The #LTWWFHM Situation, as told by a designer
15th June 2020
About four months ago, what seemed to be a harmless virus circulated through the city of Wuhan, China caushing a shocking number of people being infected and over 4000 deaths. No one expected the virus to be transmitted so easily and soon it affected countries worldwide. 2 months ago, Singapore’s government announced a compulsory Work From Home order to contain the spread of the virus, COVID-19. Now 2 months after and at the end of Circuit Breaker (CB), we are all slowly easing back to ‘normalhood’ broken up in 3 phases.
Despite being able to Work From Home (WFH), it doesn’t mean that our designers get to take a break from work. We asked Gift Ratchasuwan, a senior designer at LTW, about her challenges and day-to-day work plans during WFH.
How has been the WFH situation for you?
Gift: To be honest, there isn’t much difference working from home or in the office except that I feel we are even more productive because we are able to concentrate fully without colleagues walking up to our desk to ask us the progression of a particular project. We get to receive updates from each other more, twice a day to be exact and with that we are able to get an overall picture of each individual’s workload.
What’s been the biggest challenge of working from home?
Gift: As designers, we are required to print our work in a big scale to view in detail and to look at our sketches and not having a printer at home does have its limitations. It can definitely disrupt the way we’re used to working at the beginning. Also for meetings, I wouldn’t call it a challenge but it’s not as easy being in the office, gathering or walking up to your colleagues if you need to speak to them.
Could you tell me more about your day-to-day schedule?
Gift: I have an automatic body alarm clock that wakes me up at 8am daily…and also because we have the first call by 9am. After the call, a cup of coffee is needed and I’ll sneak to have a quick breakfast before officially starting my day. A big PRO about working from home is that I am able to cook my own lunch and that’s my ‘break’ from work. After lunch it’s back to work till 5.30pm and that’s our 2nd daily call to catch up what’s we’ve been working on for the day and if there’s anything we’ll need to prepare for the next day.
Circuit breaker has ended and we’re all going back to the office – are you excited? What will you miss most from the work from home?
Gift: How relaxed it was! Personally work life balance works better with the WFH situation. I am able to have proper lunch and dinner hours and maybe pop an exercise session right after work.
