us, but it will impact all of us.

What can we do to help?

For many of us, our teams at work will be the main link to the outside world. As such we need to treat each other less like a team, and more like a community. Teams are often about achieving a goal, and their culture often focuses on how best to achieve that goal together. For most of us the workplace is usually quite separate from the rest of our lives, and so this approach can work quite well. But now our home lives and our work lives have been smooshed together with little warning, and that separation isn’t so clear.

Communities are all about supporting each other through life. I was already a strong believer that companies should do as much as they can to support their employees outside of work, but now it’s vital. Not just for employers either, but as a core principal of our team culture. So what can we do?

Be flexible. Live in a different time zone to your family and need to take some time during the day to talk to them? Need to play with your daughter for an hour or two to keep her in a good mental state? Need to get outside whilst it’s not raining? Go ahead. Many of us work in jobs where the exact hours we work doesn’t really matter that much. Sure we need some overlap to discuss things, but in general a culture of good asynchronous communication can allow us to work very flexibly.

Be kind. Kid screaming in the back of a call? Cat jumping in front of the camera? This kind of stuff is going to happen a lot over the coming months. We need to make sure it isn’t a source of stress. We need to actively reassure each other that these things aren’t a problem, just a fact of life right now.

Be caring. Quite simply ask each other how it’s going. Ask what you can do to help. Take a load off others when you can. This is the most important part we can play in helping our coworkers maintain a healthy mental state.

In short, be a community.