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The state of work (from home) as it stands right now in June 2021 is covered in this post, and whatever I miss, please do add in the comments! I want people to feel understood and heard in this blog!!
There is no point in beating about the bush when it comes to this topic of work from home. We must acknowledge that the pandemic has changed everything.
Whether you love it, or hate it, or miss it, one thing is clear. We must acknowledge that the pandemic has changed everything. The way we used to do work has undergone massive change, and the question is, now what?
Now that 46.6% of Americans are fully vaccinated, the state of the pandemic has changed. Do we now go back to work full-time in person again like we used to? That question is loaded.
Some of us never got to work from home in the first place! I see YOU. Not everyone’s work can be taken home. And if that is you, the pandemic has been a very different experience for you than others. I see and appreciate you.
Essential workers, it has been both extremely challenging for you as well as unique! You felt the pandemic very differently! In some cases, maybe much, much more challenging (for those who dealt with the pandemic directly, as in, health care) and in other cases, maybe it felt like the pandemic couldn’t get to you in the same way as it did others because your job had to happen while going in (as in, defense). Unless, of course, you got sick!! (Like me).
I was one of those essential workers who had/got to go in. I changed jobs partway through the pandemic (last November) and got a position (still within defense) that has allowed partial work from home.
Before then, I was going in every day. My work was done in secure facilities and could not be brought home. My company split us up into shifts for social distancing. I worked from 3 PM to 11 PM. There was a morning shift from 6 am to 2 pm, but I avoided that because most people preferred morning and I figured the social distancing would be better in the evening shifts. But also, the evening shift was quiet and lonely. So it was mentally hard, but I took mentally hard over physically hard as I had already been sick once, earlier on in the pandemic, suspecting work to be where I got infected.
When you had to go in during a pandemic, you might have felt envious of the people who “get to” work from home, while appreciating less traffic and more parking! We even got dinners reimbursed up to $15. So other than the whole fearing for your life thing, it was pretty great!
Those people who were packed off to their homes and asked to work from home full-time had/got to work from home but dealt with a lack of work-life balance.
The people I have heard most struggle with work from home are all parents. Trying to balance out parenting with working from home seems to be impossible. I don’t envy that at all. When I am working from home, it is just me and my cat-son. As long as he is watching real birds from the patio door, or bird videos on YouTube, or napping, I have more focus than ever to get work done.
Being child-free has been extremely favorable for the pandemic-induced work from home structure.
I can only speak about being child-free and I know it is great for work from home. However, I could imagine how work from home might provide more flexibility to even parents although it might require some additional arrangements.
I have also only ever worked from home partially, so I would not know about what that is like full-time. From the little I have experienced, I would say that it is its own kind of challenge.
Without adjustments, work from home is challenging.
For one, you have to find projects that can definitely be done from home and make sure that those are actually done with more productivity from home. Tip: leverage this in your favor if you want to work from home. Of course, this is more challenging for some than others. If your work was always doable from home (coding, software, analysis, etc.) then transitioning to work from home is, at least, not challenged by the feasibility of whether that is an option.
Then, there is the whole collaboration aspect.
Collaboration, I do believe, is better in person, however, utilizing tools to your advantage can help with this aspect. For example, for introverted people, collaborating remotely might even make them better collaborators than in person! If you hate face-to-face interactions, sliding into someone’s DM (Google hangouts or Slack or whatever you use) to ask a question might be a lot easier!
Haven’t we all procrastinated or delayed some type of work because it involves asking someone a question or doing some digging, and it feels like it is too much sometimes? Whereas when we are working from home and all logged into the same chatting tools, we can ping a colleague with a question, go get a soothing tea and work on solving problems slowly but surely.
I really do think that work from home (when set up properly and without distractions) may sometimes be a little slower but due to the great gift of focus and less stress, overall, is surer. As in, work actually gets done rather than indefinitely pushed due to too many interactions, and being pulled in too many directions.
Some of us hate people. I am one of those introverts who are capable of being outgoing but it drains me. I need breaks from it. So, partial work from home is great. I go in when I go in, rest of the time, leave me alone to do my work. In fact, this also helps to get more focused work done. As in, when I go in, I do the things that are possible only when going in, and at home, I do the things that are possible to be done at home only. As in, I have going-in projects and from-home projects, aka, multiple projects. I never work on just one project.
We introverts have to budget our energies and every email, message, meeting, drains us. Going in is a whole another level of draining for us. So, it is really in everyone’s best interest to let us function in a way that actually allows us to put maximal energy towards getting things done. The question is what will happen now?
In this Opinion by Tracy Moore, she writes:
The pandemic finally seems to be easing its grip on the United States, nudging us back into public life, friendly visits, even travel. But going back to the office full-time
According to most workers, the answer is simple: I would prefer not to.
Not yet. Not every day, anyway — and maybe not ever. If the pandemic has shown us anything, it’s that the old way of working left little room for living. Between our fragile mental health and a work world desperate to have our slot back in, something has to give. The obvious answer is a new model that allows for in-office, hybrid, or fully remote work. But it’s an open question how many workplaces agree.
A poll by the Best Practice Institute and reported in Newsweek found that some 83 percent of CEOs want employees back full-time, while only 10 percent of workers want back in. A seismic standoff is building. “There is a belief in our culture that we’ve proven that most jobs can be done virtually,” Melissa Swift of consulting firm Korn Ferry told Newsweek. “But that’s not the belief within the leadership of organizations, so we’re headed for a real clash.”
