THE alarm buzzing on Eileen Chua’s phone is to remind her that its 6:00 pm. Time to pack her work stuff and “go home.” But going home means, moving to the next room to enjoy family time and engaging in her other passion–delicious home-baked cookies–sold under the equally delectable name “Chewable Cravings.”
The public relations manager from Quezon City said it is important to set boundaries and to manage work-life balance, a scale which many people in the remote working situation have failed to achieve equilibrium.
After one year of remote working (called by many names and acronyms like work-from-home or WFH, distance employment, work-from-anywhere (WFA), flexible working, open workplace) employees have repeatedly said, over Twitter, Facebook and Instagram how work-life boundaries have been blurred or disappeared altogether because it this new work arrangement.
Remote working is nothing new. Before the era of videoconferencing it was called telecommuting, telework, or teleworking, defined as being a technology-dependent work arrangement in which employees do not travel or commute, to an office or a central place of work. Back then telecommuting depended heavily on email and facsimile machines as well as analog radio and cellular telephones.
Since March 2020, when the whole world was thrown into this forced work-from-home arrangement, both employees and employers faced unique problems and found new benefits.
On one hand, experts from Global Analytics Worksplace say that the biggest holdback of remote work is trust. Regular managers, those who micromanage–controlling over the shoulder, or by “walking around” find it difficult to gauge and see results versus those who manage by outcomes and results.
On the other hand, a study published by Launch Workplaces, a US-based coworking space firm said that telework can hamper teamwork, decrease social life, impact on motivation while confirming how work-life balance disruptions, cause employees to be unproductive or emotionally bereft. WFH takes away important face-to-face discussions or even arguments, which are part of the social nature of a centralized workplace.
Two years before the pandemic, a Standford University economics professor Nicolas Bloom, studied the biggest travel agency in China and discovered a 20 percent increase in productivity–equivalent to one whole working day.
This productivity improvement came from several ways employees changed how they were working, less time spent commuting, taking fewer breaks and less time off.
In the manufacturing sector, it is a totally different game. WFH arrangements on the factory floor are not available in almost any instance and technology, like programmer robots and collaborative robots (or cobots) come into the picture. Engineers now work from a desk remotely, look at and operate digital twins to see projects progress.
There are however managers who simply don’t trust their people. They need to see them literally work from a desk and use technologies like “always on” monitoring cameras and video conferencing tools, because untethered is not normal. Technology has the solution, but policies control and manage this kind of micromanagement. Data and personal privacy come into place because the home is considered personal space, now overtaken by work arrangements.
Technology-related challenges proved easier to solve than personal ones. And many new-normal employees can relate. A bandwidth upgrade, a change of modem, a more powerful computer or a simple wired LAN closes most of the technology gaps in a WFH arrangement. What companies need to do it to help employees manage their time and productivity, ensuring work quality as well as quality time is given equal attention–something that used to be impossible in an office setting.
WFH is predicted to be the future.
In a lengthy LinkedIn post related to the workspace of the future, the concept of a hybrid working environment, with a mix of working from the office and working at home is being pursued intensely by many enterprises.
One factor for this trend? Cost savings. Enterprises realize the savings brought about by the reduction of employees at workspaces. Accenture PLC said they saved about $11,000 a month based on benchmarking data they set, while Flexjobs.com computes that about $4,000 is saved by U.S. employees who don’t go to an office and work remotely.
“I save about P15,000 a month” just on commuting expenses alone, including gasoline and parking fees,” Paul Cornista, who is part of a marketing company. “If this is the future or work, then I like it.”
Perhaps, it is Eric Yuan, CEO of Zoom, in a report that first appeared in BBC describes the future of teleworking best. He said “in the near future, some organizations will adopt a hybrid-work model, with certain days in the office and others remote, and might align employees’ in-office and remote schedules to create equity. Other companies will use video communications to be completely remote. Both models will enjoy increased productivity and deeper collaboration, and the ability to attract a more diverse workforce.”
