Impact of Work-From-Home on Employees and Employers
‘Work-Life-Balance’ has been an endlessly debated topic since the last few years.
It touched a new dimension called ‘Work-life-Integration’ only until the
recent times before the covid-19 Pandemic has put all the employees to
Work-From-Home. The new Work-Life-Integration brought in a lot of good things
for employees from having a Gym for a young health freak employee to Crèche for
a young mother’s baby. Although the expenses incurred in giving these home-like
facilities are recovered from the employees in some form, it is still a huge
expenditure for the employer to build and maintain these facilities.
Yet, the purpose of all these initiatives is employee-satisfaction.
Satisfied employees are believed to perform better and their performance leads to
the success of the company. Today, when most of these employees are working
from home, these facilities do not make sense to them. Employers are naturally
saving on the office spaces, gyms, sports facilities and their maintenance and
utilities. But what they are missing on is a direct access to their employees,
the quick floor meetings, random-interactions, and continuous-engagement with
their employees. As per an article of Economic-times1,
58% Business leaders found it difficult to connect remotely with their
employees and 56% employees face network issues. Although online conferences
and meetings are a solution to these problems, there are two basic hurdles:
Internet-connectivity issues and Company’s confidentiality-policy issues.
Employees on the other hand, save the time spent in commuting
to office and utilize it better by focusing on health and other household activities.
An article from Monster.com3
revealed that 25% employees felt their stress reduced by working from home and
being near family. Undeniably, from my personal experience, I agree that in an
office, employee faces innumerable constraints starting from the way to sit,
talk, eat etc. to way one can express emotions and this freedom is compromised
with the appraisal they receive to obey with the Boss and culture of
organisation. Yet, this work-from-home period keeps them away from their
colleague interactions, support from seniors, ‘office’ environment and a clear distinction
between ‘Office’ and ‘Home’. They might also miss the engagement activities which
HRs organise for them and various celebrations which bring them all together.
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This dilemma of weighing the Pros and cons of Work-From-Home
brings me to an analogous dilemma of the recent times, ‘whether there is a need
for classroom teaching for students anymore’. Students need physical presence
of their teacher to learn, beyond the lessons, the personality traits like soft
skills, leadership, the body language, and other behavioural aspects which
groom them for better. Similarly, teachers need to know the body language of
students to modify their way of teaching, know whether their teaching reaches students
and get more access to them. Employers and employees also need a minimum level
of access to each other & learn various things beyond the formal talks.
Yet, there are employees who are comfortable with the new way of working. Hence,
it is high time employers “Fit policies to employees” and not try to
“Fit Employees to the Policies”. There is no One-Size-fits-all policy since
all employees are diverse. It is time Policies must be revisited for their
effectiveness and each employee must have an equal say in reforming them for the
greater good of organisation.
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