A Deep Dive Into Work From Home Culture
WORK FROM HOME. Talk of the town right now, isn’t it? Many of you know what it is, many of you don’t. Many of you have opinions about it and again many of you don’t.
For those who know it and have formed an opinion about it, well continue reading to reconsider and those of you don’t know what it is or don’t have an opinion about it up till now, don’t worry, you are being taken care of.
LET’S DIVE RIGHT IN!
Defining Work From Home
Telecommuting or commonly known as work from home (WFH), refers to working remotely and commuting through electronics mediums for work. Now, let’s look at the fundamentals of this definition- working remotely refers to working from a place away from the office, commonly this means working from home or some other place that is closely acquainted with the comfort one gets at home(a cafe will be a good example to go by). Also, commuting online or via electronic mediums, refers to connecting with coworkers and employees for work using mediums like online chats, e-mails, online meetings, telephones, etc.
History of WFH
From the long view perspective, WFH has been a thing from the time of hunter and gatherers, but that might be irrelevant to talk about over here, so let’s fast forward to the work-home of that existed in medieval times. In this period houses were an amalgamation of family and work-life which had its own perks- everyone contributed and did what they were best at, no gender gaps as this style of working could as easily done by men as by women. The professions undertaking WFH included bakers, seamstresses, shoemakers, potters, weavers, ale brewers, and blacksmiths.
During the industrial revolution that shifted the wheel from the work-home concept to work at site. Workers now were pulled out of their houses and made to work in an inflexible routine (the forerunner of what can now be referred to as a 9 to 5 job).
Technology came into the picture with the innovations in the wartime. In 1942, the world’s first electronic digital computer was built at Iowa State University, which not only helped crack enemy codes, but also laid the groundwork for the work-from-home movement that was still years off.
By the 1960s the ‘knowledge economy’ was still out of the picture and the 20th-century workforce was a commuting workforce. Meanwhile, the people in the creative professions continued to work from home.
“What we’ve come to think of as modern stay-at-home workers really grew out of the late twentieth century with creatives in metro areas like New York, London, and Paris reverting back to the Medieval way of doing things — with studio apartments that doubled as work space and living areas,” writes the History Cooperative.
In the advent of 1970s, there were various factors that pushed telecommuting forward-
- The Clean Air Act was passed in 1970.
- The OPEC oil embargo began in 1973.
- The idea of “gridlock” was coined to describe what then seemed like terrible commuter traffic into and out of cities every day.
In a book called The Telecommunications Transportation Tradeoff published in 1973, Jack Nilles proposed -
“either the jobs of the employees must be redesigned so that they can still be self-contained at each individual location, or sufficiently sophisticated telecommunications and the information-storage system must be developed to allow the information transfer to occur as effectively as if the employees were centrally collocated.”
The Washington Post published the article, “Working at Home Can Save Gasoline” which suggests telecommuting could have eased the gas crisis.
“If 10% of those who commute to work each weekday were to start working at home two days each week, this would reduce the volume of such travel by 4%. This is not a large number in the absolute, but significant when compared to the 3 to 5% overall shortfall in petroleum availability which brought on the recent gasoline lines.”
The article even brings up that the rising service industry, declining producing segment, and the development of data-based employments make it a lot simpler for individuals to come back to decentralized, locally situated strategies for work that were to a great extent well known before the Industrial Revolution.
On 20th September 1994, AT&T drove a preliminary with 100,000 laborers stretching out from the CEO to the phone managers, to test the telecommuting waters for such an enormous affiliation. Today AT&T is just one among various affiliations initiating the alternative workplace(AW) — the blend of nontraditional work practices, settings, and zones that are beginning to improve standard working environments.
All through the 2000s, associations like JCPenney, American Express, The Hartford, General Electric — GE, Levi Strauss, and Co., and Singes Possessions started attempting various things with the telecommuting model and created telecommuting ventures for agents, a critical number of which are as yet set up today.
The Covid-19 Angle
In the era of 9 to 5 jobs and packed schedules, employees have often struggled to find a work-life balance and some have even overlooked the need of having one. As unexpected and unfortunate as it may be, but the current pandemic situation has made employees (other than the frontline workers) work from home.
While some organizations are merely juggling with understanding and implementing remote work with no prior experience, some companies have been experimenting with work from home for a long time now and have mastered it so well that this crisis is hardly being troublesome in the functioning of the organization.
The question here is, whether the employees and employers are considering this paradigm shift as the future or are they bearing with it till the things get back on feet. Also, what are the benefits and repercussions of such a shift, and which one weighs more?
Comprehending The Employee Side Of Things
Although in recent years WFH has become more acquainted with people, the current situation has thrown this on the face of many. Before the pandemic, it was still a dream for many to imagine their workstation transforming into their couch. At a hasty glance, WFH might seem all dreamy and wonderful, and not to create any pre-assumptions, it might be so. To reach any conclusion we should consider the factors that shape this seemingly new cult.
