Yanela Rodríguez Rodríguez does not feel strange working from home now that she has to do so because of the physical distancing measures to avoid the spread of the new coronavirus.
Las Tunas, Cuba.– “I used to spend part of my time here, especially when I needed a lot of concentration, says this computer engineer. She is one of the developers of the eCRM internal platform of the Cuban Telecommunications Company S.A.(Etecsa), which through 15 different modules manages a dozen of its services within accounting and billing centers, for the benefit of more than one million residential and business customers.
“It is carried out the recharging of Nauta accounts, paying telephone bills at mixed rates from abroad. In addition, telephone bill payments are made from the Cuban Post Office. Yanela is in her room at home, but the rest of the team accompanies her on the net: eight colleagues from the provinces of Cienfuegos, Ciego de Ávila and Havana.
AT HOME AND WITH A LOT TO DO
Home is not synonymous with inactivity. “It is, Yanela describes, being in multitasking mode, alternating household chores with calls from business offices anywhere in the country; or the girls from the support department for any issue with the system, or the Data Center for any existing situation. In short, we are always working.
When last September the economic situation of the country was aggravated by the intensification of the U.S. blockade, the group that manages the eCRM switched almost all the time to teleworking. In its case, this meant the indefinite extension of the work cycle in each of the provinces, which until then alternated with face-to-face contact in the country's capital.
“When the different members of the development team are geographically in different places, we coordinate by phone, through social networks and email. We use a version control tool that allows everyone to update the code and work together. With the beginning of the pandemic, the company asked us to implement a functionality that would allow the recharging of cards that are used for public phone calls with term charges, in order to provide the service in the isolation centers”, she says. That, by the way, was done in a few days.
SOMETHING TEMPORARY?
Obviously, it's not all about being in front of your computer and more so because, being the youngest in the house, you're in charge of getting the food and other products needed by the family. “My productivity really increases a lot when I'm here”, she says of the incentive that the Ministry of Labor and Social Security has given to the administrations to encourage more employees to go on to telework, without detriment to efficiency and control.
Another point in favor, she adds, is that “the level of concentration increases on what is being done because one is organized. For example, there are many developers who take advantage of the late-night, others the morning. The point is that we look for the right time to be more productive."
She assures that “one of the dreams most longed by us who are in the world of computerization is to achieve the modality of telework or distance work, in which the evaluation is by deliveries, according to the requirements arrived by the clients.
In her case, she specifies that her aspirations transit in being able to perfect support to the sales force or the commercial channel that provides services in schedules that sometimes do not coincide with the areas that should provide support. She details that in Etecsa there are services that are active all the time.
However, when there is a problem, the technician or developer must move to an office in order to have access to the tools or infrastructure where the service solution is supported. Having remote access, of course with the proper IT security rules, the level of response and solution to interruptions would be considerably reduced and the level of service quality would increase, she suggests.
Telework is, in her opinion, a priority requested by the country in order to advance in the computerization of society.
