Before the COVID-19 pandemic hit the UK in 2020, I used to spend six hours commuting to and from my workplace in London five days a week. Looking back, it feels surreal that I wasted so much time travelling. Fast-forward to today , and I carry out my online work from home, and I absolutely love it. But how did this happen? Two main factors contributed to me transitioning to remote IT work: the COVID-19 pandemic and becoming an independent contractor. 

How the pandemic shaped the office workforce.

Businesses, especially those with an online presence, had no choice but to quickly find a solution that allowed their employees to keep working and generate revenue for the company. Amid all the tragedies and chaos the pandemic had bestowed on the world, there was a hopeful glimmer of light for a new type of workforce to be born. Or at least for it to be made available to more people than before - the world of remote working. 

Factoring in affordable broadband, faster hardware distribution channels and better online infrastructure, businesses had a means of enabling their workforce to work from home. Furthermore, with the steady rise of smart devices, video conferencing, and e-commerce, these businesses found that the training curve wasn't as steep for many of their staff. Additionally, their customers had already been accustomed to living their lives online, and the transition to making more services available from the comfort of their own homes was well-received by many.  

I quit my permanent job to become an IT contractor.

When I graduated from university in 2006, I hopped onto several permanent jobs until I found a company I was happy with and stayed there for four years. During those four years, I moved departments. I started as a website administrator, earning £24,000, then moved into database administration, earning around £32,000. Finally, I got into implementation account management and received around £35,000. The big turning point for me was when I got into database administration, as I was part of a workforce comprising of permanent employees and independent contractors; where I quit my permanent job and started earning over six figures a year.  

In hindsight, I can see why managers disapprove of contractors talking to permies about converting into independent contractors. However, transitioning from working as a permanent employee to becoming an independent contractor is a long, well-thought-out journey for those who understand the financial risks of swapping a relatively stable monthly income to an unstable yet rewarding one.

I have my mentors and contractor colleagues to thank for giving me the confidence to make the jump. I have never looked back and am continuously grateful for the flexibility and opportunities contracting has given me. Being a contractor gave me the edge to pursue remote working, which I hope will inspire other mums to make the leap or at least cultivate a working agreement with their permanent employer to support a better work-life balance. 

How I moved to working remotely.

A few months before the pandemic reached the UK in 2020, I worked as a contract business analyst for a UK client. By this time, I had been earning money as a contractor since 2014 under my own limited company and worked in the office for five days a week. My specialism was cloud CRM systems, a fancy way of referring to an online customer database. After dropping my 1-year-old baby at the nursery, I travelled to my client's office and started work at 9:00 am. I didn't have an allocated desk, so I always lugged around my laptop, setting myself up to a monitor, mouse, and keyboard each time. As a business analyst who regularly held face-to-face workshops, I was constantly using pieces of paper and props to help the business visualise their challenges and envisage their wants and needs, so my rucksack was full of postit notes, multi-coloured pens, and highlighters.

I indulged in your regular office small talk. How was your weekend? Who keeps stealing the milk? Have you signed Karen's birthday card? I booked meeting rooms to hold my workshops, which always ran late because an attendee needed help finding the room or the laptop could not connect to the large TV screen mounted on the wall. Someone was always running to the loo because they had back-to-back meetings, which led to an army of people deciding they could make a quick cuppa before the meeting started. Before you know it, a 10:00 meeting is now a 10:15 meeting, which will no way in hell end on time because somebody important wants to overrun by twenty minutes to make their point heard. This working pattern would repeat over and over again for the entire week. I would get home much later than expected, be exhausted in the evenings and wake up in the morning not feeling as refreshed as I wanted. I was irritable, tired, and demotivated. I was following the norm of adulting: paying the bills, picking up my kids, eating and sleeping. It was a vicious cycle, and I was no longer living life. 

The UK lockdown was the start of remote working for most office staff.

Then COVID-19 hit the shores of the UK, and before we knew it, singing "Happy Birthday" twice while washing our hands wasn't enough to keep the UK safe; we found ourselves on lockdown.  

Not all businesses survived. I became furloughed after the company I was providing services for terminated my contract, and there was no demand for my services in the market. Still, the landscape of office work was evolving. This is when most office workers' ways of working started to change. Businesses found a way to allow us to work 100% remotely. 

My 100% remote roles started as hybrids.

The most powerful asset of being a contractor is your freedom to leave when a workplace situation no longer suits you. This brings me to how I transitioned from working in the office five days a week to working remotely. I purposely looked for roles that would allow me to work from home, and when I found hybrid roles, I proved my worth and negotiated working 100% remotely. But how did you do that? I hear you ask. For me, there are five core ingredients:

1. Prove that you are more efficient working remotely.
2. Prove that you can successfully collaborate with your team when you are not in the office. 
3. Support remote working in your workplace. 
4. Be helpful when you have downtime.
5. Be available online when your team needs to contact you.

Prove you are efficient in doing remote IT work.

