Hmm, recent survey findings suggest that Work from Home works.
Made me think, are we all just putting up a brave face & say it works for us in those surveys?
Are we just trying to make the best of a very bad situation?
Is WFH here to stay?
Some say it is still too early to tell.
I say, working mainly from home does not work for most of us unless we work on solving these 10 challenges:
1) Mental Health – Collaborating online is more mentally taxing than working together face to face (Microsoft’s Human Factors Labs).
2) Communication issues with partially-remote workforces – Lack of person-to-person communication can be a challenge for some people. The full extent of their professional efforts might not be appreciated because of a lack of in-office contact.
3) Young people & new jobs – I would not have been mature enough to work from home when I began my career. There’s far too much I would have missed out on in the learning process.
4) Social bonds & collaborative techniques formed in person can be carried over into a remote setting. But the same isn’t always true when colleagues are forced to establish their professional bond remotely at the onset.
5) Decision inclusion – For those of us in any kind of a leadership role, being “on the bridge” is an important part of our job helping run a company. But it may not be possible to be metaphorically on the bridge without being literally in the office.
6) Extroverts – Many of the most successful people in any organization are good at selling themselves & using the power of conversation to get their point across. This stuff doesn’t work as well on a Zoom call with 15 people in little boxes on your computer screen.
7) Lack of physical boundaries between work & personal life – Not everyone stays at a conducive home for remote work.
8) Loneliness – Social connectivity is a critical element of what enables us to be productive when collaborating in the workplace.
9) Optics – Many of us grew up in a culture where actual time in the office is equated with how dedicated an employee you are. So what will it look like if two-thirds are in the office & a third are at home? The worse that ratio gets, the worse the optics.
10) What about the majority? – More than 50% of the global workforce can only dream of the privilege of performing their work from home. Who am I talking about?
Our colleagues in Manufacturing, Logistics, Retail, F&B, Hospitality, Healthcare, Agriculture or your friendly bus driver (wanted to write ‘aircrew’ but we haven’t seen those for a long while).
Their duties must be performed at an on-site workplace & cannot be performed at home.
They & their duties are rather essential.
So where are they in all these scenarios? Where are they in those “privileged” discussions?
What other challenges do you see?
How do you feel about that privilege of “Working from Home”?
Could it be that the idea of working from home is better than actually working from home?
My verdict: The workplace – There is nothing like being there.
I am a bit torn about this issue… After 10 months of working from home, I have observed quite a few positives:
1) saved 20 hours of driving to and from the office a month
2) ate healthier by cooking own meals
3) in theory I had more free time
4) much less office bullshit – colleagues gossiping etc
5) more intense family time
6) worked from two other countries (not encouraged, but also not forbidden in my company) while work from home
Unfortunately, there were also negatives
1) All the fun bits taken out of work: seeing colleagues, going for a beer, table soccer match, non-verbal communication, fierce discussions face to face…
2) Worked a lot harder from home than ever in the office… More hours, basically felt like living in the office
3) Totally disassociated mentally from the job. Maybe because of the lack of interaction outside the telecon marathon, maybe because too much work… I totally lost all identification with the job
4) not leaving the house for days on end has led to fatigue and crumbling physical shape. I used to go to the gym after office and in that way the commute structured the day
5) First few months I worked in jogging pants and t-shirt, I stopped doing that and now dress up for work again, as I felt somehow deteriorating
6) Much less time to focus on getting things done. This came as a surprise to me. As work from home was introduced we also started using Microsoft Teams and instant messaging and dramatically increased the video conferences. This led to always on mindset with notifications popping up left and right and people demanding instant responses instead of email. This made working for more than 15 minutes uninterrupted pretty much impossible. In the end I had to catch up at night and once or twice on the weekend, which I never did before.
You are right that working from home is a total privilege, for many jobs it does not work. For those who can, I believe a hybrid model is the best. Half the time from home, half from the office would be ideal for me personally. In order for that to work, there should be 4-6 core days a month, where the whole team is in the office.
Overall this “best of both worlds” scenario would maybe work better than 100% office or 100% work from home?
Excellent sharing of how you experienced working from home.
It looks like there is a consensus evolving for hybrid models going forward.
Those “core-days” you mentioned will be essentials as we need to actively work to build social capital at work – and for this, we do need the human-to-human interactions.
They say innovation occurs when idea-filled people meet & interact. Severing this tie between “where we work” & “where we connect” could have profound consequences on innovations over time.
Well, I guess we will find out in the next few years whether technology can replace the serendipitous personal encounters that often spark innovation and that contribute to our well-being.
Hi Andy,
How is everything?
My friend from Siemens told me last month or so, WFH is to be a norm even after Covid.
One problem here is lack of space! Imagine husband, wife WFH. Children at Uni level also SFH!
Also, SG weather can be too hot and humid, and imagine AC switched on throughout the day and at night when we sleep.
The rainy weather lately is not giving me too much complaints about the weather though.
And not all Singaporeans household live in a big house like in US, AU, EU.
Hi Rolf, Yes, those are additional challenges.
Interesting what your friend from my former employer Siemens said. I read last month, that Siemens announced a new mobile working model that is allowing more than 140,000 Siemens employees in more than 125 locations across 43 countries to work from wherever they want, for two or three days a week.
Wherever is much wider than WFH. I gives flexibility and autonomy to the employees. Including choosing to work at the office.
Details are here: https://hrmasia.com/siemens-new-work-culture-is-on-the-move/
Some humanized workplace flexibility would be great, right? Give people the choice to work from anywhere and we will end up with hybrid models.
Work will be more about what you produce as opposed to where and when you produce it.
Employer flexibility will no longer be a ‘nice-to-have.’ It will be table stakes.
Will go back to f2f workplaces when covid blows over.
But hybrid will have greater acceptance in certain companies & civil service.