Coronavirus: The experience of working from home

After Rwanda confirmed the first case of COVID-19 in the country last week, among various measures taken to prevent the spread of the pandemic included requesting employers to, where possible, allow employees to work from home. The country has so far 11 confirmed cases. A few days on the road, some employees share their experience and how they are coping. Stella Tushabe, online content developer The experience is great, and I’m glad that we were given the permission to work from home, because if we were still at work there would be less concentration as we would be afraid of what is next as far as COVID-19 is concerned, due to how exposed to the virus we would have been. I am doing work well. But again, I still miss the community- it is always good to have someone on your side whom you can consult and talk to while working. Festus Irungu Ndirangu, university lecturer Our campus is among those that temporarily closed after the outbreak of this pandemic in the country. However, we shifted to online learning so as to use time efficiently. I can say that it was not easy because, different from what we were used to, assignments are now being submitted via emails and Whatsapp, and so are feedbacks we give to students. What is most challenging is teaching practical courses, because few students can get the necessary infrastructures from their homes. And even if they would, it would be very difficult for us to show them how they use them. However, I think all these teach us a lesson of being flexible enough when there comes some unprecedented changes and have alternatives in advance. Emmanuel Rwozi, Customer Service Manager At my workplace, we started working from home on Monday this week. Normally, my work includes report analysis and briefing members of the customer service team. I can say that at first, it was hard to concentrate on work because when you’re home everyone is passing by and you’re subject to some small home responsibilities which all end up messing up the normal daily time table. I can say that I got to know how to manage all these so as to ensure efficiency. Eugene Sibomana, Communication and Public Information For me, I can say that all is well because as long as I have my laptop and internet connection, I can work from anywhere. But the challenge I heard from many of my colleagues is to handle tasks that require the approval of more than one person. According to what they told me, it was challenging at first because they could only liaise on email and Skype with their heads of department- which was time-consuming and not effective as face-to-face meetings. But they are all now coping like many other people who are in the same situation.

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Coronavirus: The experience of working from home