Pros and Cons of working from home during COVID’19 Lockdown (Part 2)

For those who haven’t read the Part-1 of this topic, please do so to know about the pros of working from home. This article focuses on the negative aspects of Work from Home.

Now that all of us have spent many months being bound to our laptops at our homes when it comes to work, we might have realized that the grass is not always greener on the other side. ‘Work from home’ brings its own set of perils which need to be properly circumnavigated. A cursory look at each of those issues goes like this:

Ergonomics goes for a toss

I still remember a session that happened in the very first company that I had joined after my studies. It was conducted by a well-known medical practitioner and the entire session was on how to develop proper posture while working to avoid issues like curvature of spine, pain in the neck, poor circulation of blood etc. It all seemed far-fetched in those days. But after all these years in the industry, I appreciate every point that was mentioned back then.

The corporates have been doing their bit. From installing ergonomic chairs and desks to sending mails on how to take frequent breaks at work, urging the employees to follow proper techniques of using the keyboard – all these meant that we employees had someone to guide us to avoid health related issues due to bad postures.

Compare that to the current scenario.

How many of us have ergonomically designed workstations at home?

How many of us have our laptops placed at the eye level when we are working?

With no friends around, we may not even take that occasional breaks which are much needed to avoid strain on the eyes.

Seemingly simple things which can later lead to major health related complications in the long run.

Nothing’s lost even now. Making little changes can go a long way in leading a fit life.

It isn’t all that joyful

Barring those highly stressful days wherein the deadline is fast approaching, and we work as if there’s no tomorrow; all the other times, employees in the IT offices have relatively better ways to spend time. A couple of coffee breaks, extended lunch hours, strolling around in the lawns of the office premises while talking on phone with the loved ones, playing a foosball or a basketball in the evenings, reading newspapers or a book in the library – there were too many ways to relax when needed.

Quite a few companies have uniquely designed ambiences at the workspace – yet another way to make employees feel more comfortable.

I am sure that I am not the only one who is missing these little joys of being in the office.

While we can’t dream of having all these available for us in our homes, we need to replace those with other options like spending time on our hobbies, trying out some new activities, watching some comedy clips for entertainment (movies are a no-no in the office timings), spending time with kids etc.

No socializing

Devoid of the need to travel and spend time in the office implies having to confine ourselves in front of laptops within a room in our homes. With the fear of COVID being scary enough, none among us would really like to hang out with others. That leaves us with the only option of having to spend our time with our family at home.

Socializing with others has reduced big way. In pre-COVID era, if there were some sports tournaments planned, we had an opportunity to mingle with employees of other projects/divisions. When there were some cultural activities, debate competitions, toastmasters or some CSR activities organized, we got to find the hidden talents of our fellow employees while showcasing our own skills and interests.

Perhaps we need to wait for things to get back to their normal state to relive all such events.

Lack of networking and bonding with the team

When was the last time any of us had been to a team lunch? Remember those birthdays of our teammates and how they were celebrated?  What about those quarterly get-togethers? Or those parties on winning new logos or successful project deliveries?

These were not just occasions to eat and make merry but also allowed us to bond well with our teams.  As a team, we had that oneness which strengthened beyond the usual office work.

Post-COVID, all these have become a matter of the past. Work from home makes it difficult to have such joyful moments with our fellow teammates.

For now, virtual meet ups are the in-thing. This could be the only way to gel well and work together with our teams.

Lack of visibility

What work we do matters. But what matters equally is how we portray our work. How we showcase it to our senior management and how we receive their feedback. Working from home strips one of the abilities to understand the impact of their work fully. It gets difficult to know if all that hard work that you had put in has really fructified (unless the manager takes that extra task of letting you know). If you had been longing for that promotion or onsite or a pay hike, you can no longer make frequent follow-ups with your boss to find out. Neither can you have that one-to-one discussion (in person) to get a better understanding. Visibility of your work takes a dip and so does the motivation to slog more and make your work count. Perhaps, the managers must take this into account and find ways to maintain the motivation levels in employees’ in these tough times.

Grave impact on career prospects

Sitting alone and working at home reduces our career aspects in more ways than ever imagined. The regular interactions with our colleagues lets us know what’s happening in other companies, what sort of technologies are they focusing on, which certifications or courses are they pursuing, how some executive MBA graduate is making a killing, about how some ex-colleague has a start-up now etc. O course, these discussions ae over and above the other water-cooler gossip about office politics, latest movies, cricket, where to invest, latest car model that’s out in the market etc. ?

It helps when a colleague of ours has a friend in the company that we have applied for and we get a referral done in this manner. Small step ensuring greater chances of clearing the interview. Such things don’t seem to be possible to happen over a phone call.

