Remote Working. To Be or Not to Be.
Before the pandemic struck and upended our lives, work from home was a luxury many of us longed for. But then it was akin to a perk reserved for the select few.
To me, work from home characterized certain freedom to work at will. For good reason, it was linked to greater productivity and, of course, savings on travel (time and money) and dressing up for office. Clandestinely, it was an opportunity to attend to small household chores the weekends were too precious to waste on.
The one primary reason for not allowing people to work from home (or from anywhere) was the mistrust that the employee would go shopping or partying at company’s time (in some cases I have known, suspicion stemmed from real incidents). The other reason is the sight of an employee at their work desk - satisfaction managers cannot compromise with. I recall a rainy day when I requested my manager to allow me to work from home.
“Why? You stay close by. How difficult is it to travel to the office in a car?” he asked.
Of course, I didn’t want to tell him the real reason for staying back at home, which was to get some urgent plumbing work done.
A friend in an MNC, whose counterpart in the US worked from home often was never allowed the same convenience. The HR showed her the India work policy that forbid remote working.
But now that work from home has been the norm for more than a year, it’s no more a joy it was perceived to be.
Another friend tells me how unrealistic expectations it has given rise to. Well past midnight (in India) one day, his manager from the US called up and asked for some inputs in two hours flat.
On other occasions, employees are constantly made to hook to fatiguing meetings round the clock and that’s resulting in burnouts and annoyance.
“What else do you have to do at home?” a manager told his subordinate in another instance when the subordinate protested about the series of virtual meetings on his calendar.
But this forced work from home has also given a rare opportunity to many who were starved of spending quality time with family.
As we debate on the good and the bad of remote working, the choice of work from anywhere should prevail for its myriad benefits. Here are three in which it will help firms:
- Bring in greater work discipline and faith all around. Employees will mature and allocate their time to personal work more judiciously
- Increase employee productivity
- Enhance savings (which is already visible)
Indeed, WFH is a double edged sword- boon for many & bane for some. It's all about how both employer and employee use the set up judiciously.
Excellent views - maturity is the key thing here - both for the employee and the employer / supervisor. I remember my early days as a graduate trainee - my boss would leave the office only after his boss left the office. And due to this problem he also wanted us to stay in the office with him - very immature !!