Since the Spanish government declared a state of alarm on 14 March 2020 teleworking AOC been a priority objective: to respond to the real needs and emergency personnel and the Catalan government citizenship.
For AOC staff, moving from face-to-face work to teleworking has had a relative impact: at the AOC, for the past four years, almost everyone has worked from home one day a week. Now we do it every day and, in most cases, surrounded by family. This stress test has required that the work of each of us become even more collaborative and goal-based.
Since March 14 we have fully maintained our activity within the limitations of the state of alarm. The communication of the legal, organizational and services aspects affected has been reinforced and strengthened in order to bring the news to the widest possible audience and amplify the message. This normality in the activity of the AOC has been carried out satisfactorily because steps had previously been taken in the digital transformation of the organization. In summary these steps are:
From our experience we can deduce the fact that, without this previous transformation and without a real training of the workers, trying to telework at once, forced by the current phase of emergency, is a fallacy that can only partially compensate for the impossibility of working in person.
We have shared with public administrations our experience in telework and we have published two guides, expandable and open to external contributions, on collaborative telework and security in telework, with recommendations for both organizational and remote teamwork tools:
Of particular interest was the section on video calls, chats and screen sharing, as well as the "Telematic management of a plenary" or the specific post on "how to hold Municipal Plenary Sessions".
Now we need to rethink what needs to be done and how it needs to be done to keep moving forward in a new way of working that has come to stay.
