The global pandemic of the last 1,5 years has left the world with some significant consequences that we, one way or another, have to deal with. When talking about these changes in our daily life, society seems to consider them as negative by default. However, the covid crisis has brought some opportunities to light that are not as malicious as we first thought. Working from home is definitely one of them, as companies worldwide have accepted this new concept and it seems here to stay.
The Work-From-Home concept is not necessarily something completely new, as some companies have already accepted the method with open arms1 and during the pandemic, it was no surprise that it were these companies who thrived more than others. As we are (hopefully) approaching the end of this global crisis, business are starting to see the advantages of this working strategy, rather than just having to adapt to it, because of regulations.
One big advantage is naturally the reduction of traffic in and around cities. In recent covid times, we have seen immense global reductions in air pollution, due to less activity in the transportation sector2. The fact that employees were more at home than even before played a significant role in this reduction. Moreover, not having to deal with traffic every day leads to reduced amounts of stress3, which will come te improve the quality of work later that day. Furthermore, companies do not need as much space in the office as they did before, which should lead to more financial health of the organisations, as well as more room for other construction to be build, such as more houses.
Besides these economical reasons, working from home has proven to have its personals reasons as well. Employees tend have a higher job satisfaction when they can work from home4, less sickness is reported with remote workers5 and, partially due to the eliminated travel time, people have more time for personal activities, such as fitness. On the other hand, critics may say that the quality of work reduces once an employee works from home, but in a Chinese experiment conducted in 20146, it was found that remote workers were 13 percent more efficient than colleagues based at the office.
Naturally some of these benefits can vary per business and employee, since there are also companies where physical labour is performed who simply cannot work remotely. Eventually, it is up to the business to decide whether their employees can work from home, fully or partially. With the developments we have seen and the benefits they clearly lead to though, it is not unlikely that will see more office-styled homes in the future.
Reference List
- https://5ca.com/customer-experience-solutions/
- Venter, Zander S., et al. “COVID-19 lockdowns cause global air pollution declines.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 117.32 (2020): 18984-18990.
- https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/21/upshot/stuck-and-stressed-the-health-costs-of-traffic.html
- Golden, Timothy D., and John F. Veiga. “The impact of extent of telecommuting on job satisfaction: Resolving inconsistent findings.” Journal of management 31.2 (2005): 301-318.
- https://www.pwc.nl/nl/actueel-publicaties/assets/pdfs/pwc-the-costs-and-benefits-of-working-from-home.pdf
- Bloom, Nicholas, et al. “Does working from home work? Evidence from a Chinese experiment.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 130.1 (2015): 165-218.
I personally did my internship within a company, where the CEO is still not convinced that HomeOffice actually provides more productivity from the employees. This is simply caused by a lack of trust, but it also shows that studies like the one you mentioned need to be made even more public to get rid of those false assumptions.
On the other hand, it remains to be seen if companies who are aware of the increased level of productivity in HomeOffice are trying to get rid of their office spaces to save costs. That would, in my opinion, also create an issue, since most of the employees would probably like to have a mixture of remote and going to the office – rather than working 100% from home.
Companies should not necessarily try to get rid of their office spaces, but it is a nice benefit if employees enjoy working from home. I agree with you on the part that it should be a hybrid working environment of partially working from home and partially from the office (I might not have emphasised that enough in the post). When employees do prefer a hybrid environment you can still efficiently arrange your office spaces, so that a person who works at the office on Monday, for example, can take a desk, which another employee can take on Tuesday, when he is at the office.