In Egypt, most people don’t have jobs they can do from home. Only half of Egyptians have internet access, and workplaces hit by the COVID-19 crisis have been shedding workers since the government began introducing measures to curb the spread of the coronavirus last month. But even workers at internet-based companies are feeling the pain of moving their office culture into various clouds. 

The shift has affected startups, schools, gyms and companies of all stripes for the past several weeks. What are the challenges and opportunities posed by remote online work?

First, I tried to call Ahmed Zahran, founder of solar installation company KarmSolar, on Google Hangouts, but then he sent me a link over Facebook Messenger to a meeting on Google Hangouts Meet, which I realized was a completely different app — our call was delayed for several more minutes while I downloaded it over a sluggish internet connection. 

Zahran’s company, KarmSolar, had never opted for remote work “even under good circumstances,” he said, because they value face-to-face interaction — a sentiment echoed by several companies that, like KarmSolar, were established in the wake of the January 25 revolution. 

“In our post-revolution startup ecosystem, people like working in teams,” Zahran said. But Cairo’s competitive edge — its relatively young workforce — is lost without the dynamism and energy of actual offices, he added.

Shifting “from phone to screen to app to phone — it’s daunting sometimes,” a team leader at a small startup in downtown Cairo said. The video meeting app Zoom has shot up in global download rankings, according to SimilarWeb, and in recent weeks was ranked among the top five in Android app downloads in Egypt.

The team leader said his startup had just leased a bigger office space when the pandemic hit, forcing them to postpone the lease and rethink their communications strategies.

“Client meetings became phone calls or Google Meet calls, and brainstorming and team meetings also moved to calls,” he said, but “people are not used to remote call dynamics, like muting their microphones.” 

The new norms can lead to awkward situations, the head of an animation studio said. 

“You’ll be on a call with a client and suddenly you’ll get that static noise, so you just agree with whatever the client is saying, and then you find out later you agreed to things you didn’t even hear.” 

Remote work has also forced the studio to overcome slow internet speeds, as employees share large video files online that they used to send over an internal office network. “The internet has always been bad, but now that so many companies are relying on it, there’s more pressure for it to be functional,” he said.

KarmSolar’s 130 employees began working from home in mid-March, the same week the government ordered the closure of all schools and universities. Zahran works from his second home beside the Red Sea, where his children can bike around the empty hotels. But he’d rather be in the office where he can see the employees’ faces, he said.

“If you don’t see facial expressions, you don’t understand how people are thinking,” he said. The company has tried to address the missing social component in part by creating online channels specifically for friendly chats.

Working from home has also disrupted work-life balance, according to several remote workers. 

“Working from home can turn into working 24/7,” an IT outsourcing manager said.

The startup team leader said he has started snoozing his phone notifications in the evening to actively disconnect. And a freelancer who has worked from home for two years pointed out that since most people live with their families, creating a quiet workspace is crucial. 

Charlotte Streinger, a teacher at a private French-language middle school, says she struggled initially with creating boundaries around her work once classes moved online, especially in communicating with students. 

“I used to answer all their questions on Whatsapp, but then I realized it was taking up all of my time and I never felt ‘off,’” Streinger said. “So I deactivated the notifications … and try not to feel guilty when I’m not answering right away.”

For people like Streinger whose work usually depends on in-person contact, the lockdown has sometimes demanded a total overhaul of their jobs.

A teaching assistant at a private university says they’ve had to restructure their coursework for the semester, and the TAs take turns going to the university two days per week to record classes. The university is also in the process of building a new online system to accommodate online learning, she said.

But the challenges of working remotely can be more difficult to overcome in other fields.

A Maadi-based music producer who was also forced to make the transition to online finds it much harder to make money without live events. “It’s harsh,” he says — playing music online is totally different because there’s no interaction with an audience. “And it’s made collaboration different because I can’t be in the same space with other musicians.”

Meanwhile, a marketing and public relations manager says most of their work now relates to the direct effects of the pandemic. “Most of our work now is posting about restaurant closures and making quarantine announcements,” a marketing and public relations manager says. “There’s no media production now — we can’t do any photoshoots.” 

Other businesses have come up with creative solutions in order to adapt to the new reality.

When fitness instructor Sarah Carr realized she’d have to close her gym, Cairo Strength, she didn’t think her business would last through April. But then Carr found help online from other personal trainers, who were sharing information about how to transition to virtual training sessions. “They have literally saved my business, and I suspect many others,” she said.

She now holds online classes using the video conferencing platform Zoom with up to five clients at a time. Since most people don’t have gym equipment at home, Carr’s personal training sessions have had to get inventive, showing clients how to use book-laden backpacks as makeshift weights, sheets tied to doors for body pulls, and focusing her sessions a little more on cardio training. During the workouts she monitors each client’s form and pace and coaches them individually as best she can.

Going virtual has also forced Carr to get organized. “I’ve been like an overambitious soccer mom,” she says. For years, she’s wanted to make a members’ Facebook group, PDF guides and an online booking system. “I did all three in a week,” she says.

Organization was key for the animation studio too, the executive said, and going remote has forced the team to create mechanisms that have improved their work. “Our workflow is actually better now because we’ve had to create a system for keeping track of all our project files online,” he says. 

Some people hope to maintain positive changes they’ve made once their workspaces reopen.

Working with less equipment has “freshened things up,” Carr said. “I will probably apply many of the things I have learned when we go back to regular training in the gym.”

The marketer says he will use this experience to persuade his boss to allow remote work in the future. Meanwhile, the animation studio co-founder says they’ll probably keep the new file system in place. And he’s found that the key to dealing with the pandemic at work is to keep emotions in check: “Don’t let the panic control you.”