The pros and cons of work from home:
With the global pandemic re-defining humanity, discouraging face to face interactions and most importantly debunking the concept of “OFFICE” as we used to know it, it perhaps is time to take a closer look at the seem to be the inevitable future of working.
Covid-19 outbreak is a terrible package, whilst putting human lives in danger, it has also brought upon fiscal difficulties to many, with a lot of businesses closing down or a lot of the workforce taking up pay cuts. However, as a by-product it has also accelerated the revolution of technologies specifically professional digital communications, now applications like Zoom, Teams and Skype have become an unavoidable part of corporate experience, and they are here to stay.
If not for the pandemic, work from home makes absolute financial sense for business owners, office space has become a traditional and obsolete concept. Unnecessary rental, sundry expenses and utility bills that companies can avoid specially with the greatest legacy that this pandemic would leave behind, an economic catastrophe.
Long story short, remote work is a part of the new normal.
Before jumping in to the negatives, let’s talk about the positives of work from home:
1- Work without office distraction:
Avoid annoying colleagues, random chats from interns/management artiness whilst your boss is eyeing on you to check if you are working on the unrealistic deadline you were given. Random talks with senior people trying to make you forget the time they made you work over the weekend. Or even avoiding the racist coworkers who is still wondering if your family back home has enough food or is surviving the war?
2- Saving money and time on commute and rental:
Waking up at 8:55am to attend a 9am meeting?
Not getting stock in traffic? or leaving office late to avoid rush hour?
Moving to the suburbs, where is less crowded, saving on rent and enjoying the peacefulness outside the city center?
Eating at home everyday and not spending money on over-priced office food and downstairs Starbucks?
with costing you less to be alive and win bread, you’ll have more money and maybe even savings.
3- Flexible schedule:
A bit of a double edged sword, but to be honest in an ideal work environment and with the right discipline, you can start being online at 9:30am, take an hour off during lunch time and kiss goodbye your laptop at 6:30PM. You can finally check out that weird pimple or spend some time with your friends, family or even exercise for once.
4- Comfortable:
Listening to your CEO in your PJs, or judging the supreme court case while taking a biological break in the washroom, who would have thought you could get so comfy at work.
Depending on your personality and preferences the above mentioned is enough for many to take WFH as their favorable option. However, once digging beyond the surface work from home can look less ideal:
1- Upward Mobility at the work-place:
My limited experience at the corporate world tells me, good work alone does not help you climb the ladder, building meaningful relationships and networks across your organization opens you up to new opportunities. Before the apocalyptic times we live in now, I can recall regularly getting feedback post big presentations from senior managers, over a quick chat when they’d see me later that day. This is important, specially when you get a chance to receive feedback from people who you are not reporting to. Learning the business as whole and try to sharpen your commercial acumen to make your proposals more appealing to the larger part of the organization and not just making one or two line managers happy.
2- Human interaction, checking in on each other:
Understanding how your team / colleagues are trending emotionally, is a key enabler to run a healthy safe work environment. On a Covid free normal day, when you walk in to office and you find happy Joe not being so happy, you get a chance to have a chat with the guy and get to know about his break up, or medical complications he is facing.
Yes, IT IS A JOB, but also IT IS A HUMAN, who is getting it done, removing that human element from workplace would impact productivity and increase turnover rates of employees. Lots of big companies take pride in their corporate culture, and if is not for corporate interactions, what’s left of that corporate culture to brag about?
The way we appear at work place, does work as a check and balance to the way we are treated in office, if you have an abusive boss that yells at you all day, and you look sad perhaps your head of department can see your face and check up on you. The fact that people can react to your face, would make shameless horrible bosses to behave. Of course there are more than one way to make a person feel terrible, in a work from home scenario you can be abused all day without anyone noticing and anyone who cares wont be able to do so.
3- Work life Balance and boundaries:
Quarantine life has made people realize, you have probably nothing else to do. As a matter of fact, most of us don’t have much else to do or at least should not have.
With you being always at the vicinity of your laptop all the flipping time, managers tend to assume you are available. Unfortunately despite the distance, we all have become more available, and this can allow bad managers to take advantage of it.
Secondly, for those who spend an enormous amount of time in office, would be even more difficult to shut down and divorce from work.
4- Home Distractions:
It stops being cute around the fifth time when your children trash the meeting, please use the mute option, not everyone in the call had decided to bring in mini-monsters to life without their consent. Also please locate your laptop camera carefully, preferably not facing the bathroom door, so your better half wont see the hidden half walking around your ulterior dungeon.
Secondly, for many home has always been a place of recreation and relaxation, so the house is equipped as such, either you are a home spa person, professional gamer or passionate book reader, it is safe to anticipate your house is not the best place for you to carry out your office duties, as it was not meant to be, hence those homely comforts will certainly work as distractions through out your day.
In a nutshell, whilst work from home works out for many of you, but as we go along with this journey, it starts taking its toll at the workforce.
If you agree or think otherwise, feel free to drop me your perspective in the comment section.
