Offices and workspaces have become less of a necessity thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic and also to ever evolving modern technology. Instead of spending much time on the road to and from office/work, much of those wasted time that could be spent with families and loved ones were almost recoverd in that last eighteen months and still counting.
One couldn't have imagined if businesses and finances will survive when people(employees) worked from home on their private computers. It's a reality that was enforced upon the entire human race whether we liked it or not, stay home and work or get infected with a virus that remains a mystery.
As much as the pandemic made remote working much more or a standard for almost or businesses, advancement in technology also played a major role which has made smart working free-for-all. Provided you have a job or business, the necessary skills and tools to do so from wherever you are on the planet.
Pros:
These scenarios we found ourselves in the past one year and more has advantages and disadvantages on businesses and even our finances, for both the worker and the employer.
One of the benefits to anyone who has the technological know-how so as to work and make a living for his or herself from home, anyone who owns electronic devices, smartphones and tablets or laptops and personal computers with internet connectivity has all the flexibilities in the world to do other things, for example, Childcare. A father or mother, or at the same time both parents could stay at home to work few or long hours from home without needing to rush out in the early hours or late nights to get to their office and work.
Aside from zero freedom to go anywhere, individual parents might have a sick child at home to attend to, or have a school art/play to attend to, even parents could attend their children’s sports and games and work extra hours later from home without having to go back to office to make up family time and bonding all thanks to the internet, cloud computing and IoT- Internet of Things.
A win-win situations for families, folks who just starts to raise their offer springs. Both parent could work from home and have the optimum time to take care of their children themselves without having to pay for baby sitters and day-care centres which actually cost a fortune.
Working from home out rightly or partially is one of the precious gifts our of the whole chaos of a global pandemic. Also a gift of advancing technology; it saves a lot of time and energy both for employers and employees. The problem of wasted work time is cut out, lost time of work might be due to bad weather, transportation issues to and from home which creates more time for Job efficiency and greater output.
Moreover, working from home also saves a lot in the cost of running and operating a business. For business owners, the funds needed to rent office space, pay for utility bills could be channelled into other operations of such a business.
The Cons:
There are dozens of downsides to working from home too, one of these is massive lay offs as witnessed during the Peak of the global lockdown.
Not all businesses could be run remotely hence some businesses were forced to be shut down and employees taking the tough exit road. That was bad for so many families, finances runied and thriving businesses killed.
Distractions, which hinders maximum productivity is another disadvantage. There might be little or no time to focus on a task with multiple distractions from the kids, neighbours, personal phone calls and much other interference.
No parents would want to ignore their child’s attention, kids are naturally attention seeking and what is the purpose of working and making a living if not for them, so ignoring them is not something every parents would do and this might hampered several tasks to be completed.
For some employers, it is difficult to keep track of what their remote workers are doing at home or anywhere else, they must get paid and this puts a lot of employers at risks of paying for wasted time spent by an employee on something uncircumstancial.
Furthermore, working from home consume all your time without paying attention or doing something else as you might feel you haven't done enough.
For example, working from offices usually takes 8a.m to 5p.m or 9 to 6p.m, except on overtime work cases which gets paid for, working from home could take more than these hours as some people get engrossed in their works; some important things might be neglected like feeding the baby, changing their diapers, using their drugs (in case of medical conditions) etc.
Working from home might not be so conducive for some; hence their performances and output might drop. Offices ambience, settings, work desk and chairs could be the factors missing at home which is hard to design and make a home look like a real office.
COVID-19 made the world understands that in our quest for survival, we are actually doing more damages to our lives due to the stresses we placed on ourselves. From spending hours in traffic trying to get to and fro from work, to many few sleep time which is beneficial to human well being.
To conclude, these good and bad associated with remote working are like ying yang, one must not outweigh the other for businesses to boom. Both business owners, employers and employees have to weigh their options and see how each affects their lives, factoring out the rest of mind that comes with it before determining which one better suits their purposes. That is, if an individual can help it while the world is going back to it's normal ways post pandemic.