JAYNE LLOYD

Gary is an IT Director of Software Engineering at a multinational manufacturing company. He leads global teams that build enterprise software capabilities, currently focused on customer relationship management platforms, CRMs. He has a team that is spread around the world, so a lot of work is online and a lot of his day-to-day is coordinating the activities of those teams and trying to set the strategic direction for that work.

Read Gary’s thoughts on working from home below.

I asked Gary:

When did you start working from home? It was early 2020 I think, the point when COVID really kicked in and the office was closed. It was literally overnight. We were in full time on the Friday but got a message to not come in on the following Monday. We were thinking it was going to be for a couple of weeks and then of course it was a lot longer than that. I worked fully remotely for a couple of years before starting to transition back to being in the office 2 days a week, then 3, and now 4 as of this month (September 2025). 

For you, COVID was the factor that made you work from home rather than in premises off site, but did you choose to stay based from home for longer or was that led by the company? It was led by the company to be perfectly honest. Initially it was decided that everyone would work entirely from home and then there was a period of increased flexibility with the number of days in and out, trying to find a balance that worked for the team. The move back to 4 days this month is being mandated.

What do you like best about working from home? I like the flexibility; the work life balance has been much better. Having two kids at school, I can do the drop-offs and walk the dog in the morning. There’s also more flexibility around having to duck in or out through the day for a parcel delivery or whatever it happens to be. It’s just a bit more of an effective way to manage the demands on your time between parenting, things around the house and the stuff that’s coming out of the office. It is nice to have the flexibility to better manage the balance between work and home and not have it quite so absolute. 

Are there any aspects you’re not so keen on/are there any difficulties in working from home? There are a couple. Particularly at the start, it was quite tough being suddenly isolated from the team. There was a disconnection, which was particularly difficult when trying to lead and coordinate project work. The lack of direct connection, not being able to quickly turn round and talk to the person next to you in the office made collaboration a lot more difficult, until people adjusted to those new ways of working. 

I was also working in the same space that I tend to relax in. Suddenly it was just way too much time in one room, and I was really starting to climb the walls. There was also no trigger to switch off; I was going from working to being at home with no transition and in the same space, whereas I used to have a nice half hour commute to reset. The boundaries blurred between home and work, and I was finding that I was getting drawn into work things more through the evenings and weekends whereas previously I had a cleaner split between those environments.

Another challenge has been working around the fact that my family are obviously in and out of the house during the day. Being in the office all day, that was all focused time. What I’ve found here is, particularly in the afternoon once the kids get home from school, focusing on work can be a problem because suddenly there’s a lot of noise in the background. The time to focus is in more of a constrained window, before you’ve got that other world coming in.

What is your favourite feature of your workspace? Being around the dog all day is nice. My favourite part of working from home is probably having him come in and settle down with me. Otherwise, because this is also my relaxing space, most of the stuff that’s around me is more tied into how I disconnect and wind down; the Lego and boardgames especially. My wife got me a little Lego work desk, which sort of blurs that boundary, so I have that out as well.

Did the company help support you in getting set up to work from home? The company helped provide equipment. They set up a scheme to provide things like headphones, docking stations etc. to be able to work remotely. So, from a productivity/hardware point of view, yes, but in terms of supporting the transition, that was more down to the individual. There wasn’t a great deal of support for how to manage that change. Because it had been so sudden, I think the company was trying to work it out at the same time. That sudden imposed shift required quite a bit of transformation; it wasn’t just a case of plugging a laptop in and carrying on. Going from working in real time with people around you, to suddenly everything being remote with communication through online messages was a big change. Also, trying to run online meetings where you’ve got no eye contact in a room, everyone’s suddenly talking over each other in conversations. That transition has been more difficult than setting up the physical space.

Because the initial situation didn’t come about through design or choice, it was more a reactive and adaptive response to what was being imposed by COVID, it really limited the support. Fortunately, everyone in the company was going through a similar thing at the same time, so there were others in the same boat trying to work through it which provided more informal support.

I feel that 2 or 3 days in the office as a hybrid balance works for me now, I’ve adapted to that way of working. The shift this month to 4 days each week back in the office now feels too far in the other direction, but I’m sure we’ll adapt again.

Home / Work is a documentary photography project featuring people who work from home/live where they work. I am interested in how people design these spaces and how the lines between home and work are defined or blurred. If you are interested in participating in the project please get in touch.