Work-from-Home Works: The Future of Workplaces

Table of Contents

Work-from-home has become one of the most indispensable trends of the post-covid world. Here is everything that both employers and employees need to know about work-from-home (wfh)

The mode of work where employees, whether self-employed or working for an employer, work from their own premises (or somewhere close by) is commonly referred to as ‘work-from-home (WFH) in today’s parlance. The practice when a person works for an employer away from the specified workplace, is also referred to as ‘remote working’ or ‘telecommuting’.

The Work-from-Home Revolution

The practice of working from the comfort of their own homes has been practised from time immemorial Artists like painters and skilled workers like blacksmiths often did their work at home workshops or simply at their places of residence. Practitioners of medicine in India (and elsewhere) mostly worked from home till hospitals came into existence. Even now, many doctors continue to practice from their homes.

In the last thirty years, since the arrival of computers and the internet, more people have started to work from their homes, at least part of the time. This is fairly common among the new generation of ‘information technology (IT)’ professionals . In the past ten years, in parallel with WFH de veloped the idea of shared workspaces where people who either worked for themselves or another employer shared a built-up workspace for the purpose.

While both these trends have been developing steadily in these modern times, it was not considered mainstream. Employers often allowed their staff to work from home primarily as a favour and often as an exception. Self-employed people chose to work from home primarily as a cost-saving exercise. However, with the arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic, there has been a massive disruption of mobility and, as is known, has caused panic over working together in office settings.

For this reason, remote working suddenly be- came a necessity and not an option. Work which could be done remotely has now become, at least for a brief while, the only type of work which can be undertaken without exposing people to excess risk of catching the infection. International Labour Organisation estimated that more than 1.5 billion jobs were disrupted between January and April 2020. Suddenly, the WFH option has become a necessity and not an exception.

Without warning, or without preparation, hundreds of millions of people had to start to work from home. This is the biggest workplace revolution that has happened in the history of employment and has happened in a scale and scope that far exceeds that which was brought about by the ‘assembly line manufacturing processes in the early part of the twentieth century. This is the only comparable event in history.

Work-from-Home Works

When the shift of the workplace from the office to the home just started, most employers (and many employees) were very apprehensive about the efficacy of the arrangement and the fallout of the process. Both employers and employees saw it as an emergency measure, only to be reversed as soon as the Covid-19-pandemic-induced lockdown was lifted. However, three months into this global workplace revolution, the conclusions are unambiguous. WFH works!

Organizations across the world are questioning the need and wisdom of having massive office premises in expensive cities to accommodate their staff while it has been proven that employees could work, be supervised and produce outputs without travelling to a common place of work.

Employees are now realizing that they can continue to be productive but also have more time for themselves and family when working from home. This is a win-win situation and employers like Twitter have already announced that their employees will never return to office to work. Tata Consultancy Services was the first major Indian IT company which announced that by the year 2025, up to 50 percent of their employees will be working from home. While any quantitative figure did not emerge, it is obvious that other companies will soon follow suit.

Authors:

Muralee Thummarukudy, Operations Manager,

United Nations Environment Programme, Geneva, Switzerland

Neeraja Janaki, Career Mentor, Ernakulam, Kerala

Multigyan.com

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Shivanga Kumar Gogoi

I am Shivanga Kumar Gogoi, owner of the Multigyan.com website. I am a B.Tech degree holder and 21yrs old young entrepreneur from the City of Jorhat, Asam. By profession, I'm an instrumentation engineer, web designer, google webmaster and SEO optimizer. I have deep knowledge of Google AdSense and I am interested in Blogging.