With all the life changes and impact created by the pandemic, the working professionals also experienced major shift from the way companies operated in the past. Earlier, working from home once a week or couple of days was prevalent only in few companies or restricted to only certain job types. However, once the pandemic took over, almost all companies had to allow their employees to work from homes whether they liked it or not. Working from home is not a new concept but eventually became the new normal for everyone.
Within a year, most of the companies adapted well to this new norm of working from home and reaped benefits out of it with increased productivity and happy employees spending quality time with their families. Work from Home had some major benefits to employers like less office space, less commuting, fewer business trips, shorter breaks and better focus by employees, among others.
Yet, after the effects of pandemic reduced, some of the companies immediately chose to call their employees back to office much to their dismay.
Some companies have chosen the hybrid mode with the mix of going to office one or two days a week and working from their homes on remaining days. This is again debatable in its own way and it reduces the perks of working from homes for both employees and employers. With hybrid mode being enforced by the companies, some of the workers who would have moved to their native or hometowns during the pandemic had to relocate to the same city where their office is based.
While some of the companies continued to allow their employees to work from home, other companies insisted that they either return to office on full time basis or follow the hybrid model. The reasoning behind this was that these companies felt employees were missing out on team building and collaboration, interaction with colleagues and face-to-face meetings that they believed were vital to their company’s growth and development and also for the employees to feel a sense of belongingness towards their company.
Much discussion was done during the pandemic on how Work from Home or remote work is going to be the new norm and companies should consider allowing their employees to work from home permanently.
Nevertheless, the debate on this matter seems to be still on and many companies completely switched back to the traditional ways of working and operating despite protest or disapproval from their employees.
Pooja, who works as a Business writer in a Corporate says, she totally enjoys the perks of working from home – She is able to focus more at home with no distraction around, is able to spend ample time with family and her pets and she never wishes to commute to work with all the traffic and rush hours. On the contrary, Deepak who works as an IT professional says, he misses the office atmosphere, interaction, abd break time fun with his colleagues.
If you have been a work from home professional and have totally adapted to that, I am sure you can vouch for it and say that it can be very efficient and productive. With the number of digital tools and platforms available, almost anything can be done virtually these days from daily team huddles to team building activities to training sessions. The overall market feedback demonstrates that remote workers are less likely to take sick leaves and stay longer with the companies. On a larger scale, it also offers companies the flexibility and ability to deal with uncertain events or crisis in the future. Hence, it may be worth allowing your workers to choose based on their preference and what works best for them.