Certainly, some people are thrilled to squeeze into hard pants and rejoin the thrum of the office. But for many, going back to working for the weekend is a nightmare. Who, exactly, is thirsting to wake up earlier to slog through their commute? Who’s excited about team-building exercises, long hours, and impromptu meetings? Who could possibly be jazzed about sharing colds (to say nothing of, still, the coronavirus), wrangling child care, or promising to work late because you had the gall to schedule a doctor’s appointment?
The pandemic’s dramatic expansion of remote work, with its attendant humanization (Your toddler interrupts a meeting? A colleague joins the Zoom from their car? Just another day at the “office”!), suggested there was a different culture on the horizon — one that accepted the realities of family, health, disability and more, and that, critically, treated workers as adults capable of managing their lives and their deadlines.
It seems most employers want their employees back in the office
I cannot speak for all of you, so chime in with your comments, but from what leadership I interact with, it is clear that employers want us to go back in. I also know that plenty of employees would like to go back in and regain the option of keeping work at work. In my experience, though, these are folks who are parents and have been struggling with doing work at home. Not us child-free folks. But, in general, a lot of us would be in that category: I would prefer not to.
It’s simple. We were flexible and took work home when you needed us to, employers. Then we designed our entire lives around doing work from home and set everything up, made good progress. We delivered during a pandemic. And now you want us to change our lives again? I say, let’s take a breath.
Employers are not generally involved in the nitty-gritty of what day-to-day work looks like for us employees. Now that we are expected to come back in again, I am finding that I have to justify and make a case for why and when I would need to work from home. It seems we can’t just say, because, that’s what we do now! So, even though it might not make sense to have to rejustify this setup, I would recommend preparing to do so if you would like to keep working from home partially or completely.
After working from home, either partially or completely, for so long, for one, you might be more set up to do stuff from home than at the office. There might be projects that you are better off doing from home because they require more concentration and less interruption. I am doing projects at home using tools, for example, that are more (or even only) accessible at home, not at work. So… of course, I can’t do them as well at work, so in order to continue them I need to have some days at home.
Be prepared to explain, in detail, what things need to be done at home, on which days, and what things need to be done at work, on which days. If you want to go hybrid, like me. It can be annoying but, trust me, if you present a case, that will be more acceptable than if you expect bosses to read your mind.
What I am finding is that employers want to regularly or, at least, semi-regularly see your face.
The reasons they give mainly for wanting to do this is making sure we are not disconnected from what is going on, and for collaboration purposes. I would say that if a person did not take initiative to know what is going on, then even coming in, they might be in the dark. So by working from home successfully we actually demonstrate that we have a lot of initiative and don’t need supervision.
It is the people who need supervision that would need to come in more. Once they are set up and know what they are doing more, they can decide what makes the best sense. The employee themself would know best about what needs to be done, not a supervisor, especially when it is about the details of how the work gets done.
Same for collaboration. If you don’t deliberately collaborate, you might miss a lot of collaboration opportunities even coming in. Now, if you are new in the job, it might take more interaction initially to solidify the connections that you might leverage later on to get things done. To me, it is all about doing what is best and also whatever works best. If there is no reason to go in, one should not be forced to go in. We can avoid traffic, rush hour, and stress.
Go in impactfully, stay home impactfully.
I am a proponent of coming in sometimes to accomplish the connections one would need to accomplish and basically, doing whatever is needed! Go in impactfully, stay home impactfully. I will go in when that is needed, and work from home when I can do the task from home easily or even better. Some of my work can only be done going in, so for those, I go in and that is when I (also) automatically get visibility.
If your work is not getting visibility, it might as well not be getting done. So, for visibility, you have to figure something out about presenting your work so others know what you are doing. In-person would be best for such things, but this does not need to happen every day. So, you can still move further away into a nice house and only go in sometimes, if that is what you want. I am all for “the office” being flexible and changing according to what works best for everyone. If “the office” is not what is working best for the employee, then that is not best for the company either.
Coming back to supervisors and what they want, I do wonder if people are realizing that maybe bosses are not needed. The more we show that we can independently do work without supervision, and it can all function like a well-oiled machine, the less justification for the person who tells people what to do.
A lot of us don’t need such a person! The less administrative bullshit we have to do deal with, the better! Maybe the answer is fewer administrators! More use of digital, and less need for paper pushers. Honestly, what the pandemic has shown is that researchers are ever more in demand, but maybe we don’t need the middle man. So, honestly, maybe some employers are worried about the trend because they fear losing their own jobs, whatever that job entails!
If you are good at your job and also good at learning, adapting, adjusting, and pivoting, which you have already demonstrated through this pandemic, you have nothing to worry about.
You are not alone if you want more flexibility to live your life and want to work from home. Tight schedules, punching in, punching out, those are all old news.
If they (companies) can’t adapt, it’s not you, it’s them. Time to look for other opportunities.
We have to meet somewhere in the middle because there will always be positions that allow full-time work from home. We may end up reshuffling ourselves into positions accordingly, but don’t be afraid to claim what is yours – freedom to choose how you would like to work. If that is not being accommodated, there will be other options. If you are a talented person making good contributions, it really should be up to you to figure out how best to do that, and I trust that you can find a setup that works for both your work and your life. In fact, I encourage doing that rather than waiting for the weekend, or for retirement. The time to live is NOW.
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