Viewing 23 posts - 1 through 23 (of 23 total)
  • Starting a new job while working from home
  • gastromonkey
    Free Member

    I’m starting a new job in a few weeks. I’m staying with the same employer but moving to a new team and I don’t really know them. Because of covid we are all working from home and the plan is to stay like that for a while. Starting with a new team I’m keen to get to know people quickly and to build the relationships I will need to be successful. Pre-covid this wouldn’t be a problem because we would all be in the same building and most of us in the same open plan office.

    Does anyone have any hints, tips or advice on how to make this work while using Teams / Zoom? If you have started a new job or had a new recruit during the last year what worked well, what didn’t and what would you do differently if you had the chance?

    nbt
    Full Member

    We had a new guy start about 6 months ago. I think the boss and his team lead went into the office to meet him on Day 1, then he’s been WFH ever since – that initial day was really just to get his work PC set up so that’s something you don’t even need

    we do daily video stand-ups, and we all talk (type) regularly on MS Teams. As a senior guy I’ve made the effort to walk him through tasks when we’ve worked together, so he can understand why things are done that way rather than just knowing “this is what we do in this case”

    we have a regular team quiz at the end of each week where we take turns to set the quiz, and are encourage to turn up with a social beverage and gently poke fun at each other. notall of the team do participate but he has and it’s increased his social interaction

    MoreCashThanDash
    Full Member

    I transferred to a different Civil Service department in September. I’ve never met any of my team face to face, and bandwidth issues mean we rarely have cameras on for Teams calls. I wouldn’t recognise any if we passed in the street.

    It is a bit weird. If you do get chance to pop in to the office, or meet outdoors for a socially distanced team meeting then take it.

    Be quick to ask for help and get chatting to your team mates whenever you can. If there’s a social online get together then get involved, even if it’s the last thing you really want to do.

    Whatever you do, if you are stuck with a work problem, do not waste hours trying to figure it out yourself if a quick “help me please” message or call will solve it. Don’t be shy, or assume they won’t want to be bothered.

    It’s hard if you are not the most sociable person, or a bit anxious about stuff generally. Don’t make it harder than it needs to be though.

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    dpfr
    Full Member

    I started a part time role on Dec 1 and they organised almost 50 1:1 Teams sessions with people I needed to ‘meet’ over the next couple of months. It was quite overwhelming at first but now I am more settled in, it is useful to ‘know’ these people

    citizenlee
    Free Member

    I’ve moved projects twice within the same company during the year+ I’ve been working from home. Thankfully each project has had a Teams group chat for my particular department, and a weekly Teams meeting which has helped me integrate somewhat. The only thing I’ve found difficult was training, but that was more down to the person who was doing it not being very good.

    IHN
    Full Member

    I did exactly this last year; I started a new job in a new team, doing something different to what I was doing before, but same employer.

    I’m not going to lie, it’s tough, mainly because you miss out on the significant learning that comes from earwigging on conversations other people are having, and then if necessary asking “what was all that about?”.

    Obvious first step is to stick some time in to chat to everyone in your team to see what they do, see what it is they think you’ll be doing (you/they may be surprised…), and just have a general chit chat. Ditto for anyone outside of the team that you’ll need to be working with/speaking to regularly, and your new boss should be able to give you a good idea of who those people will be.

    chakaping
    Free Member

    I started a new job in an existing organisation in March. Totally new team, albeit I’d me a couple in person once or twice.

    As IHN says, set up a half hour individual call with each of the people you’ll be working with and just have a general chat about what they do and how they think you’ll be working together.

    I like to ping people on Teams for a text chat now and then as well, using my wit and charm (OK, my dad jokes) to endear myself to them.

    It’s harder than when I knew the people in my old team better and we’d already established a bond in-person, but I’m starting to feel settled in and part of the team now.

    rogermoore
    Full Member

    I started a new job, with a new company in Feb. Already knew a couple of people (the one who poached me and a contractor who has since moved on) and this helped a little. I’ve found that always using my camera on teams/zoom calls helps, and always made a conscious effort to do a little general chit chat (where are you from / isn’t COVID rubbish / lovely weather isn’t it) when meeting folk for the first time.
    Getting on fine, very well settled in and helping a couple of other new members in the team to do the same.
    Best of luck!
    RM.

    TheBrick
    Free Member

    I did so in September. Luckily team leader organised a getting to you know session for all team members as there had been several people join. IF this is the case suggest that.

    binners
    Full Member

    I started freelancing with a new client about two months ago. I’ve never been into the office. I don’t even know where it is. I’ve never met any of the people I’m working with, I have no idea what any of them look like, what they’re into, where they live etc.

