The WFH phenomenon as a double-edged sword
The WFH setup and attendant rise in productivity may be good for some industries but there is a need to look at the situation from the perspective of the individual worker. Are employees really becoming more effective, thus productive, or are they just working more because there is hardly any demarcation line between home and work anymore?
There was a survey done last month (September) by USbased Enterprise Technology Research (ETR) among 1,200 chief information officers belonging to different industries around the world. The results were interesting in that the CIOS were optimistic about business prospects next year, mainly because productivity actually increased during the coronavirus pandemic.
The way I see it, people are working more efficiently from their homes as they have more time saved from not commuting and because meetings are more focused and shorter, requiring zero commute as well. Systems and processes are starting to flow more smoothly as organizations are able to deal with the initial kinks. In the survey, the IT departments in telecommunications, financials, and the insurance sectors reported a boom in productivity.
Based on another study, US office workers have been saving an average
of 4.3 hours per week because they don’t need to commute. This figure could be a lot higher for a country like ours where urban roads are congested almost all of the time. Many people are using this extra time to work, according to this survey of more than 10,000 Americans by researchers at Voxeu.org, a Center for Economic Policy Research web site.
And because the WFH setup seems to be working well for most people, the CIOS surveyed expect that the percentage of permanent WFH workers is set to double in 2021.
They also expect that budgets for the IT sector will increase, allowing them to reduce hiring freezes and to start working on projects again.
According to a new report by the researchers at Harvard Business School and New York University, the average workday during lockdown is 48 minutes longer than pre- Covid times. The researchers studied 3.1 million workers from more than 21,000 firms in more than a dozen cities in North America, Europe and the Middle East. This report also states that workers are sending more e-mails and attending more (although shorter) meetings.
In various places all over the world, the WFH setup has started to plant itself more deeply due to new policies. In San Francisco, for example, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission has just approved a mandate that would force office-based companies to have 60 percent of their employees become remote by 2050. This policy is being adopted to address climate change and build on the momentum of the WFH trend. In Japan, Honda is giving its employees extra allowance to cover for their electricity and equipment expenses. And in England, companies are trying to reverse plans to return employees to their offices after the government abruptly changed its initial push encouraging the same businesses to put people back in their offices. The sudden shift is due, of course, to rising Covid-19 cases.
The WFH setup and attendant rise in productivity may be good for some industries but there is a need to look at the situation from the perspective of the individual worker. Are employees really becoming more effective, thus productive, or are they just working more because there is hardly any demarcation line between home and work anymore?