Dealing With Four Challenges of Telecommuting to Keep Teams Well and Effective
Karen Tay for TODAY
(Photo credit: Pxhere/Wikimedia Commons)
April 16th, 2020
Following is an excerpt of the op-ed by Asia 21 Young Leader Karen Tay, originally published in TODAY on April 14th, 2020.
In the past three years, I’ve largely been a remote worker.
I’m based in the San Francisco Bay Area, working for the Smart Nation and Digital Government Group as well as the Singapore Global Network. Both are part of the civil service, so their headquarters are naturally in Singapore.
I co-lead a global team spanning San Francisco, London, New York and Singapore. The four of us based in San Francisco have an office, but because our work usually takes us all over the country, we meet in person only once or twice a week.
Three weeks before Singapore’s circuit-breaker measures, the San Francisco Bay Area went into “shelter-in-place” mode. The conditions are relatively similar — all schools and childcare centers are closed, and we can step out of our homes only for essential services or exercise.
As a working mother of children aged four and two, whose husband also works, having children around 24/7 is an additional adjustment.
Since many Singaporeans are now working remotely, I would like to share some tips on how leaders and employees can keep themselves and their teams well and effective while working remotely.