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WORKING FROM HOME: HOW TO MAKE IT WORK

On the 10^th of May, Abubakar Suleiman, the MD of Sterling Bank tweeted about the benefits of homeworking and what employers and employees stand to gain if organizations can embrace this new way of working with the abrupt change brought by the Coronavirus pandemic and the tweet received a lot of positive response from Twitter users.

Self-isolation, quarantines, lockdowns, social distancing, coronavirus, working from home are vocabularies the new decade have brought with it and how governments, societies, businesses and individuals have reacted to this new normal has been unprecedented.

According to a study published on Zippia.com, titled: ‘Zippia Poll: Half of American Workers Would Rather Work From Home Forever’, half of the millennials want to work from home permanently, while most people feel more productive, older people feel significantly more productive working from home than younger workers, 51% would rather work-from-home full-time than go into the office, more than half of Americans don’t believe their work will make remote work permanent, and 17% of Americans DO believe their work will let them work remotely following the crisis. In a similar vein, an article on Forbes.com also reports that the German labor minister, Hubertus Heil, says the proportion of the workforce working from home has increased from 12% to 25%, exceeding eight million people. Germany wants to enshrine the right to work from home in labor law, and is an interesting way of learning from an exceptional situation.

According to Wikipedia.com, telecommuting, also called telework, teleworking, working from home (WFH - the most common term in the UK), mobile work, remote work, and flexible workplace, is a work arrangement in which employees do not commute or travel (e.g. by bus, bicycle or car, etc.) to a central place of work, such as an office building, warehouse, or store. According to a Reuters poll, approximately "one in five workers around the globe, particularly employees in the Middle East, Latin America, and Asia telecommute frequently and nearly 10% work from home every day."

Working from Home Is Here to Stay, Even When the Economy Reopens, an article sourced from the CNBC's official website notes that experts say that even when the coronavirus is in the rearview mirror, many of us will still be working from home. Now that so many companies have been forced to function with a remote staff and to adopt technologies that enable collaboration from a distance, they’ve already made the necessary investments and they know they can save money on office and real estate costs.

Evidently, cost reduction and occupational flexibility are among the most celebrated benefits of teleworking and employers, as well as employees, are generally aware of the fact that office related expenses will greatly reduce whereas employees will save more on clothing, dry-cleaning, and laundry related expenses, cost of travel to and from the workplace but cost reduction is one out of a bundle of abundant opportunities that remote work offers. Improved productivity and business continuity which are among the pluses of working from home to businesses are also discussed in subsequent paragraphs.

According to Forbes.com, improved productivity is another advantage of working remotely, in an article sourced from the website, titled: ‘New Survey Shows 47% Increase in Productivity: 3 Things You Must Do When Working from Home’, this point was extensively addressed. Excerpts from the post, ‘a California-based company has tracked a 47% increase in worker productivity. An eye-opening survey shows that smart companies are gaining ground by having workers work from home.’ Also, in the event of a natural or manmade disaster, a distributed workforce is in a better position to keep operations running, even if some of the group goes offline.

Alternatively, as good as working from home or telecommuting may sound, there are major bottlenecks businesses and their staff have to address if this interesting arrangement can work seamlessly. Lack of Work-Life balance, home-related distractions, siloed knowledge, personal discipline and time management challenges, limitation of social interactions and the risk of overworking amongst others are challenges brought by working remotely according to articles from geekwire.com and smallbusiness.ng.

Unfortunately, there is a deliberate attempt to reduce the word count so we would only look at the two most common challenges of mobile work in the next paragraph which are lack of work-life balance, and personal discipline, and time management challenges.

Overworking is the main challenge to effectively work from home according to smallbusiness.org. Personal discipline and time management challenges are a major setback to effectively telework. One reason why a lot of managers do not favor remote work is that they are afraid that their employees will slack off. It is because no one will be around to supervise them in person. In most cases, though, the opposite happens in the sense that several remote workers are at a higher risk of getting overworked. You might find it challenging to determine when you should start and end your workday. In consequence, without discipline and a deliberate effect to combat it, work-life balance is hardly achieved with teleworking.

HOW TO MAKE IT WORK - Investopedia, HiveLife, and TheLeadspace.co provide interesting articles on making teleworking a wonderful and seamless transition. They have listed a host of interesting tips on how to optimize the new normal brought by the coronavirus pandemic.

      I.        Set A Consistent Schedule

     II.        Build an Effective Work-Life Balance

    III.        Set Your Workhours

  IV.        Set Up Your Reminders for Real Breaks

    V.        Decide On Your Priorities

  VI.        Create Your Own Workspace

 VII.        Be Prepared

VIII.        Track Your Goal

Conclusively, I spoke to some of my colleagues at work on their view on working from home and their feedbacks were exceptional, Ogo believes that tracking employee performance is key and supervisors should confirm that deliverables are met by ensuring that reports are submitted as frequently as possible. Toyin notes that online businesses are better suited to telework and Tobi traditionally adores the idea, he believes that a lot of companies should consider it because it will reduce work-related stress, decrease traffic gridlock, moderate workplace bullying and it will make appraising performance easier. It is obvious that working from home is a fantastic idea but businesses should ensure that customized models are designed to suite employee’s unique requirements. 

Stay Home, Stay Safe.

God Bless Us All.

Oluwole Olusanya is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of one of the fastest-growing lifestyle blogs in the country. He is a banker, writer, blogger, public affairs analyst and a tax consultant. He anchors Trending Topics on SHEGZSABLEZS’ Blog where he shares his thoughts and opinions on trending issues.

He is currently studying for a Masters Degree in Business Administration at the University of South Wales, Wales, United Kingdom. He has diplomas in Banking and Finance, Investigative Journalism, Creative Writing, and Linguistics from Lagos State Polytechnic, Isolo, Lagos, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland and The Open University, Milton Keynes, The United Kingdom.