COVID-19 hit the world hard. Suddenly our lives were all different. Nothing remained the same. Every sector from health to business, entertainment to technology, was transformed. With the steady pace of increase in the COVID cases every country is currently undergoing a period of lockdown that lasted over a span of half a year.
As per government mandate, people were made to ‘Work From Home’ as a result over 90% of employees now work from home. This transition was comparatively easier for IT sectors, for obvious reasons. When it came to business sectors, the economy was fluctuating and dropping. But even then, we adapted to the changes rather quickly and life seems to go on.
Initially, it was thrilling. We needn’t move from our couches or go out. But once it started, everyone started facing difficulties in maintaining the pace of work. There were a lot of reasons why, and how work from home changed so much.
-A survey showed that the average quality of emails being sent and work-time both increased with the lockdown. When the time barriers of check-in and check-out are taken away, combined with the ease of working in your own home, people seem to be spending more time on their jobs.
-With every member of your family home, a peaceful meeting is rarely possible. The barriers of privacy that people set up between work life and family life are all being broken down.
-Layoffs became something so common, it’s not even a rare sight anymore. Too many corporations took COVID19 as the perfect excuse to reduce personnel. Now there’s too many people and too few jobs. So work from home has turned to ‘search for work from home’
-Working from home really puts a damper on industries that absolutely require a human presence. Manufacturing, textile, medicine; industries that require the human touch of care and quality had to take multiple steps and measures to ensure their businesses stayed afloat. Here the initial phases were very hard but video conferences and networking have made it much easier to transition.
-Most organizations boast the ‘team’ skills. So with lockdowns, a lot of companies have regular online team building activities. As important as it might seem, this also takes up a lot of time and planning which would otherwise be used for company hours.
The biggest question after all this is, how do we go back to normal? What is normal anymore? We can be sure that masks and sanitizers are going to be a constant in all our lives. Likewise, will work from home be a permanent set up?
If there’s one thing COVID has helped us realize, it’s that a lot of the things, methods, and processes we thought would be vital to the functioning of our society and industries, aren’t really needed. PLenty of assets, time, effort, and personnel are saved when the medium of working and communication is changed. With new challenges, new solutions are needed. Thus right now, we cannot fully predict what will happen. But Work from home can very well become the future that we live in.
