Working from home: over 12,200km from the office

Charlene Lubbe, a senior administrator in the Auckland office, was enjoying a long-planned visit to her family in Pretoria, South Africa. As she was due to return, the world was changing very quickly.

“I’m sure one day I’ll laugh about the day I got all packed up, very excited to come home to New Zealand; but a little stressed about travelling on the roads to get to the airport after hearing various threatening warnings on the tele and radio about unwarranted travellers that will be prosecuted,” she says.

“Then we arrived at the airport only to be denied access. This led to a panicked phone call to my husband in Auckland who had been constantly checking the websites and phoning the airlines to confirm that the flight was still departing on time. The flight was literally cancelled within the hour of my arrival at the airport. So, I had to turn around and go back to my parents’ home… and figure out what the next step would be.”

Charlene found a laptop she had left with her family when she came to New Zealand several years ago and called the IT Team.

“That older laptop isn’t able to run many of the programs we use across our offices,” says Craig O’Brien, senior IT support. “Remote access to the wider company network and servers wasn’t advisable, Skype for Business wasn’t an option… so we had to use what was available to get Charlene as much functionality as possible.”

Auckland Business services manager Cathy Hall says: “By Wednesday, when she was due back to work, Charlene was up and running having managed to download Microsoft Outlook, Teams, and Sharepoint. She is working through the night (her time) so she can provide support to our team and continues working on anything that she can progress. Not having access to the office servers has not deterred her.”

Working from Pretoria, Charlene’s workday starts at around 9.30pm (which is 7.30am NZ time). She assists planner Carey Pearce for about an hour, and calls into a daily catch-up Teams meeting with the Business Services team.

“Depending on the day of the week, I’ll either have another catch-up meeting with the Planning team or continue to work in the Planning team with Carey. Generally, I do what I would do under ‘normal’ circumstances, only this time it’s through a digital link from the other side of the planet,” she explains.

“Regular tasks like responding to emails, scheduling team meetings, taking minutes and catching up with Cathy on further things to do, all fills up the time.”

For partner Carey Pearce: “After a few initial hiccups we have settled into something like our usual working routine and have become quite efficient in delivering outputs and have been able to maintain the early work starts in New Zealand, (which have been something of a challenge for me). Charlene’s enthusiasm for getting items off the to-do list has not changed and often I need to remind myself that it is the middle of the night in South Africa!”

Charlene says, “I think my biggest challenge is dealing with being away from home and from my husband. I’ve been nearly two months in South Africa and there is still no certainty of when I’ll be able to return to New Zealand.”

“I’m very impressed by her commitment to the cause and good humour,” says Carey. “Charlene faces a degree of uncertainty about when there might be a flight back to New Zealand from South Africa and then faces the prospect of two weeks in quarantine at a hotel in Auckland when she does return.”