I’m not going back

My first whole week working remotely has come to an end, and I must say that it was terrific. Even before I began at my new company. My badge and computers arrived days before I began my new job. I had eight people from management reach out to me to make that transition seamless, and it continued after I started on Monday when I logged onto Microsoft Teams.

My first meeting was with my manager and three other people coming on board within her department. It continued a half-hour later when we immediately went into an hour-long session and were introduced to managers from different departments and the director. Immediately after that meeting, I hopped into the training room with our trainer.

Weeklong training

I’m back working in insurance. It’s an industry that I’ve been out for several years; however, I missed my time away, and now I’ve returned. This first week and the upcoming eight weeks will be training. This first week, I did not handle any “live” documents. All my training was conducted within Microsoft Office Team meetings, and virtual training was conducted in a simulated program environment. I must say that everything that has to be done is a lot to wrap my head around, and I’m grateful for the nine weeks of training that I’ll receive. Even after the training is over, I’ll be working with a mentor for quite some time before I’ve fully “mastered” my position.

During the week, I was able to see firsthand how my company handles difficulties. One of the ladies within our department was having issues with her laptop computer. It was slow, not responding. She could still hear and see the instructor, and so she watched and took notes.  Within a few hours, the help desk reached out to her to troubleshoot and fix the issue. Once they took her laptop through all of its paces, they overnighted a new laptop to her, and she was able to actively follow along and do the assignments with the class. Before this happened, management had reached out to her and would have let her start at a later date; however, she had bonded with the instructor and us (classmates), so she was adamant about staying within our class. They allowed her to do that, and in 1.5 days, she had a working computer.

Downtime activity

I only have one HR video to complete. I already watched over eight hours of video. At the end of most of the courses, I was graded. I received 100% on the majority and high 90’s on the three that I did not receive perfect scores. Currently, I only have one video left to watch, and that is two hours long. I most likely will hold off watching that video for a while. For several of the videos that I watched, I had 90 days to complete; however, I wanted to get them out of the way quickly to focus on getting familiar with my job in my downtime.

I much prefer working remotely

As I’ve mentioned before, I have worked at home several times throughout my career. Our instructor stated that this was one of the largest classes. Our instructor was filling in for a trainer that was on vacation this week. She’ll be returning next week. It’s a lot of information to process; however, the trainers/mentors made the transition easier. I don’t miss dealing with 695 traffic, and I don’t see myself going back to working within the office setting.