    Nor do I want to.

    Its absolutely ****ing brilliant!!

    Every job should be like this 😀

    northernmatt
    Full Member

    I started a new job in May last year. New company, new industry, new everything. I live around 2.5hrs from the office so it was a given that I would be WFH most of the time anyway. I had a one day induction at the office and I’ve not been back since.

    Coming from an office based job it was a bit of a shock to the system to begin with. I struggled with motivation/procrastination. I’m part of fairly small team for our company, we have a much larger team in the US though. A lot of my first few weeks were spent learning the ropes and who I needed to speak to to get things done. I have a 3 catch-up calls a week with my direct boss and anyone else I need to speak to I can get hold of on Teams.

    boombang
    Free Member

    I’ve taken on 3 new team members (2 internal, one external) recently and have made huge effort formally and informally – good onboarding guides, booked 2 x 2 hours first week to go through bits then same the following week for what they didn’t take in or what I forgot to tell them.

    For the permanent staff we have regular group chats on Zoom – not compulsory but everyone has attended including 2 people on parental leave who aren’t even getting paid to be there. My 2 contractors are invited and treated the same too, one of them comes to everything the other 50%, again no pressure.

    I do fortnightly 1:1s with everyone part with agenda and part free, always start with the free chat unless we have something pressing, but always willing if free to jump onto a call with any of them (even outside my team, if they report to someone else in wider function but can’t get them).

    We have a team Whatsapp group, again voluntary, but everyone contributes even if it is the odd cat photo.

    If I moved jobs I’d be asking for a ‘buddy’ from the existing team as my first contact (I would in fact expect the manager to have set something like that up) – being remote I’ve done that myself though, but once back in the office will share that task.

    stevextc
    Free Member

    Quite possibly over thinking/worrying…
    Much as getting to know someone f3f is always good I spent a long time working with global teams and just through work became firm friends with quite a few I’d never met.

    When you do get to meet f2f its even better …

    toby1
    Full Member

    Depends who you work with, a tech team probably used to it and have well adapted processes to welcome people and make it easy.

    I’m at the end of my second week in a new job (because of redundancy not my choice to leave) It’s been odd, but a few of the people I work with I potentially won’t ever meet face to face, as they are either out of the country or across this country.

    It takes a bit of effort to get a raport with people, I haven’t had anyone tell me to f*** off yet, which I usually like to happen within the first couple of weeks, in a friendly manner of course 🙂

    oldtennisshoes
    Full Member

    I’ve started 2 new contracts whilst WFH. Both have been OK, and the second (current) one has been a better onboarding experience (yes I know some folk hate that term!). The key for me is to actually have an onboarding process that you can work through methodically so that nothing falls through the cracks.
    I’ve also just booked travel to attend a work social at the back end of this month – gotta make the effort with the opportunities to get some proper physical time with folk when you can to develop the trust/relationships that will bear fruit when you’re all sat on a zoom call.

    andrewh
    Free Member

    Whatever you do, if you are stuck with a work problem, do not waste hours trying to figure it out yourself if a quick “help me please” message or call will solve it.

    That. It’s a good excuse to have a chinwag with your new colleagues, and they won’t mind at all, I would much rather spend 10 mins answering a silly question than four hours trying to undo something when someone has guessed and ****ed it up

    IA
    Full Member

    Something I did that worked for me, but will depend a bit on you/the team.

    A couple of times I’d start a teams/meet/whatever call when I was grabbing a coffee, dump the link in the team/company slack and say “Having a coffee if anyone else fancies it?”.

    People dropped in just to say “hi”, or to see who else turned up, or just out of curiosity. Ended up having a few good chats, and getting other people talking to each other that wouldn’t normally. I appreciate not everyone can force themselves to be that outgoing though.

    In general, make reasons to speak with people, and even if it _could_ be a quick slack/teams message, ask if they have 5 mins for a chat about X and make it a video call. Ask everyone you speak to who they think is the important person for you to speak to.

    matt_outandabout
    Full Member

    We had a new staff member interviewed the week that we all went into lockdown last year.

    Our CEO will meet her face to face for the first time next week.

    We’ve another 9 staff who have started in the last few months the same. We hope to meet face to face in the next few months.

    mahalo
    Full Member

    I started a new job like this in January. I’ve just jacked it in after 16 weeks of the most frustrating, boring, least rewarding period of my career. It wasn’t just the remote working tho, in fact that was best bit. If I’d have had to endure these people in person I’d not have lasted 16 weeks.

    jonba
    Free Member

    Echo the above having just done it.

