Let’s take a moment and review our past month
Developers are well versed at working from home. In fact, our developers have been known to code from beaches and snowy alps at the best of times. However, having our entire team locked down and working from home is new for us.
The Abletech team
We’re a team of around 27 software developers, mainly Wellington based. We share our office space with developer-friends from Sharesight. We have three directors who are active and available for our team every day (that’s one of our x-factors).
Abletech team headquarters in Wellington
Our past month
As the pandemic approached New Zealand we got big on hand washing, sanitiser, covering sneezes / coughs and staying home if symptomatic. We established an Abletech Covid-19 Response Team so we could forecast our approach and prepare our business for developments.
Preparation
The situation unfolded rapidly but there was time for us to prepare our team to remain productive during a period of physical distancing.
We ran a trial day when everyone worked from home. It was a good chance to check out our home internet, power leads, our chairs and desks, our monitors, keyboards, our favourite video conferencing tools etc. We listed everything we’d need to get set up at home, should Abletech’s headquarters close.
Meanwhile we tried to keep symptoms out of the office by checking visitors’ health and overseas travel. Things evolved daily so we started regular recommendations for our team.
Lockdown
We bought new tech for home, arranged options for workstations and looked at setting up home hubs. The government introduced a level system; we started at level 2 then quickly moved to level 4 so working from hubs, or the office, weren’t options.
There was a short window of opportunity, at level 3, to help our team improve their setup at home. We spent our last day at the office in delivery mode, taking chairs, desks, keyboards and monitors to our team’s homes.
Life
Life goes on; members of our team managed to fly home from overseas, one broke his leg and had surgery, another had a baby and there’s another three enroute.
Our workforce is active and it’s business as usual, we’re helping our clients, partners and services do their own business as usual.
We are thankful for our wonderful team and directors who continue to be available daily to discuss our individual situations.
There are great resources available to help us get through this time like the expert advice from local psychologist Karen Nimmo at her blog.
As a team, we all miss our Abletech kitchen with its beautiful coffee and delicious treats, but in general we are adapting well to our new virtual reality. We’re using the Daily Donut app to catch up with a different Abletecher each day and we have our Friday afternoon social get-togethers, and monthly team meetings.
It’s been an eventful month but when we review it, we can be grateful for homes to work from, ongoing online work, and a company that puts its people first.
Read more
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Four tips from a working-from-home pro
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How we’re supporting essential services
