Global Mobile Workforce
Posted on Mon, Feb 08, 2010 @ 08:00 AM
Today we get a glimpse through Lee Densmer's eyes of what it's like to be a Lionbridge employee working on a remote team...
Lionbridge has employees distributed all over the globe. My team has over a dozen folks, and we work from our homes in Michigan, Idaho, Los Angeles, Madrid, Tampere (Finland), Paris, Luton, Boston and Dublin. (Once, we emailed each other photos of our workspaces, which was very very interesting.)
We communicate via any and all means of electronic communication: detailed emails, frequent IMs with casual tone and incorrect grammar, texts on Blackberry, VOIP calls. We send monthly reports to let others know what we are working on and we plug in via weekly team calls. Generally we work on projects alone, but our group is extremely collegial, always willing to help one another whether by doing research, proofreading a document, weighing in on an approach or strategy, or helping finish something while someone takes a well-deserved day off.
My colleagues are an amazing group, people I like very well despite (or in spite of) our distance. We are strangely homogenous: overall, we are all late 30's, parents, people with advanced degrees. I wish we could have lunch more often, collaborate around a table on a project, or talk about the latest trends in our industry. Or talk about politics, parenting, or making a perfect pie crust. But instead of this, we post to each other's pages on Facebook because otherwise we would not socialize with each other.
Yes, it is difficult to get training and sometimes difficult to learn (truly grasp) new things when working remotely, apart from an office or a team. But there are few disadvantages other than this.
Despite the undersocialization, at the end of the day, I would choose to work remotely. Why?
- Total focus. I do not have any distractions while working, except ones I can control: music, the dishwasher running, etc. I can be extremely productive in this environment. No listening to someone else's phone conversation. (I remember once in an office listening to a colleague clip her nails. This simply does NOT happen when working remotely.)
- Better work/life balance. Working from home, remotely, allows me to drive a sane work/life balance. Some would call it ‘extreme multitasking' if I were to iron while contributing on a conference call, but I call it 'Efficiency 2.0'. Anyway, my husband likes that I can start dinner during the final hours of my day, put in a load of laundry between calls, and pick up the house before he gets home. I work full time but I can still take care of my family. This is HUGE for me.
- Flexibility. Because I work from home, the work-hour boundaries are a little more ‘soft' than they would be if I were in an office and people were expecting to interact with me there, between 8am-5pm. I can work early, catching the east coast folks, and then take a break to go running. I can receive a repair man or take care of an errand during time between meetings.
- Relief from office drama. I don't know who is getting a divorce, whose home is in foreclosure, or whose kids are having problems at school. (I hope none of my colleagues are going through these awful things.) Nor do I have to watch people come and go, which happens in every office. Having to tune into these emotional distractions can detract from productivity, and I'm appreciative of the distance from them.
I'm grateful that today's business environments foster this kind of working setup. Working remotely works for me; I feel lucky to have a career where I can do interesting work, and be part of a team, yet work from the comforts of home.