What might be considered fair enough arguments to propagate WFH are -
- Flexibility of schedule
- No daily commute
- Better work-life balance
- Comfort of home
- Healthier lifestyle
- Increased productivity
Some of the above points are self-explanatory, but people may find the argument proposing increased productivity debatable. The logical case against this argument might be concerned about how a lack of discipline, a lack of space (mental and physical), and unfulfillment of obligatory social needs of an employee might let alone increase would lead to a decrease in productivity.
Many might be able to draw a well-demarcated line between work and family when working from home, while some others might end up blurring or at worst mixing the two components leading to failure on both fronts. Also, people find work as a medium to build a social life that might become obsolete altogether (bonding sessions over zoom don’t make sense do they ?). Informal bonding structures that are considered of much importance in any organization might collapse fully.
According to a survey by consulting and advisory services provider EY -
“As many as 72 per cent of organisations believe the impact of coronavirus pandemic will be felt beyond six months and the single biggest concern for continued remote working is fall in productivity.”
This does make sense when you consider this in your head, but a recent survey by Rescue Time cleared all our inhibitions and concluded that WFH has indeed increased the productivity of employees.
According to the Rescue Time survey, Over a year, people who work from home average 58 more hours on their core work and 256 fewer hours on communication (than office workers).
Coming to the psychological aspect of stress, procrastination, and lack of motivation, the following infographic aptly shows the facts -
Thus, it would be safe to say that work from home does increase the productivity of employees, by increasing their focus, comfort, and time at disposal.
What might make up for some inevitable stumbling blocks is increased screen time, as most of the work is to be done online as there is no scope of any physical efforts. Furthermore, breaking the orthodox 9 to 5 pattern, the formalities of calling and emailing at what one considered appropriate times is now becoming obsolete. The definition of appropriate hours seems altered and employees feel that they have lesser time to themselves compared to when they had to spend hours commuting.
Someone has to talk about boundaries and working from home real soon. I should not be waking up to emails from midnight through 3am with deadlines at 10am. This NEVER happens when we’re in the office. It’s almost as if WFH means work 24 hours.
— kevikev (@KevCoke6) April 9, 2020
The pain of equilibrating professional and personal life is becoming real. But in this situation, we have to say that comfort and hardships go hand in hand.
Comprehending The Employer Side Of Things
We have been able to conclude that WFH increases employee productivity, but does this argument alone justify adopting remote working fully, or are there any other viability criteria to be met before taking such a revolutionary and fundamental alteration?
When we consider the feasibility of the WFH model we need to take into account the concerns that might arise from the employers’ side of the desk.
Employers might have their doubts regarding the monitoring of the productivity level of employees and losing control over them. Although it is verifiable that employees’ productivity is on the rise while telecommuting, but there are exceptions everywhere and to dust off any doubts and lag that there might be, the employers can still keep track of the productivity. Employees if using work laptops that are connected to the company’s virtual private network can easily be invigilated. Furthermore, video conferencing apps like Zoom and messaging services like Slack which are WFH essentials, provide monitoring features to the employers, and ensure that focus isn’t compromised at any point in time.
Offices have customized workstations and are furnished over the years to gain perfection in terms of efficiency. Telecommuting won’t make sense if the workforce isn’t well equipped, and thus it is a matter that might forfeit the idea altogether. Some employees don’t have acceptable workstations while others lack room to work. Also, this problem is aggravated by network issues and e-commerce platforms not being able to deliver amid lockdown.
Next up, companies will have to alter their compensation and incentive plans to some extent. We will here explain things considering Willis Towers Watson Covid-19 India Readiness Survey 2020.
The survey was conducted among 4.17 lakh employees from 103 organizations during 20–31 March 2020.
THE FINDINGS STATED-
- 77% of organizations have indicated that there will be no reduction in salaries.
- 33% performance appraisals and bonus pay-outs will happen as planned.
- 17% 2020 long-term incentive plan designs have been impacted.
- 53% of cases have seen no adjustment to the sales incentive pay-outs.
- 42% have not decided on salary increment budgets for this year.
Wrapping Arguments Up
On close analysis, one finds what weighs telecommuting down and what gives it brownie points. The needle may not incline towards any side and thus the conclusion drawn can be ambiguous.
What we are experiencing today is an extreme situation that will eventually normalize in the times to come, and this will rule out the need for complete telecommuting. Working at home is not a hard-line and doesn’t need to be followed in all-or-nothing proposition. Hybrid models have been devised and can be refined to find a middle ground that optimizes the benefits of both work on and off-site.
Finding this neutral territory will not only provide efficiency in the routine world but will also help organizations to find a balance during unprecedented times that we are currently going through.
