
Ask HN: How to drive up employee/intern morale in an online working environment? - iamnotjasper
Transitioning into the online working environment could be tough, especially in a startup environment with not a lot of structure in place. I was able to quickly adapt within 2-3 weeks of work. However, that wasn&#x27;t the case for some of our employees and interns.<p>To all startup founders and HR managers here on Hacker News, I would love to seek some advice on how you approach a situation like this. If you have any tips, guides, or even successful case study you have implemented for your company, i would love to further connect and learn more from you.
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giantg2
I can tell you one bit from my own experience.

I joined a new team on a new stack about a month before we had to start WFH. I
did ok for the first 2-3 weeks WFH and felt like I was still making progress.
Now after a couple months, I feel like I'm not producing value and I'm slow.
I'm very demoralized.

The reasons for this are: I feel the subject matter is boring, the business
doesn't give us good requirements because they either don't know or can't
explain their complete process, the program-level technical leadership didn't
do a good job of guiding the business so the system is a bit of a mess, and
most importantly I don't feel like I am a value-producing respected member of
the team. I miss having a say in how things are done. I was the acting tech
lead on a previous team and later an ASC who was allowed to prioritize,
manage, architect, and perform or delegate security work on an application
covering six teams over two departments (still an ASC but not much to do on
the current system).

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gshdg
Start by finding out why their morale is low. This is likely to be unique to
each person. Deal with their unique situations and needs.

