Home Vs Office - Which?

Working from home was always deemed the ideal perk or concession when looking for a new job. When the new company offered that it also meant you could accept work at a company further away from home, and the company could offset offering more money on that same basis; lowering the commute burden with days working from home.

Working from home requires certain elements to virtualize the office connection. Good stable internet being one of them as a base layer and good video conferencing software to improve the virtual experience when collaborating.

March 2020 put the whole debate of work from office vs work from home under a trial by fire. The pandemic forced the transformation on many companies with a do or die mantra. Many have adapted, however, how has this change affected the company and then secondly the people they employ.

While many arguments for working from home are for the benefit of staff, we forget as well that a company supports many who have no job if we go completely virtual. If you work for a more traditional company, then the tea lady and the cleaning lady, the receptionist, and perhaps even the office manager were all handed notices of separation. The HR role was perhaps reduced because fewer people on people interaction, we may assume less to deal with.

The IT department? Initially, more work to get everyone online, and then a rapid decline in work since working from home would force the individual staff member to be more self-sufficient. Ie, if your mouse or webcam plays up, becoming more tech-savvy became a necessity to keep working.

There is a rule that says 1 professional creates employment for ~10 people. So, we can imagine that if we start reducing dependency, we start job shedding.

How did working from home affect the staff key to company business service and function? Many friends and colleagues I have spoken to noticed the following:

1. Lower Salary: Salaries were cut in an effort to save jobs. No salary increases were applied a year later, and the original salary was not restored, nor were bonuses paid
2. Work Load: Work increased, with more expected as staff who could not take the pace moved on. No, or few new hires taking place ie saves money to spread the work over the remaining staff
3. Work hours: Traditional office hours fell away, with the expectation of availability increasing to "Always Available"
4. Health: Since there was less me or rest time, over a year there was a definite decline in health and personal well-being. Family life suffered as well
5. Stress / Anxiety: Overall daily stress and anxiety rose, with no separation between work and home

Having an office to go to does have the overlooked advantage of compartmentalizing work away from home. If you leave the office for the day, the last-minute call becomes tomorrow's work or task.

Some of my observations with working from home were:

1. More time needed: Tasks that an employee could have done in a day now started to take 2-3 working days
2. Technical growth and skills sharing: When you are all in the same space, skill sharing and the cross-pollination of ideas happens organically and it feeds on itself becoming stronger and adding more value. That just doesn't happen when you connect once a week for a meeting.
3. Recognition and credit: It was also noted that since there was now a higher focus on "what have you done", the work from homers were more likely to need help and subsequently claim the credit on work not done entirely by themselves. This led to team members not wanting to assist others as it took time from their work
4. Task Shyness: The work from homers also now became less likely to tackle more complicated or technical tasks and took on the items that they knew they could do, and then asked for more time. So, skills growth suffered.
5. Work Load Shift: Those who chose to come to the office more often then started to take on the work that was not being done or not done properly.
6. Culture Deterioration: While this point is open to debate as it is more subjective, there was a noticeable team culture change. I won't say break down because that was not true.
7. Task Stalling: Part of the reason for tasks taking longer was that often completion needed other resources in the company, so you have to wait to schedule a meeting. This contributed to the rise of point 4.

Employee / Employer Trust

While sitting on the same floor in eyesight of your boss gave them some sense of assurance you were working, working from home eroded that because it's easy to assign 3, 5-hour tasks to one person or the person who answers the chat. Then in two hour's time, a progress report on all 3 tasks was asked for . . .

Don't get me wrong, we all do our work and get it done. But your manager is always the one needing convincing, which I saw caused raised stress levels as management wanted more feedback sessions and meetings and tended to manage more increasing stress levels on employees.

Advantages?

Many of the advantages cited for working from home were

1. Lower office costs: While true, the cost of a workspace would have just shifted onto the employee, along at times with the cost of equipment, etc
2. Less commuting: True, but why then do so many get up earlier and work later while working from home. That commute time should be personal time, with office hours maintained
3. More family time: Tell that to the closed door of the study. ..
4. Working for a preferred company in spite of geography: While true, many fellow South Africans got jobs in other parts of the country on the basis that they would be open to relocation - where they could work from home < - makes sense?

The X Factor . . .

While the work from the home debate will rage, there is the reality that humans work better in teams. While there are exceptions to that, a team provides the emotional, technical, and logistical support that has to be requested and then waited for if you work from home. It's much easier to context shift and collaborates on multiple tasks when in the same work space, and a lot gets lost in translation when writing emails and answering texts as a way to assist.

The Muddied Conclusion

True, working from home does save the company money, however, that incurs costs in other ways and shifts the cost to somewhere else, rather than reducing or eliminating it.

True, working from home does save on commute time. This time was often used for other less obvious thinking/mulling or emotional down time dealing with life and personal growth - which is now gone. The point is that the mundane effort of just getting to work has hidden advantages.

New hires will suffer as well because much of the knowledge transfer that makes people good at what they do happens organically or incidentally by observing and working alongside more experienced colleagues.

In the long run, the work-from-home employee is a new type of person. They are emotionally robust, highly motivated, and highly adaptable to change. The question is: Are they human?

With more people suffering from emotional burnout, depression, and raised anxiety companies are bound to start suffering, and without a clear-cut formula for the problem, there remains no clear ethos to solve the problem. The work-life balance is the ultimate goal, but with higher productivity being demanded in exchange for concessions are we really helping ourselves by bringing our work home?

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