Now it is customary to say that humanity has seriously discovered remote work and may not want to return to the offices, and Bloomberg correspondents have collected the opposite impressions.
First of all, work from home doesn’t just seem longer – it is. According to statistics gathered by several VPN services, when working from home, Americans work 3 hours longer than in the office. When there is no need to spend time on the road to and from work, that time somehow automatically becomes working. What’s not so good is that if you still sit at home and don’t go out even in the evening, you find yourself at work anytime, including weekends and holidays, and you have no reason to be unavailable.
That’s exactly what I always said when I was asked about remote work – you just feel like you’re working from home, you actually live at work. Your working day becomes endless, and the development of mobile technology makes it unnecessary to even approach your work computer – you will be caught up with a message in a messenger or, as the example in an article, a notice on the clock during the morning shower.
The lack of the need to move from home to work and back also has a psychological impact – some people interviewed by journalists admit that they need this time to prepare for work or, conversely, to complete the work process.
In one survey, 45% of Americans surveyed in early April admitted to feeling burned out. Both the increased workload and the lack of support from the employer contribute to this – because it’s not easy to do without direct contact, and few managers and HRs have experienced burnout on such a scale. In general, management has yet to come up with ways to maintain team spirit in fully distributed teams.
It is widely stated that remote work shows really effective employees and ruthlessly identifies idlers, but it is not uncommon for attempts to control this effectiveness, for example, by tracking the activity of employees, only increases the burden on them at the expense of psychological pressure. To this we should add the existing tension, because the conditions of work from home are not ideal for almost everyone, and everyone is aware of how difficult it is now and the economic conditions will become even more difficult.
Additional problems arise for employees with children who are also permanently at home – after all, schools and kindergartens are closed – and require attention. If we add that not all families are able to physically divide the activities of children and parents in at least one room, the picture becomes quite sad.
So, it is possible that by discovering the benefits of working from home, humanity will also learn to appreciate the benefits of offices. Once the quarantine is lifted.