How is working from home for you?

by Adam Gray | @AGSocialMedia | LinkedIn

Do you feel like you’re simply marking time? Do you feel that life is better? Do you feel that you’re missing something? One thing is for certain, working from home has had quite a profound effect on everyone.

For each of us we have a very singular view of the world and the situation we’re in. If you live in the countryside and have a home office in the garden that you need to walk to and it has a view over rolling hills your life will be very different to if you are in an apartment sitting at a small desk in the corner of your bedroom with a view of your wall

Whilst I don’t have that idilic first example I am fortunate enough to be closer to that than the second one. I can imagine that the overwhelming majority of people aren’t as fortunate as I am in this respect.

As we move out of lockdown and in to a more normal sort of life we might well be looking forward to getting back in to old routines again. But, one thing is for certain, things will not go back to how they once were. People are unlikely to want to be trekking in to the city every day like worker bees. Many organisations have also realised that the huge financial overhead of a city-centre office building and the enormous time cost of asking the entire workforce to travel to and from the HQ might not be the best way to organise things even once these strange times have passed.

So moving forward we need to consider what we as individuals want, need, and are prepared to tolerate and try to construct our working lives around what works for us.

Over the last few weeks I have gradually seen more articles challenging the ‘working from home improved work-life balance” narrative that seemed to have made up the majority of posts during the first weeks of lockdown. Perhaps this is because people enjoyed the change and were positive about putting a brave face on it in the early days and now the reality of feeling annexed and one day merging in to the next has struck home. Whatever the reason though it seems obvious to me that many people are missing the interactions they are so used to and they desperately want to have some of those back.

So perhaps the answer is to work more time from home and have a more flexible approach to where and when we work.

The good news is that now prospects, clients and colleagues know that not every worthwhile meeting needs to be had face to face, but let’s not forget that there is more to life than merely a balance sheet and efficiency.