Those who can work from home now do — and though it is bound to still feel strange and even stifling, teleworkers are certainly lucky. They still have jobs, and jobs they don't have to risk exposure to COVID-19 for every time they go to work at that.
Will more people be working from home, even once the pandemic dies down?
Telework isn't new. It was already on the rise when the COVID-19 pandemic hit (and had been since at least 1999). Nearly a quarter of the US workforce already spent several hours on an average day working from home in 2018, for instance. More people worked from home than used public transport to go to work already, pre-pandemic, in the US.
Some of that would have included work-related tasks that unwittingly spilled over into people's private lives, as smartphones and ubiquitous broadband internet lulled workers into unpaid labor like answering emails or participating in workplace What'sapp groups.
Working from home can also, however, make a lot of financial sense for both workers and employees — saving on office space and commutes, for instance. At least in the US, it won't save employers on wages, mind you, as they are lawfully required to keep paying the same salary they did when the employee physically came to work, so long as they are performing the same tasks.
Telework is definitely here to say, but not for everyone. Highly-educated people were most likely to work from home before COVID-19 invaded our lives and turned the world upside down, and that's probably not going to change much. Some of the essential jobs that keep society running cannot be performed from home. The janitors and cashiers who are risking their lives for minimum-wage pay are probably laughing at those of us who vent about the mental health struggles we're facing because we're "forced" into telework "house arrest".
A new kind of social divide may arise, differentiating people with jobs that can be done from home from those who need to go out to work, at least for a while.
As the current COVID-19-related fog lifts from societies the world over, it's quite likely that those people who can work from home will want to keep doing so — to reduce the risk of infection that will likely linger, but also perhaps to save money. As more solvent folks may decide to recreate a version of their former lives in their homes, online jobs may bloom for people who previously wouldn't have had the chance to work from home. Think music tutors, capoeira teachers, or yoga instructors hosting online classes on a broader scale.
One research paper has already stated that in France at least, telework protocols are expected to continue even when schools reopen. So whether by choice or not, it's quite safe to say that larger numbers of people will be working from home for quite some time.
Working from home: Can telejobs really work for you long-term?
So, two dimensions really come into play here — mental wellbeing and productivity.
Research among teleworkers has made some fascinating findings:
- Working from home part-time, two and a half days a week, gave people a greater sense of autonomy, improved their relationship with members of their households, and didn't negatively impact their relationships with their coworkers. Teleworking more than half of their total working time, however, meant that relationships with coworkers suffered.
- Telework can be good for your physical body, in terms of blood pressure and stress hormones. If it discourages physical activity, however, working from home can also do physical harm.
- Working from home most of the time meant a lower risk of conflict caused by the fact that household members were unhappy with the amount of time people spent working. Workers were, on the other hand, annoyed when their family members interrupted their work. You win some, you lose some.
- Telework is hard for people who do better with oversight and accountability — organizing your time effectively without managers and coworkers around can be rough, especially if you're easily distracted. Managers, too, find it hard to supervise workers who aren't physically present.
- When your home is your workplace and vice versa, there is a very real risk that the lines between work and personal life become blurred. You may always feel like you're on call, even outside of agreed working hours.
Findings like these were, of course, made before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. If telework is going to be a permanent fixture in society, technology that promotes team-building and team work will continue to evolve, giving you more of a feeling of actually being at work and reducing current feelings of self-isolation.
Nonetheless, as someone who has worked from home for years already, I can't understate the importance of a change of scenery. Going to work automatically builds that into your routine. Under (previously) normal circumstances, making a conscious effort to leave the house every day for things like sport, shopping, socializing, and spending time in nature was essential to my mental wellbeing.
Those things are pretty much out the window right now, in COVID-19 lockdown. If telework does become the new normal for many people, even after the pandemic stops being the focal point of everything, it's essential to build variety into your routine. In the meantime, while lockdown lasts, teleworkers could at least try to separate their work life from their home life through, for instance:
- Setting up a room or space solely for work, and then spending time there only during working hours. Keep other family members away from this space, if you can, to decrease conflict and increase productivity.
- Simulating slightly unmet needs like meeting up with your friends and going out for a jog in a nice breeze through only socializing platforms and by doing a home exercise routine.
- Even if you don't have a backyard, you probably have windows. Open them. Look outside every day, for longer periods of time, and observe what you see — anything from flowering plants to nesting birds.
- Some people will actually find that getting dressed for work increases their productivity.
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