Like it or not – flexible working is here to stay! Thanks to technology, we are able to connect with each other from even in the remotest of places on Earth. But how have the people in the engineering profession have managed to work from home?
The portrayal of engineers has generally either been introverted, the ones who come up with brilliant ideas by deep thinking in silos or collaborating in an open-plan office. Both of these portrayals are exciting. Engineers traditionally have been required to work with each other to ensure that their ideas are well-built into products or services that are reliable and marketable.
More companies than ever are switching the collaboration from physical space to a digital space that has impacted from positive to negative for engineering careers. How successful you will be with the work from home experience depends on the type of engineering work you do and the career stage.
Subscribe to PII and receive:
Our long-established bi-monthly digital magazine *Process Industry Informer*, featuring exclusive articles, news and updates across the Process Industries, plus commentary from our three industry experts:
Sean Moran
Gavin Smith
Dave Green
PLUS:
- Process Industry Update — our weekly e-newsletter
- PII Podcast
- Special messages from our advertising partners
I would consider the luckiest ones are engineering professionals in the computer, software, and digital services industry, where all that is needed to work remotely might be a computer, stable internet, and remote connection to relevant servers. Other mechanical and chemical engineering companies who might have fretted the idea of work from home before the pandemic have now opened up more procedure to allow employees to work from home.
However, it is still a challenge when it comes to field-based jobs. A large and impressive increase in augmented and virtual reality technology may have helped some field workers solve problems by being connected through experts remotely with fewer people present on site. Also, in many cases, the time at the site has been used more productively by offloading the many administrative tasks that can be completed remotely.
Interestingly enough, I started my work a couple of weeks before the UK went into a national lockdown. I started my role as a Project Manager for a research project on predictive modelling of uncertainty quantification in multiphase flows with the Chemical Engineering department at the Imperial College London. The first couple of weeks went by, getting to know the people and space. And then there was the lockdown!
Luckily, I had a work laptop purchased, which I would consider a critical step in moving into work from the home phase. To keep in touch with my new teammates, I quickly learned how to use Zoom, Microsoft Teams, House Party, and Slack. Staying in a boxed central London apartment did not help matters – as space was far from realistic to work comfortably, I quickly had to clear up my dining table and start using my dining chair as my new make-shift office. Little did I know that this was my office space for next year until I moved to a new house.
Being a part of the group that does computational work, I rarely had to go in for any work-related purposes. However, in other parts of the project where experimental work was necessary, I noticed that my colleagues prioritised reading and writing research papers when they could not go into the labs and worked in labs with reduced capacity when they were able to do so.
The whole transformation seemed quick, and we even had virtual coffee sessions to take a break from our work. Though this process happened to save a good couple of hours of commuting time, all the hassle getting into busy parts of London, and given so much flexibility, I wonder if it is the same, better, or worse, when collaborating in person.
When I got my first graduate role in the North East of England, I learned all things engineering, its processes, witnessing theories in practice, what it means to be an entry-level graduate, and how everyone feels part of one big team, starting from the manufacturing shop floor to the senior management teams. As part of my induction, my manager offered me the opportunity to shadow colleagues across various departments to understand every stage of the business, company culture and build relationships.
Communicating in the physical presence of others made a difference to my every day at work. There were constant waving, acknowledgements, and a sense of community. There were good days at work, and there were excellent days at work – thanks to people!
But if I imagine being the same entry-level graduate starting during a pandemic – would I have felt part of the team? Would I have connected with colleagues the same way as in person? Would I have managed to apply different and new communication techniques quickly? Would I feel part of a community? I do not know because my imagination is blurred by all the positive experiences I had with the in-person workplace setting.
However, knowing that some social contact in a workplace is important for us, I hope we can all play a part in taking just a little extra effort to revive those corridor conversations, laughs, acknowledgements, random waving, and checking in with our colleagues in our new digital environment.
