Working remotely. What are the implications?

Better time management from home.

The Harvard Business Review made an excellent survey, based on the home office experience of more than 600 US based white-collar workers. The aim of the survey was to get answer about the following question: “What impact has working from home had on productivity and creativity?” Nowadays, working remotely is much more acceptable than it was during the last few decades. Nevertheless, there are still pending questions regarding the effectivness of this kind of employment, and there are several doubts whether the affirmable negative impacts (besides the many positives) on the work-life balance are sustainable in the long term. The incoming answers and comments proves that numerous participants easily found the way to work with the same efficiency as in the office, despite of the fear of their managers.

The huge challenge for the participants was to switch off and stop the work at the end of the day, therefore a regular workday increased during this virtual work period. The participant CEOs gave interesting feedbacks concerning the positive impact of the new situation. They noticed that the time management was more efficient and they could skip the „not important” meetings or completely avoid them thanks to the virtual solutions. Obviously the survey-makers faced the negativity of the work from home condition as well. For example, the lack of the spontenaous interactions between the colleagues was a huge step back. The decrease of these interactions stole many creative moments from the workplaces which are irreplaceable through virtual meetings or Zoom conferences. The pandemic is a huge challenge for the US labour market, nonetheless the work from home solution could help to get through to the deepest crisis. Based on the CEOs’ responds the remote work will not dissappear totally after the pandemic, but we must wait until the full spread of it. If you are interested about further info about the survey click on the link below:

• https://hbr.org/2020/07/the-implications-of-working-without-an-office

Nov 4 2020