WFH- A Research Based Reality Check

When I was a kid , a popular advertisement on TV was an actor on realising how bright the new light-bulb works- says "ghar ke sab badal dalunga"- "Will change all bulbs at home"- Some ideas have a life-cycle like those bulbs . So when the pandemic started and we were forced to get into the largest uncontrolled work experiment since the dawn of civilization - the initial euphoric reactions were the same - Headlines and company CEO's screamed work has changed forever- we are not going back to offices, use the offices to create manure (well some of them were doing that when people were there as well) ; now 1 year down the line - people miss creepy Rajesh from the next cubicle- "yeah he was political as hell but man could he tell a story". Here is a reality check based on Science .

Sociology

We have almost no studies-especially in India which look at the effect WFH programs from the lens of class & gender .

Class-Maybe it would force a realisation that the front line workers and "Covid warriors " - from healthcare workers, , delivery , garbage disposal and house helps- who made it possible for us to live in our tiny safe bubbles with Netflix and Zomato binges have some of the riskiest, lowest paid jobs with no social security- despite sexy branding like gig economy.

Even in the Knowledge Economy the salary differentials between senior and junior levels are so high that its not easy to fathom lack of infrastructure and space that a software engineer or analyst might suffer from while working from home.

Women - irrespective of class in India have been dis-proportionally affected by Covid- Parochial attitudes have contributed to them taking more of "house chores"-- whether its cooking or cleaning , especially where they had to let go of domestic help to safeguard older relatives at home. - A survey cited by Hindu Business line noted that 85 per cent of women felt that it was challenging to work from home. While 81 per cent believed that it was difficult to draw a boundary between personal and professional life- 61 per cent of women felt that work-life balance during the pandemic was worse for women than the men in their house

Anthropology

This is my favourite- and should be the basis of all HR policy and not just Work from home policy - unfortunately it goes against the grain of most modern management practices

Human Evolution- is based on the longest "occupation" we had- Hunter gatherers and then came agriculture- both of them have periods of wax and wane- unlike the small duration of time we have been "organised" workers when productivity is supposed to be constant .

WFH has enables some folks to work like hunter gatherers , i.e. control their time and productivity and these are the people who are the most content and realised the maximum productivity gains . Some have indicate that they would take a 10% salary cut to continue working int he same flexible format .

Behavioural Science

Pro s

• Detailed studies even before the pandemic showed that work from home / Flexibility results in a productivity boost. A Study in China showed that not only there was a 13% increase in productivity but significant reduction in attrition and sick days taken. Some of the other benefits are
• Ability to have control over how they spend their time
• Reduce/ Remove the frustration of driving or commute
• The open plan of modern offices is often the culprit that reduces focus and encourages context switching and time wasting
• The Differently-able found the pandemic WFH as a boon because they were already remote working and now were not anymore the only person not in the room
• Increased work life balance - because of better control over time .

Cons

• Workday tends to get longer without the cues of start and finish and when personal and professional boundaries blur - travel to and from work actually signalled the mind to have a proper shut off from work.
• People missed offices because of what Jennifer & Gianpiero Petriglieri described as -" identity workspaces. They are spaces where we learn what it means, and what it takes, to be someone — say, a good soldier, chef, lawyer, doctor, accountant, leader. Through a bundle of stories, practice, feedback, rituals, and relations, we become that someone. Ideally, but not always, remaining ourselves in the process."
• Meetings meandered because the physical cues that a discussion are over were missing
• Informal interactions on what others were doing - significantly reduced- thus increasing "silos"
• Collaboration and Knowledge Sharing suffered - Creative , design lead companies found that innovation is being limited because of lack of spontaneity of interaction
• Online meetings made the "introverts" go more into shells as the physical cues of making a point or dissent were missing . If you have a boss who likes his own voice- meetings became virtual gas bags.

Economics

Pros

• Wage & Opportunity gap is huge- the salary differential between metros and non-metros is significant. Also a part of this differential is because of significant difference in cost of living
• Business that can work remote or do not need to be concentrated in metros may use the pandemic data + opportunity to spread to tier-II / III cities
• Some business will realise the benefit of the talent cloud- i.e- access the best talent- irrespective of the geography and permanent or flexible nature of employment
• In Industries and countries with high per ca pita salary - the commercial real estate business will take a hit .

Cons

• Pan Economic- Productivity studies are limited but some have indicated that as a whole productivity fell
• Productivity of Research & Development Teams, Teams working on collaborative input projects - fell
• Most of the available research is skewed towards developed countries- we are yet to find significant productivity gains in countries like India- where remote working from small house-holds with lack of privacy and subpar infrastructure had a clear negative impact on the junior and middle management . 

The way forward

• WFH is not the panacea of productivity that is made out to be
• Be vary of affects of WFH on Women and folks in Junior Management
• Collaborative Projects, Innovation and Productivity Suffers- when working remotely - especially when the work requires multiple teams coordinating , this is true for R&D , Design, New Product Launches and many more
• Be vary of lack of infrastructure to support WFH for your team- whether its bandwidht of physical space where they can "switch on " to work mode
• A common procedure of existing hybrid companies, accelerated since the pandemic started, is to designate certain days for in-office meetings and collaboration, and remote days for work involving individual focus
• Kissflow, a provider of digital workplace services with offices in the US and India, has introduced a mixed working model called REMOTE+. This combines three weeks of working from anywhere with one week of office-based work. The company covers accommodation costs for the office week, and encourages employees to return home the rest of the time.
• Nicholas Bloom, a Stanford University economics professor with expertise in remote work, believes that once the pandemic subsides, working from home two days a week will be optimal for balancing collaborative and quiet work, while benefitting from the reduced stress of less commuting. He suggests companies that want to retain their own space consider moving from tall buildings to spread-out industrial parks or campuses to facilitate social distancing.
• Work is not moving to Tier II and Tier III cities in countries like India- anytime soon

Sources

• Work-From-Anywhere: The Productivity Effects of Geographic Flexibility-Choudhury , Foroughi & Larson
• The new future of work - Research from Microsoft into the Pandemics impact on work processes.
• Does working from home work? Evidence from a Chinese Experiment - Bloom , Liang, Roberts , Ying `
• Identity workspaces: The case for business Schools. Gianpiero Petriglieri & Jennifer Louis Petriglieri
• Aternity- Are companies less productive while working remotely?
• The real Productivity Impact of Remote work- A Valoir Report
• Bullshit Jobs- The rise of pointless work and what we can do without it - by David Graeber
• Sapiens a Brief history of Humankind- by Yuval Noah Harari
• 85% of women felt it was more challenging for them to WFH: Survey
• India Inc CEOs see work from home advantage, long term
• Re-imagining the post pandemic workforce- Mckinsey & Company
• Why the future of work might be ‘hybrid’ - BBC Worklife

Omar Farooq

Omar is the CEO & Founder of AceProHR

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