The Company’s Teleworking Environment and My Job as a PTA President

*The name of “G Suite” was changed into “Google Workspace” in October 2020

Hi, there!

I usually write about system collaboration, but I picked a different topic this time.

I was the president of PTA at the elementary school where my kids attend, during the last school year.

I had to participate at many occasions to make speeches at entrance ceremonies and graduation, etc. And most of them were held in daytime on weekdays. Therefore, it seems that there were many cases where the president was mainly chosen from those who worked at home or nearby the school so far.
I accepted the offering of becoming a president by the former president, whom I met at as a local volunteer, because I thought that I could have valuable experiences I can not get elsewhere.

After agreeing I would not be able to participate in all the events, (even true for self-employed people), I tried to attend the high importance occasions, as much as possible.
Therefore, it took a half day leave in the morning on weekdays / a half day leave in the afternoon / going home early in the evening / all day leave, etc. This occurred several times every month. Throughout the year, I think there were quite a few times. (Adding the number of half day leaves and 1 day leaves, it exceeded 25 times. I believe I never took that much paid leave since I started working.)

Being in such a situation, I was helped in many ways since a teleworking environment for the company was available.

• Handling business emails and corresponding to urgent issues remotely using email and social networking, during any free time I had while I was at the school.
• Getting home early and after my task as PTA were finished, I worked from home.
• When PTA task took longer than planned for a half day leave.
  (Travel time from home to the company is about 30 to 40 minutes, which is a waste of time as it takes 1 hour for a round trip. Though this was only possible when I did not have any clients to visit, etc…)

* Even though it is not related to my PTA role, even when I was not allowed to go to the office after recovering from the flu, I could have meetings with customers via web conference from home.

Although these were advantages in average teleworking, I really realized the worth of teleworking again, and really was helped.
If it were not for the teleworking environment, I suppose that:

• It could have been hard for me to take a half day leave feeling easy, so I would have had to reduce the times to attend the PTA events.
  (In some cases I attended lecture meetings and I realised a variety of things by attending, so I wonder if I have had to cut down the times to listen to such lectures.)
• By being absent and not being able to respond remotely, the burden on other members who were at the company might have increased.
• More loss due to travel time could have occurred.

The main teleworking tools of our company are below.

• G Suite (Google Apps)
  Email, calendar, file storage, Web conference, portal
• Questetra BPM Suite
  Case management/ estimate management/ lead management related to sales operations, various claim applications, enterprise social networking

Even though it may be self-praising since it includes our own product, I believe that it is true that I was able to correspond in a better way thanks to the teleworking environment, and it was a strong backup.

Although it depends on the content of work, etc. If telework environment would spread more and therefore waste decreased in the world, I suppose society is going in a good direction, if we can reduce overtime work and each person can utilize their time more effectively.

It is not that we could not do it without a teleworking environment at all, but I think that there are various things that I could get by experiencing being the PTA president. And it was good for me that I accepted the offer. (Although this may be a digression, I had a lot of opportunities of public speaking. Before, I did not feel confortable talking in front of a crowd, but somehow I could get used to anything.)