‘Confessions’ of WFH – secret showers, bathing while on Zoom calls and lots of gaming!

As HRs have heard time and time again, millions of us have experienced working from home like never before. Once seen as a trusted privilege, ‘Work From Home’ has quickly become an enforced rule for so many. 

But what does ‘working from home’ actually look like and, more to the point, what are people getting up to when no one is watching?

Totally Branded carried our an anonymous survey to unearth some home truths and find out some of the more light-hearted ways we’ve been not working from home.

Taylor Tassie from Totally Branded, said: “It’s been a hard year for everyone, so I’m not surprised to see people making the most of some of the ‘opportunities’ working at home provides.

“We haven’t suffered a noticeable drop in productivity overall, but that’s not to say we would welcome all of these ‘away from keyboard’ activities into the workplace.

“I’m sure the majority of people are being productive and getting the job done, however, perhaps there are some things HR need to be aware of when trying to navigate flexible working in the future.” 

Some of the ‘top confessions’ from respondents to the survey include:

• Secretly showering during a companywide team call
• Lunchtime fumbles under the sheets with the other half
• “I know for a fact that one of my colleagues has not worn trousers in over a year, zoom meetings or not”
• “I was on a Zoom call in a very important meeting and my little Frenchie come over and started urinating all over me and my laptop, wasn’t impressed but was a very good ice breaker!”
• “Five hours of Football Manager, two hours of work”
• “I totally loved logging on to work on time but then actually having a shower and cooking breakfast – actual start time no earlier than 10am”
• “Not more than 10 minutes before a super important meeting with the company’s CEO, MD, my manager and all senior people, I got very sick. In this meeting, everybody had the camera on, but when I was not presenting/asked about anything, I was turning my video off and throwing up in a salad bowl”
• “Opening Zoom meetings putting the laptop on the toilet, camera and mic off and get in the bath

While not the most scientific of surveys with only 27 people responding, maybe you can relate? We’d love to hear your ‘Away From Keyboard’ confessions too. Contact us if you’ve got a story.