What I learned after working remotely almost

[ishanijerin1]

Hello, this is nonask from the PR team.

Due to Oda's policy of valuing communication, iRidge does not normally have a remote work system in place. However, in response to the COVID-19 outbreak, remote work has been the general policy for the entire company since February 19th, and it has now been a little over a month since then.

Based on interviews, it appears that 99 acres database engineers and marketers are almost fully remote, sales and PMs are working remotely from time to time, and designers and back office staff are coming into the office as usual (with staggered work hours).


An empty office

As you can see from this, some jobs are better suited than others, but today I would like to write about the pros and cons of remote work and some points to keep in mind when implementing it, based on my thoughts after doing it for a month as a public relations/IR professional.

What it's like working remotely
According to the results of a survey released by the Persol Research Institute on March 23, 13.2% of full-time employees nationwide, and 19.6% in the Tokyo area, have engaged in teleworking (remote work) due to the COVID-19 pandemic. For those who have not been able to do so, the main reasons given were "systems not in place," "the work cannot be done via telework," and "the ICT environment is not in place."

iRidge did not previously have a system for remote work, but the management team and labor and general affairs team quickly created temporary rules and remote work began.

*By the way, some companies are now publishing their know-how, such as Lenovo's "Telework Start Guide" and Members' "Telework Introduction Manual" (very detailed). With no end in sight to the situation, these may be useful for anyone in charge who is struggling with how to proceed with implementation.

In my case, my work changes greatly depending on the time and situation, but in terms of PR work, the current situation has meant that there are fewer topics to announce to the public, and I also had a lot of busy work to do, such as creating instructions for revamping the corporate website and transcribing employee interviews, so I think it was a period when it was easy to work remotely.

In terms of IR work, this was a period after the financial results announcement when meetings with institutional investors were intensive, and as expected the proportion of conference calls was higher than usual.

Regarding the ICT environment, many people at iRidge use laptops and work based on G Suite and Slack, so those who don't need to access special systems, including myself, can work in an environment that is no different from when they are in the office.

We mainly use Google Hangouts (occasionally Zoom or Slack) for online meetings, and just last week we successfully held our first company-wide meeting using Google Hangouts.