KUALA LUMPUR: Throughout the implementation of the Movement Control Order (MCO) period, there are groups of people who are required to work from home to ensure that the management of the company to run uninterrupted.
However, in reality, working from home poses a big challenge especially to women who are also mothers of young children.
They need to be smart in juggling between work and managing family matters at home.
Sharing her experience, finance executive Nor Herdawati Abd Rahman, 29, said the biggest challenge with working from home was to ensure that she retained her work performance despite being ‘accompanied’ by her young children.
“March is a key performance indicator (KPI) month, so it is wise to allocate time to achieve the KPI and try to meet the needs of the children during the working hours from 8.30 am to 5.30 pm, especially my second son who is 20 months old and still breastfeeding.
“Once, while I was on call with a customer, one of my children was crying for milk and I had to explain to the customer. ‘Alhamdulillah’ she understood,” Nor Herdawati said, adding that despite working from home during the MCO she regularly had discussions with colleagues via teleconferences.
To facilitate her task Nor Herdawati said she would seek her husband’s help to look after the children while she was on the conference as well as to prepare food for her two boys so that they would not be restless.
Meanwhile, customer service officer Nor Khamisah Mohd Noor, 32, admitted that working from home required real ‘multitasking’ talent as she also needed to ensure that the needs of children such as food, drink and daily care were not neglected.
She also had to ‘steal’ time off work to prepare breakfast, lunch and dinner for her three children, aged five, three and eight months old.
“When we are working from home we can feel how time flies without much rest in between compared to working at the office where we get an hour break. Works at home just never finish.
“There were times that I forgot to take a shower in the morning as I was juggling between work and my children. In fact, there were time I did teleconference while trying to put my children to bed,” she said.
However, Nor Khamisah was thankful to be able to work during the MCO, and viewed the period as the best way to ‘reclaim’ lost time with her children as she was always busy working at the office prior to MCO.
For executive officer Wan Nur Izah Wan Noordin, 29, she had to use the bedroom as her work place and to avoid from being constantly ‘disturbed’ by her four-year-old son.
If that did not work, she would put her son’s favourite movies on to distract him, and reward the boy if he behaved while she was busy working. - Bernama
