Flex/Hybrid Workspace, with Mark Williams, Ep. 89

Mark Williams is a controls engineer at Egan Company who is living in South Saint Paul, Minnesota with his family. He is working in a flex/hybrid role where he can work nearly all of the time from his home with the option to use a drop-in desk as needed on a location about 45 minutes away. Like many others, he and his coworkers at his previous job unexpectedly started working from home when the pandemic hit; however, his role was more hands-on there as he had to do measurements in person at times, and his team eventually went back onsite. Mark feels that his experience in field service helped prepare him for working remotely. He was often out and about at various job sites in his prior role and needed to communicate from a variety of locations, including when he was traveling out of state or internationally for days or a week or more at a time. Working from factory floors, hotel rooms, planes, helped him feel more comfortable with the nomad side of remote work, with the downside of being away from his wife and kids.

Now that Mark has a new degree, he is working in his preferred role at a different company where roughly 95% of his work can be done from home. His employer also allows him to have a fair amount of flexibility in his schedule, and he has tried a few different schedules in the past, including waking up at 4:30 am to get to work onsite by 5:30 am so he can get home before dark which was especially important for him when he was working in factories during the daylight hours. Currently, now that he doesn't have to commute, he gets a bit more sleep if the kids don't wake him up; however, he also gets a lot more family time and can help run errands or pick up the kids from school midday and sometimes works something more like a split shift and wraps up in the evening hours once they're home from school or in bed. Mark and his wife just moved into a larger home, and he sometimes has to change location within his house to catch a quiet spot to take a call, but he is generally able to work from his kitchen and living room where they have a nice morning and afternoon light which is important to him. In the evenings, once their four kids are in bed, Mark and his wife both head down to their large basement room where she works on writing novels, and he works on a board game or two he's been developing. They're excited about their three-season porch and backyard with plenty of room for a large deck and are talking about putting a desk out there as well once the weather warms up a bit come springtime.

Mark can be found on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markwilliamsfst/