Emma-Kate Greer is the general manager for corporate affairs and strategy at telco 2degrees - a role she started while Auckland was mid-way through its 107-day lockdown. Photo / Supplied
Emma-Kate Greer is the general manager for corporate affairs and strategy at telco 2degrees - a role she started while Auckland was mid-way through its 107-day lockdown. Photo / Supplied
Emma-Kate Greer didn't expect to introduce her young kids to her workmates in the first week of her new job.
But there they were, on-screen, as the mum-of-three started her new job as general manager of corporate affairs and strategy for 2degrees while Auckland was halfway through last year's 107-day lockdown.
"It's unusual, right? But when you're working from home and your three kids are at home, that's part of it … normally when you start a job, you don't have children running into the room to have homework marked.
"I guess it takes you straight to a very authentic place," she said of the occasional on-screen interactions with her 7, 9 and 10-year-olds.
Greer spent her first couple of months working remotely from her workmates - including some she was now leading - after starting her new role about six weeks after Auckland went into lockdown to stop the spread of Covid-19's Delta variant.
While an induction app developed after the 2020 nationwide lockdown took care of the logistics of starting a new job, she couldn't meet her new colleagues in person.
It was "virtual coffees" only for the first couple of months.
"The hard thing is you're just meeting people in meetings. You're not picking up on the four-way conversations, you're not understanding the nuances of the office, hearing those friendly chats, so it's a really hard thing to come in at that time, particularly to be leading a team during a lockdown.
"But my team were amazing, and welcoming. We had to just find ways of working together."
Greer had previously worked in leadership roles, but her unusual start at 2degrees taught her new lessons.
Making a deliberate effort to meet people informally, as opposed to at a meeting where an agenda was usually involved, had proved invaluable.
"Asking people - even in that virtual world - 'I'm new here, and I'd like to hear about what you do'. People are really open to that, and it's a way you can break through the fact you're not having lunchroom or hallway conversations.
"If I had to ever start a role like this again, I'd do it that way. Be deliberate about connecting with people informally."
Emma-Kate Greer is now happily office-based, after starting her new job with 2degrees while stay-at-home orders were in place due to the Delta variant outbreak. Photo / Supplied
Gathering rules eventually allowed her team to meet, outdoors and socially-distanced, for coffee, but for the most part her first months in the job were spent slowly building working relationships virtually.
"You had to be prepared for things to move more slowly. Your relationships don't develop at the same pace, and you have to be a bit easier on yourself in terms of what you might achieve and really focus on the relationship."
When the telco's Auckland office reopened in December, she was among those to return straight away. Others came back later, some this month.
"As soon as the offices were open I really wanted to get in and meet people and show my face and meet people in a way you can't through Teams [video calls].
"Even if I only saw a couple of people in the office each time I was here, that was really meaningful to me."
