Hello people

[trishpiglet]

Someone's Facebook post reminded me that DreamWidth was a thing and I thought 'yeah I miss seeing people's longer posts' also miss some of the people I don't Facebook with or who just don't Facebook. So HELLO here. No need to say hello back, I'll come find you x

Comments

[nou]

Hello! I haven’t posted for ages but I do comment on other people’s posts.

[trishpiglet]

Hello lovely

[nou]

How are you doing? Have you been able to work from home during all this?

[trishpiglet]

I've worked from home since mid-March. People like not having to come to the clinic!
I'm also training new stop smoking advisors from home, which has been a massive amount of work but also an amazing journey... beginning with my bosses: 'can we do the same training over 2 days but all in Zoom?' and me: 'NOOOOOOOOOOO that will be horrible for everyone!' so now I've got students for most of the month doing assignments and watching videos and doing exercises together over the phone and just one hour-long Zoom per week (with 2 optional Zooms per week if people want to join them).

How about you? xx

[nou]

Oh, nice! Do you think you’ll carry on offering online services after the pandemic?

Well done for not letting your bosses make everyone sit in front of Zoom for two days...

I’m doing fine. I worked from home anyway, and bob just went from 2 days remote to full-time remote. We’re both shielding because of my asthma, but we have a garden to exercise in, we can get almost everything we need delivered, and I have a nearby friend who gets me anything else. I miss seeing children, but we’re doing weekly Zoom calls (in fact I have a call with two of them this morning).

[trishpiglet]

We had a meeting about that today. While we don't know what we're doing long-term, it's likely we'll retain the online services that work. Hopefully at some point we'll be able to roll out a choice for clients as to whether they'd prefer an online/phone service or face-to-face and then refer them to advisors who like to work similarly.

Glad you are doing OK! Huge understands about missing parts of how things used to be.
And Zoom is really helpful

[nou]

That sounds really good — much more accessible.

[trishpiglet]

Muchly so.

One concern I have, ahead of their oral exam on Wednesday, is that perhaps there has been too little take-up of opportunity to ask questions. If we were all in a room together, more questions would be asked - being in a meeting on a screen rather than in person seems to bring about a level of passivity on some of the trainees. I wondered if it was because I said it was OK to not have your cameras on, but at the last Zoom meeting the non-camera people were more vocal and interactive than some of the camera-on people, a few of whom it was like looking at a test card sat there. They have a group WhatsApp, regular emails, smaller groups to work in on stuff, and a weekly catch-up phone call with me but I think ... you know what I think? I've maybe not been toppy enough. Or that's silly and I need to work to overcome the problem another way. Make the Zoom meetings longer and include time at the start to have a recap of how everyone's getting on with the work.

My boss informs me the company wants to standardise the training across all our services (I only do the London areas) and, when I complained 'what if I don't like someone else's training resources? or methods?' he came back with telling me the training model would be based on what I was doing and why did I think anything otherwise? etc.
...
No pressure then but what if it's shit?

Hello and guess who can't stop thinking about work even though it's the weekend! x

[nou]

You’re obviously very good at your job, but yes, you deserve your weekend off :)

Re the questions issue, might it work to offer people the option of putting questions in the chat channel instead of saying them out loud? I think there can be more of a barrier to vocally speaking up in a group Zoom call than in a face-to-face group meeting, since it’s harder to sort out conversational turn-taking and harder to understand when more than one person is talking at once. With the option of typing instead of speaking, there’s less of a feeling of interrupting.

[trishpiglet]

Good idea for next time. Thank you! I expected more interaction in the WhatsApp group and them being more vocal in their catch up calls and Zoom meetings but then I also have to remember back to the face-to-face training with the room of introverted pharmacists; that lot hardly said a word but then they did fine in their assessment.
For this time around, I'll make sure I give every opportunity for them to ask questions before Wednesday morning - also before the assessment starts I'll take questions for a few minutes and ask people how they've found the course.

I like the typing rather than being vocal option - also, if they ask just me rather than the whole group (I think you can filter chat to talk to specific people in Zoom) then they can feel they're asking their questions anonymously!

...
I miss you now. I think I've remembered just how much you are one of the world's loveliest humans

[nou]

Aw, Trish, you’re lovely too <3