Remember the days when heading to the office was just part of life? Then working from home was more like a scam, many odd jobs, and scams related to working from home were spread through many job search platforms. But after the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the remote work culture is growing faster than the office culture.
Even the new generation is willing to work remotely instead of working from the office and wants to be independent and have greater control of their lives.
Even companies or startups prefer to hire more employees on a remote work basis as they are not able to rent a good space as their office space due to the heavy rental prices or not being able to find talent in their local area or cities.
Generally, people are not willing to travel to more away cities just to earn a livelihood and leave their hometowns. Once upon a time, this was a fact.
While this is a great signal of comfort and choice for both the employer and employee, The real question is is the employee working less by working from home or working a lot more than a usual employee who works from the office or does not site daily?
The answer will really shake you.
The Old Normal vs The New Normal
In the good old days, if someone says that he was in a work-from-home job or profession, believing that fact was a lot more harder. Many questions were used to arise, whether he’s paying on time or not, whether the employer or the company is genuine or not, whether is he going to be scammed etc etc.
But in the new normal the work-from-home culture is spread across the country like anything. In the filter bar of any job search portal like LinkedIn, you can find more job listings on work from work-from-home basis than in the old days, and the applications are huge due to huge unemployment in the country.
In the old days, you may have had to travel from your home carrying your lunchbox to your office or workplace, you had to be on time, punch your thumb and sing on time, you forgot to punch or sing, then many companies were used to consider it as leave, even though you were present and working.
To be on time, you used to start a lot earlier to travel through your local train, bus or autorickshaw or your own vehicle to reach the office on time.
But remote work culture removes this travel thing as you can directly start the work on time from the comfort of your home.
After the pandemic restrictions were lifted from the country and COVID-19 cases decreased, many big MNCs started a hybrid work culture, where the employee must come to the office for a minimum of days in a week and present, whereas on other days he or she can work remotely.
This hybrid culture is still being followed by many organisations.
What Does “Working More” Even Mean?
Working more means working a lot more than you used to work at office before the remote work culture. The time you start your work, Generally you do your work, take some rest, tea break, lunch for an hour, then again a tea break, a team brainstorming session, a break if you feel stuck etc, but in the remote work culture, you don’t get any such things at all.
Even though you are allowed to take a lunch break, you generally start earlier as soon as your lunch is completed, because you don’t feel like spending time just like that for no reason, and without any colleague, you just try to finish the work as soon as possible.
But here the actual trap begins.
You get the feeling of not delivering and doing justice by working from home and trying to do more work and work hard to complete the pending tasks and projects on time, whereas the employer thinks that you are ignoring the work and spending time watching OTT or enjoying at home, so he or she tries to give you more work and deadline to complete by the end of the day.
That makes you more worried and frustrated and you end up working more to long hours till night without even taking any kind of break.
The work output shall be measured with more quality output rather than measuring with more quantity.
The creative professional suffers more due to heavy work demands and less freedom to think and work with creativity. So chronologically the quality of work diminishes and the work and repetitions increase from the quality check team, and then the employees generally work for more hours than expected.
Work From Home: The Pros and Cons
Pros
The best thing about working from home is no need to commute in traffic. Generally, when you commute every day you spend a few extra hours travelling and generally, it’s risky for your body than you can get to face any kind of accidents and unnecessary chaos on your way to your work. So by working from home you generally get to remove this thing of commuting for your work.
When you work from home, you are very close with your family members, Generally, if you have older parents and younger children you generally get more time to spend with them. While this is a boon, sometimes it creates more disturbance for the family to work from them in your working hours to fulfil some home requirements or to go to the store to buy some general stuff for the home, where you get to lose a lot of time and focus from your work.
Another thing which I don’t recommend is that you can do whatever you like while working from your home, Because there’s no peer pressure to be ready and wear your clothes formally or certain way to look decent among your peers, you can wear any clothes you like and work comfortably. But I always recommend wearing decent clothes and working professionally to get more focus towards your work and get respect for what you do, or else you’ll generally lose your interest towards your work.
Another pro of working from home is flexibility. You can eat, drink, sit work as per your choice. You can sit at any corner of your house with your laptop or devices and you can do as per your mood of the day.
Cons
While the pros are good, there are many cons that no office-going employee faces at all.
There are many distractions you have to face while working from home, the notice from your home, the family noise or the traffic near your home, everything disturbs you personally. and sometimes the internet or broadband goes off, and it takes time to restore, the employer generally gets annoyed with these excuses, and generally thinks that you are lying or something like that.
While you work from home, your personal life generally gets disturbed, as there’s a thin blurred line between your work and your personal life. The family thinks that you are available for them and you tend you work more for your family and have to suffer all happening in your family.
sometimes working from home leads to overworking because you feel like you need to prove you’re doing enough.
Work From the Office: The Good, The Bad, and The Busy
While the grass looks green on the other side, the working from office is also not an excuse.
What Works?
The office brings structure, routine, and face-to-face interaction with colleagues. As a human being, you need more connections with your peers, with whom you can share your work pressure or your work-related things which can be solved in minutes so that you get a collaborative environment and you don’t feel like working as everything goes smoother in a structured manner.
It’s easier to separate work from life when you can physically leave the office. When you come to work, you come to work, no other bullshit at all, like you face at home while working from home.
What’s Tough?
it’s the everyday commute, that’s tougher than the work. Generally, you suffer more in the commute than working from the office, when you work on-site. Yes, everyday commute is a tough task. You have to change many routes, many vehicle directions, face many strangers while having your journey, and have to see many things which could be disturbing and can damage your mental personality and can distract you from your work and make you drain your energy.
Which indirectly makes you sick and tired while you come back at home in the evening, you feel lost and drained.
Does being in the office make it feel like you’re doing more, even if you’re not always productive?
What We Think vs What’s Real
The viewpoint of employees and employers are different. While the employee is thinking about delivering more predictive and quality work the employer thinks in numbers like more getting done while paying less and spending as little time as possible.
Does sitting at your desk in an office give the illusion of being more productive? Don’t get fooled by your preconceived theory that while you are sitting and browsing in your office you’re working more. No. it’s not like that. You have your peers, office friends and colleagues, you chat with them. You bitch about others. You go to coffee or smoking breaks. You get many perks like you don’t need your own device, your own air conditioners, or your working desk cubicles
Everything is set up for you, but while working at home, you’ve to arrange everything and pay for everything out of your pocket, and it hurts at the end of every month through heavy bills and EMIs.
While working from home, you feel like providing justice to your salary and the organisation that you are working in, so you tend to deliver and work more for a lower salary.
How it Affects Your Well-being
It affects both physically and mentally. Working more makes us mentally stressed and creates an imbalance between work and personal life. And even if we work more, pay less attention to the body and barely eat anything, we gradually get weaker and fatter with more physical damage.
Even your work area plays a key role in your well-being. It should be neat clean and well-structured to create a healthy working environment.
Even though the there’s a rise in hybrid work, even though it’s possible for those who have relocated from their home to a city where the company is located beneficial for them, staying in a remote location and following the hybrid work culture is expensive.
Wrapping it Up
Generally, I would prefer both work from home or work from office, but work from home should be the preferred method, because of less commute and spending more time with family.
But many things to take care of, such as keeping less stress, the mindset of delivering more should be taken away, the work pressure from the company shall be decreased. If all the above conditions are fulfilled then there’s no better option than work from home or remote work.
