Work From Home can work: it has to

Firstly, I have written this short opinionated piece as a response to the below post that I noticed in my “Today’s news and views” section when I logged into LinkedIn earlier. Now, I’m no journalist but I do have some points to make regarding this topic as I feel very well informed on it for a number of reasons I will go into further down the page…

(feel free to encourage discussion, share ideas, and post comments on this post as you wish. I am no authority on the subject. Merely a man who has experienced both sides of the coin) 

Beware of permanent WFH

“While more companies and workers are embracing the benefits of remote work, long-term arrangements may not live up to the hype. Experts say extended remote work threatens a "decay in culture," as out-of-office workers face increased isolation, distractions and blurred lines between work and home life. Short-term success amid the pandemic has largely been rooted in established relationships, which are harder to build and maintain online, Axios reports. It's even led some companies to rebuild virtual simulations of their offices to give employees the social experiences of office life”. 

- Kelli Nguyen (Editor at LinkedIn News)

https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/kellinguyen/

My take on it...

As a Londoner and both recruitment industry & music industry professional who has worked from home for circa 4 years in total in the past and will work from home once again when I fully launch my business, I understand better than most the pitfalls and the plus points to working from home. There are ways in which you can preserve and protect culture. Let us not focus on the fear of what long term change could bring about and instead learn from this current experience and use these valuable insights to plan and structure a better way of working moving forward. More businesses need to take a pragmatic approach: coming from senior leadership and HR (organisational management) and change management teams. If good structure is built-in, regular communication is maintained and time for fun is accounted for then a good balance can be reached and progress achieved. I will say, having experienced both sides of the fence for extended periods of time… there is nothing like the feeling of working for a great company with a really vibrant office space and positive people but let’s face it: not every company is like HubSpot, Taboola, or Google. In my experience as a recruiter, the most common question asked when speaking to a candidate about a new role after the salary and skills required is: will remote working be possible? For many people working from home is the breath of fresh air that they need. Yes, there are some downsides to WFH (I’m a realist, I know these exist, but I’m also optimistic about the future… especially here in the UK)… https://www.axios.com/downsides-of-remote-work-covid-f95f4325-e40c-4556-b838-05788320d8d3.html Nothing that can’t be overcome or worked through though so I welcome change in this regard and believe that if anything the whole COVID19 crisis has taught us that we don’t need a major national or global disaster to just try something different. And even if it doesn’t work at first, that’s okay. A great songwriter once said: “if at first you don’t succeed… dust yourself off and try again”!

The benefits are clear. It frustrates me that it has taken an event of such gigantic proportion (a threat to not only human life but also our way of life) such as a pandemic, for the majority of employers and the UK government to realise the level of benefit that can come from remote work en masse (I say government lightly as they are currently divided in opinion over its effectiveness within their own organisation). 

I get that it will work better in some industries better than others. Premier League footballers can’t exactly execute a 90-minute football match via Zoom and a TfL bus driver cannot get you to your said destination via Skype. Having said that, using a common-sense approach wouldn’t it be wise to have some form of government-led study or assessment type initiative to look at furthering the somewhat experiment of mass working from home that we have been experiencing through lockdown? An exploration into which industries/professions could benefit most from remote working the most and then also look at how best to build the infrastructure that would support this new remote working/office working world so that it can be both efficient in the short term and successful in the long term (as we wouldn’t expect it to be perfect and yield amazing results right away of course)? 

Personally, I feel like having the whole of London rushing into work in the same very congested, overpopulated, air polluted area is counterproductive. Why must we all (the majority) start work at 9am? Companies should be ordered to have staggered starting times depending on what industry they are in: so effectively 9am start time becomes the minority and 8, 8:30, 9:30, 10, 10:30, 11 becomes the majority. It’s too much of a strain on the public transport system and people’s minds above all to do it how we’ve been doing it for so long. I don’t know about you but I find the commute on the tube stressful. As a sufferer of hypertension it physically causes me to feel ill: nerve pains, headaches etc. when I have a bad experience on the tube: lately it has been roughly 1 in 4 journeys… I could do without that, before I start or after I've finished my challenging work day, and many other inner city workers could too also. Spare a moment of thought for those who have lost their jobs due to matters out of their control (it happens): because the system could have been better designed or performed better for them on a particular occasion. 

Perhaps there needs to be more support for the cyclists and more incentives through the companies people work for to encourage cycling and other environmentally friendly modes of transportation. Either way that element isn’t going to go away without some careful thought and action and I believe that element is already a decay to our culture. In my humble opinion, these problems that exist and could come about can be solved both logically and creatively and thus prevent any further risk of culture decay. Doing all this whilst maintaining and enhancing the whole notion of work-life balance is essential to the process of change though. I like this NY times article by Charlie Warzel which touches on some of these points: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/26/opinion/work-from-home.html

I believe what we will see eventually is a culture that embraces a hybrid of working in the office and working from home. I can appreciate though that as we approach the close of lockdown companies (especially those who are actively hiring) must be confused and/or undecided on whether they will be back to the office 100% full time, 50/50 split between WFH and the office or simply 100% remote (the safest option whilst as a nation we are still not yet in the clear). Google for example is having its employees work remotely up until 2021 (https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/8/21252240/google-employees-essential-staff-remote-work-from-home-2021).

More companies need to show enough trust, courage and flexibility to allow their employees the right to work from home. It’s the 21st century and people lead busy lives outside of work… many of us have families to support whether it be siblings, elderly parents, disabled or differently-abled family members, or children of our own. Some people have illnesses which don’t necessarily prevent them from doing their job but can bring occasional or even frequent complications (I myself am one of these people). Many of us have to work more than one job just to be able to survive. Many of us have hobbies and passions outside of the 9 to 5 or 9 to 6 grind (let's be real: for many of us it's more like 9 to 7/9 to 8/9 to 9 [God forbid!] smh) Monday to Friday; which means having that said timetable, as rigid as it is, definitely puts a massive strain on our schedules and our ability to effectively manage and maximise our free time. Why should the time we spend in our day job encroach on everything else and eradicate opportunities of personal downtime, relaxation, study, pleasure or just simply basic living? Working from home gives us so much more flexibility and additional time (we would not normally have had if we had to commute at rush hour or work late) to factor in all these other things which let's face it: are just a standard part of day-to-day LIFE.

Come out of the bubble and see the reality… Change is necessary. It cannot be a one-size-fits-all approach either. Introverts are likely to thrive in the WFH environment but Extroverts are probably better suited to working in the office (depending on what that office space and it’s people are like). - https://introvertdear.com/news/introvert-working-from-home-is-heaven/ Either way the future of how and where we work needs to look a lot different to how it has looked pre-pandemic... and this is I believe for the good of the economy, productivity for our employers, our own personal social lives, the environment (due to less congestion and pollution) and last but by no means least: our mental health.