    1:1 with each team member. Work stuff and personal stuff. When you’ve done the first one, set up the next! You need an excuse to talk.

    I had a mentor, that really helped. Regular chat – each day at first. Off the record, peer not manager, so I could ask daft questions. I would ask for one or try and find one.

    Usual stuff like objectives, plans, strategies still apply. It takes more work remotely. You’ll probably need to drive it as out of sight is out of mind. Normally you start short term task driven and move to long term outcome as you find your feet.

    Talk to people, on video ideally . Don’t email. Pick up the phone it’s better for relationships

    b230ftw
    Free Member

    I started a new job like this in January. I’ve just jacked it in after 16 weeks of the most frustrating, boring, least rewarding period of my career. It wasn’t just the remote working tho, in fact that was best bit. If I’d have had to endure these people in person I’d not have lasted 16 weeks.

    That’s a bit short sighted. In my experience people are very different in person compared to online meetings.

    b230ftw
    Free Member

    I started a new job in October at a utilities company. In my previous job I saw the difficulties a new lockdown starter had and tried to plan what I was doing to avoid some of the issues.
    I did have to meet a lot of the techs out on site but I have only met a couple of people who do my role and only one who is in my team (there are 4 of us). Thankfully everyone is super helpful and understanding which is a godsend but it has not been easy.
    My issue is that I am working in a sector I didn’t really know much about and the IT is wildly different compared to the civil service I was at. So that is 2 big hurdles, then add in COVID lockdown and it becomes pretty hard.
    But I’m treating it as a challenge, and I don’t think I’m doing it too badly, got some good feedback too which is nice.
    I’m guessing in 6 months things will be very different, and we will be back in the office 2 days a week later this year which will be odd but strangely welcome! Thankfully I don’t have to travel an hour to work now, my new office is 3 miles away in my own town which is sweet so I don’t mind going back.

    Cougar
    Full Member

    I’m with Binners on this I’m afraid. Though I appreciate that not everyone is higher-functioning sociopaths like we are.

    You start a new job and get the day 1 walkaround… this is Steve, this is Karen, this is Nathan, this is Kashif, this is Other Steve… by the end of which you can barely remember your own name. And why? Because you’ll be seeing these people in the office every day so you need to get on with each other. So if you’re not in the office then… who cares? What’s the point?

    Your own team is probably different and if there’s been one thread asking this question then there’s been a dozen, not least because the number of times I’ve typed this answer: schedule a meeting with the team at least weekly. We have three:

    1) Task Tuesday. We’ve all got a list of jobs to do, this is our opportunity to update the boss and the rest of the team on what’s completed, what’s still outstanding.

    2) Wednesday team meeting. This is free-form, discuss what you want. Last week we had Really Important work-related stuff; suggestions for “learning at work” week where I’ve been stitched up to do a presentation (I’m thinking of suggesting that the single biggest improvement we can make to corporate security would be to have everyone’s right index finger amputated); our new Security blog which regular readers will remember I was talking about a little while ago and now actually looks like it might be going ahead officially, I’ve stitched myself up for that one; how John’s guitar lessons are going; what Chris has shot, stabbed or blown up over the years (spoiler: more things than you can possibly imagine); my kittens; the escape rooms I’ve finally been able to line up; and what Kash and his family is planning for Eid (by the sounds of things he’s going to be coming back to work looking like Mr Creosote).

    3) Thursday… I dunno as it has a name, Thing. We’ve given a big project to one of the junior members of the team as something for him to get his teeth into, the Thursday meeting is his 15 minutes under the spotlight where he gets to show us all the cool things he’s made it do this week. I suspect that as much as anything else this is a character-building exercise, to give the guy some confidence and something he can be proud of.

    In honesty I’ve probably spoken more with my team since working from home than I did when in the office. I’ve worked with mostly-remote teams before and it was shit in comparison. I worked for our cloud infrastructure team for a while and they were all based in the same office down in London, so by the time a meeting rolled around they’d all water-cooler cherry picked all the fun jobs so it was like “uh, Alan… you can do some documentation or something.” In another team before that I was crossing the Pennines once a month for a face-to-face team meeting, I was a server engineer in a team full of network engineers so I’d sit there for three hours listening to them pap on abut WANs and LANs and who knows what, then at the end they’d close with “how about you Alan, anything to add? No? OK, same time next month everyone!”

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