Integrity in the remote working world is everything. Although your managers and colleagues cannot see what you do during every minute of your day whilst you are at home, they will quickly pick up vibes if someone is taking advantage of the flexibility of remote working. Sadly, when staff are perceived as slacking off, managers start ordering their staff to come back into the office and package it up as improving team morale and boosting productivity. I have seen this happen several times, and it is usually down to a few colleagues (who were never invested in the company's vision) who decide to disappear from Microsoft Teams for half a day and still bill for a whole day of work. They don't attend online meetings, rarely meet their deadlines and never complete a piece of work up to a satisfactory standard. It is these individuals who give remote working a lousy reputation and scare management into thinking that everyone is doing the same thing. This is not the case; your job is to prove that remote working is productive. Luckily the advice below is the same regardless if you are a permie or a contractor, its just having good work ethics. 

• Log in on time.
• Attend all the meetings that require you to do your job.
• Make sure you understand the tasks expected from you. If in doubt, ask for a quick catch-up to review the details and solidify your understanding. 
• Manage your time effectively. Set reminders that a deadline is coming up and ensure you have enough time to complete the task.
• Be honest if the workload is too much so that you are not breaking any promises, and agree what work is achievable in the timescales given. 
• Be transparent about any challenges you are facing. Keeping an open, honest dialogue with your manager helps build trust. 
• Reply to emails and Teams messages within a reasonable time frame, prioritising the most important messages first. 

Prove that you can successfully collaborate with your team remotely. 

Being productive and efficient on your own is great, but what is more powerful is successfully bringing people together and bringing the best out of each other online. This can be one of the most challenging things to achieve as it requires you to know how your colleagues like to work. 

Some people are very visual and love using pictures, colours and props to stimulate their thinking. Others prefer looking at spreadsheets and lines of data to get them to think effectively. Likewise, some people like watching others and some are very vocal in group workshops. The key here is to be flexible enough to facilitate all these personalities. So how is this done, exactly? As I have worked as a business analyst and Scrum Master for several of my business clients, I have a vast tool kit to help bring out the best in people and have become somewhat attuned to how individuals like to communicate. There have been occasions where I have (in the middle of a preplanned workshop) completely changed the approach after reading the virtual room that we were going nowhere. I would also say it is also due to my compassion to recognise that not everyone likes speaking virtually, and they would rather send a message or follow up by email. 

Support the working remotely culture.

The doorbell rings, the dog barks and it's almost time for the school run - We have all been there. Showing your support for all the nuances of working from home cultivates a workforce that embraces these differences fully because the organisation is built on trust and prioritises its workforce's good mental health and work-life balance. One of the simplest ways I have shown my support for remote working is when I am hosting a meeting, I start by informing the attendees that it is ok to answer the door or it's perfectly alright if they can only attend the first half because they need to pick up the kids. This also works the other way around; I will start the meeting by informing people that I may step away briefly to answer the door if I expect a delivery. We are all human, and showing you understand there are times when you need to be flexible is a great asset. It shows you really care about your colleagues and, no matter what will endeavour to make the meeting as productive as possible. Here are a few tips to safeguard your team's productivity:

• Send out the presentation slides beforehand.
• Distribute the outputs and outstanding questions to everyone, including those who could only attend part way through. 
• Arrange follow-up meetings for key people who missed important information while they were away. 
• Proceed with any next steps that help you progress your work objectives.

Be helpful in your downtime.

When I work from home, I am more productive and therefore can sail through a task very fast. You may be similar and find yourself twiddling your thumbs on what to do for the rest of the day. Here, remote working tests your work ethic and desire for a good work-life balance. 

As a mum, working from home is great because I get to do some of the chores that would have usually lingered until I got home from a long commute. Thanks to remote working, chores like loading the dishwasher, doing the laundry, and preparing dinner can now all be done during my tea breaks. Although it can be tempting to kick back and watch Netflix, asking your colleagues if they need help with a task because you have some extra time is the most responsible thing to do. Helping your team complete a big piece of work or starting another task to ensure that your team meet a deadline is a great way to add value and strengthen your credibility. You will also feel a great sense of achievement that you have gone the extra mile to achieve the team's goals, and your colleagues will be thankful that you are a person they can rely on. Being proactive allows mothers to feel more in control of their working day and gives us more power to design the working life we want. 

Be available online when your team needs to contact you. 

It is an easy one to miss if you aren't used to working with little supervision. Back in the day, when everyone was in the office, managers were content that if they could physically see you by your desk, then you are working. After the COVID-19 pandemic, managers and colleagues now rely on your online status as a gauge as to whether or not you are working. An online status is similar to a manager glancing at your desk to check if you are doing work or in the coffee room, so it is important that you remain responsive when your manager or colleagues try to talk to you. This is another way of building trust and shows you will always be at hand when help is needed. Likewise, if you anticipate you will need to take a quick break to load the dishwasher, pop your availability to busy and increase your speaker volume so that you can hear the message notification or impromptu video calls when someone is trying to get in touch with you so you can reply.