Working from home shuts down our interactions and exposure to the outside world so fiercely that we might get stuck in our work and comfort zone without even realizing the surreptitious nature of it.

How to deal with it? Staying in touch in whatever limited options that are there on a regular basis instead of calling up only when there’s a need – that would be worth following.

Need to be available online for more amount of time/day

Employer’s gain can come at the cost of employee’s loss. That’s what seems to be happening right now. While the companies are pleasantly surprised that the current COVID crisis has in fact led to increase in productivity, the employees who have always been longing for ‘work from home’ option are realizing what a double-edged sword it is.

The reason behind increase in productivity is due to extended hours that an employee spends on the office work. Well, it’s a Hobson’s choice. The employee can make no excuses to skip work even if it’s after office hours. This has surely been a blessing in disguise for the employers but an irking issue for the techies.

Distractions at home while working

Unless the employee lives alone, there is no way to avoid family interruptions while at work during ‘work from home’. It could come in any manner at any part of the office time. It could be wailing kids, nagging spouse, noisy maid, TV watching (on high volume) parents or in-laws, cute but troublesome pets or ever nosy neighbors – anyone can gatecrash into your office call putting you in an embarrassing situation. Lucky you if it’s only the audio effect as the video interruptions can lead to a higher level of facepalm moments.

Tips to follow:

• Set up a dedicated office space with clear instructions passed on to all the housemates to avoid you and your office space at any costs the entire day.
• Use features like blurry background or virtual background that few video calling apps have.
• If you find it affordable, go for some soundproofing set up of the room which doubles up as your workspace in the mornings.

Lesser scope of going out

Back then, the way from office to home in the evening was never a straight path. It had lots of pitstops be it for men or for women. Could be some shopping, catching up a latest movie in the mall, some quick drinks celebrating a friend’s promotion, hitting the office gym, playing basketball or none of these but a simple chitchat with friends at the cafeteria. The sheer options to relax after a hectic day and before getting back to home to handle yet another world’s problems were many. Work from home has snatched away all of these and all at once. Can these still be managed despite working from home? Perhaps yes albeit requiring more planning and more persuasion to make things happen. But it would never be so simple as it were when we all could start at same time from office and even last minute planning could take place.

Irregular eating habits

Remember those school days and summer vacation. Having to go to school meant having breakfast by 8:30, lunch at 12:30 noon, snacks at 5PM and dinner by 9PM. Vacation timings wouldn’t be so organized. Brunch at 12 noon would replace breakfast and lunch. Snacks may or may not be there and dinner got rescheduled to 10 PM or later.

Our naivety then made us to love the vacations still. Moreover, vacations never went on to replace the school days completely. So, things came back to the normal self once the vacation ended.

What’s happening now is anyone’s guess. Appreciating and putting aside all those self-disciplined stalwarts and talking about mere mortals like myself; the ever-extending work form option can play havoc with our health due to our lackadaisical approach towards our own food timings.

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While all these points on negative impact of ‘work from home’ are from the employee’s perspective, I we need to at least touch upon how it affects the companies too. Putting aside the usual ones like no direct control on deliverables, additional expenditure on making remote access and work possible, there’s one mind-boggling incident that took place in the month of April that came to light.

Yes, you read it right. A loss to the tune of USD50-70mn. Well, partly the reason behind this attack was the VDI (Virtual Desktop infrastructure) and the new laptops purchased to increase the WFH capabilities. These were the soft targets for the attack.

Perhaps this immense financial and image loss wouldn’t have happened had it not been for the hasty measures taken to implement WFH at the earliest (all thanks to the sudden COVID cases spike and ensuing lockdown measures). Or at least the magnitude of the loss wouldn’t have been so enormous. This highlights that work from home brings with it some serious security risks for the confidential data that IT companies deal with. The kind of risk-free environment that Secure ODCs provide in offices cannot be implemented at our homes when we work on such critical data.

Employee Reliability and Retention issues

It’s tough for companies to keep a tab on their employees.

Unlike the previous times, an employee can easily transition from one company to other by attending some skype calls and clearing the interviews.

When employee induction programs can happen over calls, the hiring process can also be completely online.

Companies would have to re-define work culture and instill a sense of accountability in every employee to maintain and enhance employee reliability and retention capabilities. Now that we have clearly and comprehensively gone through all the pros and cons, I am sure both employees and employers alike would tread cautiously on this ‘work from home’ option to retain the best practices and eliminate the drawbacks effectively.

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Well, that brings an end to the Part -2 of this article. Hope you had a good read.

You can reach out to me on LinkedIn or drop in a mail at ranjith.kumargokul@gmail.com