With major companies like Twitter, Facebook and Apple extending work from home periods for their employees pretty much indefinitely, it seems like WFH is here to stay.
I’m also guilty of having thought that working from home was initially a good idea since you had a few perks that came along with it such as wearing your PJs, not having to travel in the heat and having the flexibility of perhaps choosing your work hours.
But month after month, it just got more and more exhausting. The endless zoom meetings, being constantly glued to your screen, having your work and home lives being blurred have made the concept a lot less attractive now.
A Stanford University economist called Nick Bloom said that “Working from home is not very productive right now”. He published a study in 2015 which found that Chinese call-center employees who worked from home were 13 percent more productive than employees in a control group, because they took fewer breaks and made more calls per minute. They were also more happy and less likely to quit their job.
However, things during the pandemic have taken a drastic turn. The blurring of work and home is likely to be a more permanent side effect of the pandemic. There are certain perks that an office space provided which we may not have valued before but definitely do so now.
These include lunch breaks, interaction with colleagues, having motivation to work, having a routine etc. So now when both the worlds have collided, people are realizing how hectic it can be to do remote work.
The lack of clear demarcation between work and home is leading to untimely working hours, stress, fatigue and overall less productivity.
Since there is no logging off, the mind’s focus is also lost when you return to work the next day. Therefore, instead of having a stimulated mind that’s being made to work, it becomes a rather tired mind that’s working mechanically.