Last year the borders finally opened following the pandemic and I was able to visit my family over in the UK. Of course, if the distance alone doesn’t put you off, the cost and jet lag will absolutely make you question your decision. So I knew I needed a good amount of time to make it worthwhile & taking more than two weeks off from work just wasn’t an option. Thankfully, if there’s at least one thing we’ve benefitted from following the pandemic it’s the ability to work from home.
Desperate to see my family without causing too many issues with work, I asked if I could continue to work full time, remotely from the UK. It hadn’t been trialled previously so it was a big gamble, but thankfully my manager was supportive & open to the idea. Whilst it may sound wonderful (I bet you’re imagining sitting in a cafe in London looking out towards Buckingham Palace) I can promise you it was not like that at all. Here is my experience, and the tools that can help you if you ever need to consider it.
Timezones:
Firstly, the biggest issue is the time difference. NZ is roughly 11-13 hours ahead of the UK. This means that if you need to overlap with the standard working hours in New Zealand, you’ll either need to work until late at night or early in the morning. Both countries have daylight savings, so this alters slightly throughout the year. I visited in the NZ winter, UK summer (July – September) which meant New Zealand was 11 hours ahead, the worst option. If I wanted to catch the 4pm – 5pm NZT slot, I needed to be up at 3am until 4am. The feasible option was to catch the morning shift, so I would work until 9.30pm GMT which was the equivalent to 8.30am NZT.
I originally tried doing my 8 hours from 12.30pm to 9.30pm, but it felt like such a long day I really struggled to stay focussed and awake. I’m an early bird, so my routine was really out of sync. In the end I found the most feasible option was to do a split shift, so I would wake at 6.30am, workout, then work between 7:30am – 10:30am, take a break and return to work from 3:30pm – 9:30pm. Don’t get me wrong, it was TOUGH. I was shattered and it felt like I was working all of the time, but it was that or be up for 3am meetings..
Full Time Hours:
If you are considering remaining on full time, you need to be really aware as to how much time that will take from you. Unfortunately, working 40 hour weeks and working in the evenings meant I couldn’t just catch up with friends for dinner after work. My only option was to fit in brunch or coffee in my 10:30am – 3:30pm slot. This worked well when I was with my parents in Scotland, as we used this time to go out on the boat, or go for a walk and coffee. When it came to England though (where the rest of my family and friends were) majority were working during the day, so this meant squeezing everything into the weekend.
Being a day ahead, this also meant that NZ Monday fell on a UK Sunday.. so I also needed to work at 3:30pm – 9.30pm on a Sunday. Again, leaving only Friday night, Saturday and half of Sunday to catch up with everyone. It sounds like an exaggeration, but some of my saddest moments was sitting on my laptop on a Sunday & looking out the window at my family enjoying a BBQ in the evening sun, longing to join them.
I think at this point it’s worth reminding yourself as to why you are going to the other side of the world – if there is anything I can recommend, it’s drop some hours temporarily. You can live without the money and i’m sure your work will manage but family time is not something you can get back.
Equipment & connection:
My work from home set up consists of two monitors as well as my laptop, keyboard & mouse. My laptop alone is too small to work from, so I had to pre-arrange with family members as to who had a monitor I could borrow, and when I realised I really needed the keyboard and mouse as well, amazon prime’s next day delivery thankfully pulled through. In terms of connection though, it wasn’t just wifi I needed. I used a VPN tunnel software to remote in, however this caused certain applications to be very slow/video calling to lag. Eventually I had to use a UAG (Unified Access Gateway) which sped things up so I could work normally, but meant some applications didn’t work. All I can recommend here is do your research, speak to the IT team at your workplace (if you work for a company) and just make sure you’re as prepared as possible.
Benefits:
Before this post seems like a complete downer, I want to cover the benefits and despite the above issues, there are some huge benefits that make it worthwhile.
Firstly, because you are continuing to work, you’re not using all of your annual leave in one stint. I had to take some days to cover the actual travel (it took me 3 days to get up to Scotland🙃) but I also took a couple of days off here and there to spend time with family. I spent a total of two months in the UK, one month in Scotland with my parents, and the other in England. Thankfully this amount of time meant I could get over the jet lag (sort of, I did attempt to work the day after I reached Scotland – don’t do this) and be more present.
This length of time also meant I didn’t need to cram everyone into one day, I could break up my time and get certain groups of people together (old work colleagues, groups of friends, family dinners etc).
Of course in true me style, if I hadn’t stretched myself thin enough already, I was desperate to play tourist too. So I managed to squeeze in a day trip to London, meeting my friends there and exploring the various hotspots. I have wondered whether this would have been possible if I didn’t work remotely but I think that comes down to the individuals perseverance. If you want to make something happen you will make it happen regardless.
Although the time difference didn’t work in my favour, thankfully the weather did. Not only was I able to escape a kiwi winter, I was also there during an incredible heatwave that meant even Scotland had stunning 23 degree heat. If you’ve ever been, you’ll know how rare that is.
Lastly, the biggest benefit of working remotely was not returning to a mountain of debt and an annual leave balance in the minuses, therefore ready for an (actual) holiday in NZ summer.
In conclusion, do I regret it? No. I finally managed to see my family which meant so much to me and with the least possible disruption. Would I do it again? Absolutely not. If I was to do it again, I would be sure to drop some hours so I could really make the most of it. My circumstances are a little different now, I’m no longer working full time for an organisation, but I’m hoping that my family will come to me instead!
Have you tried it? How did you find it?
P.s. I created two videos of my time in the UK, if you want a laugh, here they are: