It is not really working from home anymore, is it? It is living at work!
PROS:
Flexibility: During the lockdown, work from home has been a blessing to a lot of people due to the new work-life balance because they are now being able to spend a lot more time with their families than before.
Shruti, 29 has been working from home along with her husband and she couldn’t be happier. She said earlier due to work they would hardly spend much time together except weekends which is why this time has been an absolute blessing.
They are being able to contribute more at home while managing their work responsibilities at the same time.
Fewer interruptions: It’s easier to get things done when you’re working in a quiet space or a home office and dive into a flow state of deep work without colleagues dropping by and sitting down to talk about their weekends, upcoming plans, work trips and office gossip. With no interruption or poking around, home workers turn out to be more productive than office-based workers. You may need to show up for ‘meetings’ but you are more likely to get a break from attending several other unnecessary conversations.
No commute time or expense: Waking up every morning and getting dressed up to get to work could be really frustrating at times. Everyone is saving a lot of money and avoiding wasting hours to get to and from work because the office is now at your couch, dining table or right down the hall. Avoiding rush hour & traffic battles and long-distance commutes in metros and cabs tops the list of benefits for those who are working from home. Not having to deal with these two problems was a huge plus and saving a minimum of two to three hours per day which can be put to better and more satisfying use.
CONS:
No physical separation between work and leisure: Work from home has no definite start or end times which is why a lot of people find themselves working post work hours too. This makes them feel like they are literally always at work. The absence of an obvious division between the personal and professional life means some remote workers get distracted by housework or ‘a very long’ lunch break followed by a nap.
Dhwani, 24 shared her work from home experience that she is attending work calls after hours too which isn’t giving her much time out. She thinks there should be rules defined per se office rules—-> home rules.
Being too available is also taken for granted when meetings go on for way longer hours than scheduled for. So, setting boundaries and sticking to those boundaries, is pretty important at both ends.
Miscommunication: Many people who are currently working from home did point to the difficulty of getting the tone right or sending across a message in the right way through digital communication systems, such as email, chat, social media and text. It can be easy to misunderstand the tonality of someone’s message which is why we depend on body language and facial expressions to understand better but that is very difficult in the current setup. Therefore, there needs to be extra effort made in maintaining positive communications.
Monotonous life: What can be a blessing can also become a curse in the form of cabin fever. Work from home i.e. your couch can be the place you work from and eat lunch and nap. It can be really boring because of spending a huge portion of the day indoors without any change of scenery.
Ananya, 24 pointed out that how work can be ‘no fun’ when you’re not even getting to experience it first-hand at office… while interacting with colleagues and mingling around.
The monotonicity of it can surely reduce the productivity of employees.