Millions of years ago, when early humans stepped out to hunt, I'm
pretty sure some of them chose to stay back, and work on rather
important issues from home. Fast forward millions of years, and almost
the entire world is now working from home. Of course, these are not
normal circumstances.
We're in the middle of what's being
considered as the world's largest work-from-home experiment — except,
the test conditions are a far cry from what work-from-home normally
looks like. As the coronavirus pandemic continues to spread globally,
mankind's safest bet is to stay indoors and work, while hoping for the
best. And working from home in the world's biggest quarantine isn't a
walk in the park either.
People have worked from the comfort of
their home for a very long time now, but there was a very few of us. But
the pandemic has changed a lot of things. Most of them aren't a part of
your usual work-from-home routine.
As I write this from my home
office, a tiny study room I converted into an office back in 2012, I
have a bottle of hand sanitiser next to my laptop instead of a big bowl
of snacks. I wash hands every time I walk out of the home office or come
back in. Every alternate hour, one of us have to check in on the kid
who's also being homeschooled because as you know, schools are shut too.
There's a sticky note on the secondary display with a list of
essentials that need to be purchased today.
I'm
getting things done, I love working from home, and there's nothing
quite like it. But working remotely during the coronavirus pandemic
hasn't been entirely normal. When the lockdown initially kicked in,
there was anxiety in the air, and it did make things difficult for most
people who were new to the entire work-from-home culture.
Working from home during the coronavirus lockdown feels very strange
All
of sudden, there were hundreds of how-to's floating around on the
Internet, helping people 'stay productive' as they started to adapt to a
whole new workplace. Companies were worried about tracking their
employees' workflow. Some workers lacked basic equipment at home, and
couldn't buy anything new during the lockdown.
Needless to say,
things were, and to some extent they still are, chaotic. A lot of people
I know seem to be suffering from cabin fever, they're craving for
face-to-face interaction with another human being who is not their
family. Most office-goers initially loved missing their daily commute,
but now seem to want at least a slice of it. Some even miss that coffee
machine at work.
While normal work-from-home routine offers the perfect platform to stay productive without the distractions of an office, the new normal
work-from-home culture during the coronavirus lockdown is ridiculous.
You want to get things done, but some obvious distractions are holding
you back.
You're in the middle of a Zoom
meeting, and your brain signals 'Dude, we're out of milk'. You shush it
and continue to focus on the dozen people on the screen. Another 15
minutes, and your little one walks into your home office, asking for
candy. We're out of candy too, and we can't buy anything right now
either. Dealing with your partner at home, working or not, is also
something that needs a balancing act.
With the lockdown making it
harder to justify letting a stranger walk in, you're also doing your
household chores. Yes, the things that were somehow magically getting
done in the background. You realise the importance of a clean house when
you start sneezing because of all the dust that accumulated around the
house within hours. It's ridiculous. Don't even get me started about
cooking and keeping a sane stock of ration.
While relaxations are
slowly kicking in, things are slowly getting better for the
work-from-home-during-the-pandemic culture. We all can get back to focus
on that all-important Excel sheet because we don't have to worry about
getting groceries anymore. But most other things still remain constant,
and may do so for a very long time ahead.
Schools are still closed
so you still need to work while ensuring the little ones don't keep
breaking things while you're busy working. Don't even get me started
about homeschooling, which makes me wonder why am I even paying the
school anymore. It's a different thing for you to attend a Zoom call,
and an entirely different thing to make a kid attend one, while staying
glued to his chair, even for 20 minutes.
When your wife has a job working from home and you don't pic.twitter.com/yio11vRZkb— ???????????????????????????????? ???????? ???????????????????????? ???? (@wordamentalist) April 4, 2020
It's challenging, but work from home is going to be a part of most of our lives going forward. WHO says
the novel coronavirus may not go away entirely, like a distant relative
during the festive season. Companies are now adapting too, some even offering the possibility of remote work even after the pandemic situation eases. Others are planning to take the remote-first route in the long run.
Some
companies are trying to monitor their employees as they work remotely
during the coronavirus pandemic. While it's easier to keep an eye on
employees at offices, it makes it worrisome for managers to not be able
to see what their staff is up to. With millions of people working from
home during quarantine, companies are looking to better ways to monitor
their employees. The privacy aspect of tracking employees stinks, but
companies are trying hard to keep a balance between maintaining order
while keeping everyone productive.
No matter how crazy it may seem, but working remotely is proven to be more productive for most workers. A study
conducted by Stanford, back in 2015, found that people who work from
home are more productive than those who work out of an office. Some of
the basic advantages include no daily commute, no 1-hour chit-chat
breaks with colleagues, and no pointless meetings that could have been
just an email. Commuting itself has been proven
to make us 'unhappy'. This lockdown however, showed the opposite
happen, because of all the new stresses that a pandemic brings.
Another school of thought feels
that remote workers may lose out on human interactions which may
ultimately lead to a more creative mindset. Some people also feel
separating their work lives from their personal lives is quite difficult
when working remotely. From my personal experience, setting a time to
disconnect from work at the end of the day is probably the hardest part
of working from home.
Working from home may become the new normal,
but we're still quite a distance away from it. Not all jobs are
feasible enough to be shifted remotely. There's a growing concern
amongst companies for safeguarding their data as employees work from
their homes.
As
for me, I'm itching to back to the normal work-from-home routine when I
didn't have to worry about ordering groceries or keeping the little
one's screen time in check, or these 8 pm what-should-we-cook-for-dinner
meetings with my wife.
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