Working from home these past few weeks as the coronavirus pandemic rages on outside hasn’t been hunky-dory. Yes, physical distancing is important and absolutely won’t advocate otherwise, but having bed just inches away from workstation hasn’t been the win-win situation as thought it would be.
There are two main reasons why the work-from-home concept doesn’t work, especially in the Indian workplace. Firstly, most domestic organisations prefer employees to be physically present in office, rather than logging in from another location.Secondly, executives believe that productivity would be affected if an employee works from home. Chief people officers of Indian companies say that there is a higher probability of this facility being misused. And this is a fact in case of lazy employees.
Employees are at fault, most of the times. Some workers take work-from-home for granted and use it as an opportunity to laze around. This not only affects the business performance of the organisation, but also deters employers from offering this facility. Except for some companies in the IT space and firms that are unable to afford physical space, most Indian employers prefer to see their employees everyday and only that works for Indian workplaces. The more you interact with your colleagues, the more ideas you generate for the business.
Indian employees being Indian love to kill their time doing nothing. Too much time on social and digital media and unchecked time to just gossip. Work from Home demands accountability and responsibility from both the parties, administration and employee. If any party lacks sense of liability, the whole concept of work from home will collapse. The whole nation is going through the same.
Not only this but there are many other factors that leads to failure of work from home plan. Employees lack a self driving force to work in interest of the company. Just to avoid follow ups at times they submit unreal reports. And ultimately the work quality suffers due to no concentration. Employers want employees to be passionate about the work they’re doing—inspiring passion across a dispersed team is not impossible, but certainly not easy. Unless your employees are 100 percent intrinsically motivated, it’s difficult to stimulate enthusiasm about service or product without ample social engagement—high spirits are tough to express digitally.
Though working from home can make life easier at first, it can actually be detrimental to employees’ mental health. Humans are social creatures, and working without seeing anyone can make employees feel cut off.
Remote working can also cause anxiety. A recent study concluded the lack of close contact hinders three key ingredients in any effective working relationship: The formation of trust, connection, and mutual purpose.When employees work mostly or exclusively from home, they likely only interact with their colleagues via email and occasional calls. Remote working isn’t conducive to building meaningful relationships with co-workers in the same way that working in the office is.
This is important for two reasons—first, interacting daily with coworkers facilitates expectation-setting. When new employees are continuously exposed to the behavior of their colleagues, they’re able to grasp the standards of performance and communication much more quickly than they would remotely. Second, social interaction is strongly correlated with workplace engagement and satisfaction.Indian companies are not built to adapt work-from-home policy, particularly because of their infrastructural costs. A large number of employees don’t have proper workstations at their homes, let alone WiFi. This is why the lockdown left companies scrambling to provide resources to their employees. Work from home for employees does not translate to revenue and incomes from home for the companies.It’s a short term measure when its practiced with 1-4 people, which the rest of the people are in the office, running the important economy system.
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