EQ at home – Graeme Ferrier

At EQ, our people are at the heart of what we do.

Although working from home means we are physically spread across our regions, our team are working hard to maintain regular communication with their clients whilst continuing to support colleagues by connecting with them daily.

We caught up with Graeme Ferrier, IT Manager, to find out more about his experience working from home.

How are you finding working remotely?

I’m loving working from home. Missing my colleagues and lunchtime walks, but home for lunch, more time with the family and home-baking on tap, what’s not to like?

Trying to get enough kit for everyone to work from home was a bit of a challenge and the first couple of days of lockdown were busy trying to connect staff, especially those with their own kit, but it all soon settled down and we are back to more of our regular queries.

What are you doing to keep in touch with the rest of the EQ team?

Most of our communication has centered around Microsoft Teams, we’ll use the chat facility during the day, then have a catch up call at night. Having the group video calls with other members of staff has also been really good. Seeing different faces and hearing their stories have been a nice way to have a break from work.

Although my kids do have a knack of appearing in the middle of most of my video calls and saying hello.

How are you looking after your emotional well being?

The weather has been surprisingly good, so have been taking the opportunity to get out in the garden and do some maintenance or play with the kids. Having a structure to the day also helps, oh and have I mentioned the home-baking?

What advice would you give to others working from home?

Communicate, you’ll spend a lot of your time in the office conversing with your colleagues, so you should try to keep this up as much as possible. Making sure you take breaks, even if it’s just to scare the pigeons away from your grass seed, is essential.

Tell us, what are your new co-workers like?

I’m a bit disappointed to be honest, Ken (Bruce), Jeremy (Vine) and Steve (Wright) have reasonable chat, but they are useless when it comes to getting the cuppies in.

Our doors may be temporarily closed, but EQ are still here to support you. You can contact us on any of our usual telephone numbers and email addresses, which you can find on the Our People page on this website.