The Reality of Working from Home

 Ana Ortiz, Employment Consultant with Build ON

Working from home was the solution that many employers agreed to implement to stay in business when COVID- 19 first hit, despite many companies and organizations being concerned about their employee’s productivity. For many employees this measure seemed like an opportunity to experience some “freedom” and the idea was welcomed by most workers while employers worried about how to effectively manage a remote team and implement new ways to monitor their employee’s work.

Pros and Cons
On the positive side, we can count the time that many workers saved from long commutes, avoided crowded buses, being stuck in traffic and the money they saved on transportation and parking. On the downside, workers experienced isolation and, had  to deal with many things at once; among the most common problems were anything from answering the doorbell to monitoring and helping their children connect to their virtual classrooms or keeping their pets quiet during online meetings.

Another benefit of working from home is that most workers experienced a more flexible work-life, having more time to finish their work. Unfortunately this led to not having a set start or end work schedule and created problems setting boundaries between work and their personal lives.

Spending more time with the family is another positive consequence of working from home until workers encountered complications with child-care. Many employees were working from home and taking care of their children while school, daycare and/or summer camps were closed. This is a challenge for most families since they struggle to manage the competing priorities of work and child-care obligations.

What do the statistics say?
Despite the challenges, surveys suggest that most Canadians prefer continuing to working from home. The Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC)’s working from home survey found that about 74% of  businesses plan to offer full-time remote work after the pandemic while 55% of employees want to continue working remotely and other employers are thinking of adopting Hybrid models, <Working from home is here to stay, studies show | CTV News>. This also brings flexibility to the hiring process as employers can select workers from different provinces and cities, and within time maybe even different countries.

According to this information, we can infer that employees and employers are seeing more benefits than disadvantages in working from home but is it true?

The Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM) found that in some ways working from home could harm career opportunities.

Many supervisors said that sometimes it is hard to keep track of everybody’s work and they struggle to divide tasks equally. Also, managers started developing monitoring systems to keep up productivity among their workers. Additionally, 30 % of people working remotely think that working from home permanently could reduce the number of opportunities available which would lead to having fewer opportunities for job growth.
This research also showed that working from home added some extra expenses. 61% of remote workers interviewed said that they had to pay for some equipment or furniture to set up their home offices; they also had to pay for higher internet speed, electricity and sometimes printing supplies.

Working from home also limits the chances for networking. Building relationships with coworkers has always been the most vital factor behind career opportunities. Under this new working modality, the opportunities for developing these connections would be affected if their only interaction is through digital platforms, like zoom, teams etc. More than half of the remote workers surveyed think that working from home would hurt their networking opportunities and their work relationships.

What about Productivity?
Statistics Canada < Working from home: Productivity and preferences (statcan.gc.ca)> reveals that “At the beginning of 2021, 32% of Canadian employees aged 15 to 69 worked most of their hours from home, compared with only 4% in 2016”. “Of all these new workers 90% reported being at least as productive as in their place of work: 58% accomplished the same amount of work per hour, 32% reported accomplishing more work per hour and the rest 10% accomplished less work per hour working at home”.
Even though 35% of Canadians reported working longer hours while working from home, employees still prefer this modality over in office work.

The future of remote work
Despite the Pros and Cons, working from home offered a flexible option that most of the workers embraced which also brought higher expectations and greater flexibility from the organizations.
On the other hand, business leaders are often concerned about breaking down the workplace culture, cooperation, and innovation among employees. They hold on to these as reasons to keep offices open,  although they believe that it is not necessary to bring employees back to the office on a daily basis to keep the cohesion among co-workers. Therefore the hybrid model is increasing as a viable option as a work modality among employers going forward.
Data suggests that most organizations plan to offer hybrid workspaces to maintain positive experiences with remote work. This might also have a positive impact in the environment as it will reduce the amount of traffic/congestion on the streets as well as the amount of offices spaces to rent.
Although not all industries are ready for such transition, the ones that have already adopted this modality will most likely keep it as an option for their employees.

Which working modality do you prefer?