Connect2LACity Telecommute Teams
If it takes a village to raise a child, then it certainly takes a village to set up over 18,000 City of Los Angeles employees for teleworking! This spotlight shines on the ITAConnect2LACity Telecommute Teams.
Answering the call to support core City services with employees working from home was a daunting task, let alone considering that this needed to be accomplished in under two (2) weeks. However, the staff of the ITA Connect2LACity Team quickly formed a collaboration across security, network, application, web & media, and administration teams. The group worked with 42 City departments to implement the Connect2LACity telecommuting platform and web portal (Connect2LACity.org). Even more difficult, the teams had to successfully connect 18,173 City employees to the apps and systems they needed while "staying at home" because of COVID-19.
Telecommuting can be a challenging work arrangement for both the employer and employee. The ability for departments to maintain productivity when the fundamental way staff are asked to do their jobs shifts from a normal face-to-face set of interactions to learning how to interact digitally can simply be overwhelming. Learning how to do one's work via virtual interactions such as email, chat or at best video meetings, employees can soon feel disconnected from their work teams and the work itself, with negative effects on both productivity and employee well-being. Acknowledging this challenge, the Connect2LACity Team went the extra step past just providing the telework platform to supporting a great user experience for workers at home with the Connect2LACity web portal. Connect2LACity.org provides ongoing access to tips, tricks, and tools to be as productive as possible in their jobs, while also providing a wealth of employee resources to support personal, emotional and recreational options to survive "social distancing".
A special thanks to the following staff:
Kim Amancio
Nima Asgari
Balmore Botero
Nicholas Chau
Kevin Cheng
Phillip Han
John Hawkins
Jaime Hernandez
Jayson Joseph
Jess Kapik Chong
Ly Lam
Tony Le
Andy Lam
Christopher Lastra
Daniel Clark Lee
Eric Lee
Marc Magallanes
Timothy Margono
Gian Maslog
Tuan Ngo
Ryan Norwall
Anne Phu
Jeoffrey Regino
David Rhodes
Asiri Siriwardenage
Jeremy Stout
Rick Tang
Sherri Teng
Anne Tou
Alan Tran
Rober Villarreal
Jaylen Wimbish
Alfredo Zanchez
Eduardo Magos
Felix Zhang