Why should we work from home
Most people are currently in lockdown due to Covid-19 pandemic, and most of has has been in this situation for weeks. This has forced us to change the way we work, and live too. After experiencing this, i can now say that i like to not have to commute to office to work, and i also hope to be able to continue to work from home more.
There are some apparent benefits to working from home too, since there would be lesser cars on the road, hence there would be lesser air pollution, and when the road gets much quieter this results in lesser noise pollution. Calculate your carbon footprint here.
This article shows the positive effect of Covid-19 pandemic have on our environment. So we should really put some thoughts into they way we have been living.
Another benefit of working from home is this: It only took me a few seconds instead of hours to reach my “office”, and there is Zero pollution along the way too. With the extra time that i have now, i could sleep more, and also able to make a healthy breakfast, and then enjoy it with the clearer sky now.
Anyway, why did we need to go to office and work, and why won’t our boss allow us to work from home?
This seems to be an idea that began decades ago, where people just flock to where their employer’s office is located at and work there. It is understandable for people who work in factory, and also those that operates a food and beverage retail shops. But for the rest of us that goes to office to stare at the computer screen the whole day and do the occasional meeting and discussion with fellow colleagues in within the same office or other area, i think we do this anywhere in the world.
As technology advances over the decades, the idea of commuting to office to spend the next 8 to X hours to work seems more or less intact. As a side note, there are quite a few modern companies that provide co-working spaces such as wework, but this is still based on the centralized working model, and because of this, these companies are badly hurt throughout pandemic such as Covid-19. On the other side, there are some companies such as doist, allowing the entirety of their staffs to work remotely, but there is just not enough examples to convince our boss that we could still be productive outside of office, because they themselves have not experience it. And i find this to be pitiful because those in power is imposing his/her opinion on how things should work, and this would certainly become a barrier to innovation.
Nowadays, many companies provide conveniences for us to work in office: fancier office space now such as open safe workplace (i personally find this either too quiet or just too noisy), offices designed to allow more natural light, ergonomic chairs that is supposed to help our posture and be comfortable too, when we get tired of working we could take a break in social areas such as game room, massage room, room with books, or just grab a cup of coffee from the ever convenient coffee machine with the endless supply of beans that the company bought, and when we do get back to work and need to join a meeting with multiple parties, we could go to any unoccupied meeting room equipped with fancy tele-comunication devices to let us see and talk to others in remote area. And the best of all is: i don’t need to wash my cups, plates, clean my desk, clean the floor nor do i need to clean the toilet! Someone is always there to clean it for me, i just need to focus on one thing and one thing only, which is working.
But working in office also makes it easier to transmit viruses such as flu virus, which you could then transmit it to your friends and families, this would be fine if it is not a fatal disease that has not have vaccine yet, such as the current Covid-19.
I guess a few key reason as to why employees are not allowed to work from home is: our bosses has gotten used to micro-managing people, this feeling of loosing control will lead to the belief that employee will work less, productivity will drop.
I think productivity would at least remain the same, or it would increase. Because being absent in the office leads to “I do not need to drop all my work now to attend to you needs immediately”, hence an employee could focus on his/her task. But working from home will be challenging for employee with children, as very young children will not understand your need of leaving you alone for hours to work. Another challenge of working from home might cause single people to feel more lonely too, but there is now a lot of video conference technology that keeps you connected to your team and fellow colleagues.
But nobody said that you should be working from home 5-days in a week, you could also choose to work 3 days from home and another 2 days at the office. Each of our experiences varies, hence i would suggest to experiment and pick the one that will work for you.
