Remote work: Estonia

Although I share lot of stories of the time when I was living in Ghana (they are labeled as “Memories”, I have been living last 3.5 years in Estonia. I work in a telecommunication company as online sales specialist and I am one of those lucky ones to whom company has enabled a remote-work.

I live in small city called Pärnu. Its a lovely resort city with pretty parks and popular beach. The city is almost empty at winter and crowded with turists at summer.

But like with most of the small towns – job options are quite limited. The headoffices of most of the companies are located in bigger towns like Tartu and Tallinn. In Pärnu they tend to keep just local branches to services local customers and therefore most job offers here are in a field of customer service. And thats what I was doing here for 3 years. Worked on the mall branch of my current employer, making long 12 hours shifts. Reaching home by my kids bwd time and often spent weekends and public holidays at work.

Yet, I saw interesting job ad by my employer in headoffice. And as my employer company is a promoter of a remote-work in Estonia, I took my chance and applied. Passed the 4 rounds of tight competition and got the job!!!

As I sayd the job is in head office. The head-office is located in Tallinn but I still live in Pärnu. Actually I do travel between Pärnu and Tallinn quite often – 4 days a week. But thanks to the flexibility of my employer I dont need to be in office at 8.30am like most of my collegues. But I reach there around 10am. Thats because I start working on the way. See the trick is that I dont travel by car but I travel by bus. So first hours I do remote work from bus 🙂

My bus leaves 7.30 every morning. And luckily I live in city center and my kids school also in city center (where also the bus station is located at) – so my morning rounds are not much different from those who work in same city. I leave house arou d 7.00am, reach kindergarden latest by 7.10 – run drop kids in different groups and about at 7.25 I step in bus. The advantage of small city – everything is just near enough 😉.

I would not imagine moving with kids to Tallinn. Here in Pärnu I trust them to go play alone in our compound, while in bigger town I would never feel free doing that. I am actually stressed over the idea how after one year my bigger kid will start his elementary school, and he would need to walk home after school hours alone, crossing streets and stuff. Well all other kids do it – but still its hard to imagine that only one more year and he will be walking alone in town. In Pärnu. If we lived in Tallinn, I would propably hire nanny to escort him home from school after classes finish 🤔.

With my current work and bus scheadule, I reach back home by 8PM. Which about 40 minutes earlier than from my customer service job in Pärnu. But weekends are off. National Holidays are off. And Fridays I don’t travel. Fridays I do remote – work from home. So I see kids much more than while working in my home town.

So far it has gone very well. I am little worried about winter time when dressing kids will take more time cos of all that winter wear. But Im sure it will all work out. Maybe I just start going with little later bus or wake up little earlier – or force my husband to help me out also in mornings. For now taking kids home from kindergarden and watching them till I reach has been on him.

Whats your experience with remote – work. Is it practiced also in your home country or company?

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