perconachatPercona recently hosted a #PerconaChat to discuss and share some of the things we find most essential to be successful while working remotely. Even before the viral outbreak, Percona was an almost 100% remote company, so it was great to be able to impart some of our learnings.

David Busby — Information Security Analyst, Percona, and Camila Arocena — HR Specialist, Percona, were our hosts, and they kept the discussion lively, fun, and hopefully helpful to those that joined in the chat.

Here’s a recap of the questions we posed for discussion, some of the great Twitter posts received, along with our tips and tricks for remote working:

Question #1:

How to stay in touch:

  • Social distancing does not mean staying indoors. Practice staying the recommended distance from those you may see outside, but try and find a place where you can stretch, walk, or just sit outside, whenever possible.
  • Keep up social connections, even if they are only digital. Reach out to friends online, or host a virtual party or meeting just to share ‘water-cooler’ topics.
  • Taking regular breaks from your computer, tv, and mobile screens are imperative. It’s easy to become engrossed in what you are working on and lose track of time. Take up a craft, start a puzzle, or pick a new book to read — then share your recommendations with those on your work channels, so that you can engage in non-digital ways as well.

Question #2:

Keep Your Health Top of List:

  • Set reminders to take breaks, stretch, and move around. These regular breaks help reduce stress levels. Keeping your stress manageable also ensures your teams are not unduly impacted, as your behavior will noticeably change when you are stressed.
  • Having a routine is key to working from home, but the non-work items often get overlooked, such as a shower and brushing your hair. These small actions of self-care can build to bigger feelings of personal well being. So don’t skip them!

Question #3:

Practice Good Cyber Hygiene:

  • Lock your screen! This is obvious for an office or public setting, but you should keep this up even at home  – if, for nothing else, it could keep the kids from accidentally sending out your next Tweet for you!
  • Remember when you’re tired or stressed, you’re more susceptible to suggestions which include phishing and online scams. 
  • Encryption is your ally. Tunneling VPN services such as NordVPN, Tunnelbear, Freedome are great tools, even when you are at home. 

Question #4:

Set Up a Real Office with a Real Work Schedule:

  • Set boundaries, real (physical) and virtual, for you and your family. Put your home office behind a door, if at all possible, and separate it from where you and your family spend most of your time, to keep the lines between work and home clearer.
  • Use your calendar. Mark your work times clearly in your calendar so that people won’t schedule you during non-working hours or before you are ready to work. Similarly, set times in your calendar (with alerts) for breaks and lunch.
  • Share your schedule with your family or roommates so that you can interact with real people during the breaks.

Question #5:

Communicate With Care

  • When you attend work meetings, turn the camera on! You need face time in a remote environment — it makes a huge difference.
  • Over-communicate! It’s super easy to assume people know things that they don’t. Daily standups or check-ins over Slack are a great way to help keep people engaged and in the loop. 
  • Say hello! When you start a chat, be sure to use those simple hellos to welcome people in, make others feel welcome, and make it feel less ‘remote’ when you are working together. 
  • Recognize others! Go out of your way to recognize your co-workers or team’s accomplishments and share them widely with others.
  • Be flexible — with everyone. Let people adjust meeting times to not conflict with their new family schedules, or laugh off the calls that don’t go well. Right now, life is affecting all of us in new ways, so a little kindness and understanding go a long way.
  • Still looking for more tips? A few weeks ago, our own Matt Yonkovit wrote a post titled Tricks and Tips For Remote Workers which you may find helpful.

Thanks to all that joined in our chat. It was a great way to share knowledge and connect with others, which is so valuable during these times.

Want to join the next #PerconaChat? Follow us @Percona to get the details of all our upcoming events and releases.

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Daniela.M

To those who can’t afford paid VPNs for protecting your online traffic at home: try out Atlas VPN. It saved me at the very beginning of setting up my office space and now I am using it for over 2 weeks without any issues whatsoever. The company doesn’t collect any logs, which makes the vpn usage all that safer.

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