Work From Home
Everywhere we hear people mentioning ” New Normal” and that includes businesses that are being conducted in a cozy comfort of homes, irrespective of your own business or your organization’s. A lot has been written about how work has shifted to your drawing rooms and in many cases to the only room in your homes but the happy aspect of this WFH model is that your boss is not snooping over your shoulders. Look at the positive side – your wardrobe is not growing bigger, your vehicle is gathering dust, your fuel bills are astonishingly lower, your early morning hurry has turned into extended sleep hours, your spouse spends more time on yoga or exercise, you spend more time with the kids, your parents wonder what on earth your were doing at office that you are not doing at home. The flexibility in work hours is a boon for working couples and they now partake their household chores to an advantage. Businesses are claiming higher productivity as everyone now works between 10-14 hours a day and jobs are getting finished ahead of time and customers are happy if your work is based on your output at desk and not at an assembly line or with the machines. Energy bills are low, maintenance costs of work place have come down and idling hours have gone away. Employees work 1.4 days more in a month and the average commute time of an average 2 hours in a day to office has just vanished.
Has WFH come to stay as a permanent way of our daily life? Is it really good for individuals and organizations in the long run? What will happen to those lovely offices, buildings etc? People are already complaining that it robs us off personal life and the hard barricade that existed before between office and personal lives is now gone. It has created a sort of psychological toll on people who have increasingly become irritating for each other at home. Employees don’t get paid for logging extended hours and your mind is always pre-occupied with work related actions. In the long run, this may create health issues and as we know insurance companies and labour departments are re-writing their verbose on work place insurance coverage applicability. The huge office buildings look like monuments and people who are dependent on their maintenance have gone jobless. The roads are deserted and people’s livelihood on the road sides have taken a heavy beating. Taxi drivers, Auto wallahs have no jobs to run their families.
In my view, WFH is certainly not a good long term solution for everyone however good it may be for the bottom line of businesses. The sooner we go back to office, the better for all. Don’t we long to indulge in office gossips about your colleagues or boss and bring in the social courtesies that are pleasant to exchange and are refreshing to our moods?
THE PULSE by Sivakumar Gopal 