NANDINI VAIDYANATHAN examines the evolution of work in a post-pandemic world, the complex dynamics of remote work and its impact on our professional and personal lives
In the year 2000, my boss and I were driving to work through the picturesque Cotswolds in England. Our corporate headquarters was in Broadway, a large parish in the Cotswolds. We had such a huge campus that a part of it fell under the Gloucestershire county and another part under the county of Worcestershire. It was a drive of about 100 miles from London and normally took about 2.5 hours.
The traffic In Bangalore in 2000 was like nothing that it is today, yet by Bangalore standards, was a source of constant irritation. So I said to him that a drive like this, even if it meant 5 hours every day (up and down) was so enjoyable that it took away the drudgery of driving to work. And he said to me, in twenty years’ time, you will not have to drive to work at all, it will all become remote. Since I left this company in 2001, many a time and on several occasions, I have wondered what a visionary my boss was. But in 2000, when he said this, in my typical brattish fashion, I had said, oh no, bosses will never want to give up ownership of their employees’ time!
If you remember, those were the early days of internet and the notion that you could ‘log in’ to work from home was nowhere on anybody’s radar, as ‘logging in’ to the internet itself was alien (VSNL dialups, right?)! And although by mid 2000, post the dotcom bust, we had robust internet connectivity across the globe, working from home still did not catch on, until COVID happened in 2020. When two letters such as W and F are in the same acronym, the expansion that first comes to mind is something else. But these last four years have seen WFH (work from home) hijack our vocabulary, so much so that my maid who has a good sense of humor said to me last week: I will take garlic home and peel them tomorrow, so don’t’ count it as my weekly off, it is my day of WFH!
The technical definition of WFH is when you work from someplace which is not your office environment. Work here is defined as one that involves logging in to the office server remotely to conduct business which may be selling, trouble-shooting, analyzing, coding or counting money. It is business as defined by your employer organization but instead of logging in from your assigned workstation in your office, you are outside of your office environment. I’m guessing the word remote became synonymous with this as you were logging in into the company server for business purpose from outside the workspace, that is, from a remote location.
WFH became the necessity because of COVID. Whilst it is true that the pandemic pretty much grinded the wheels of the world, everything could not be switched off completely. Goods and services had to be produced, sold, money collected, and the organization cycle had to be kept in motion, even if it had lost momentum. And for that, you still needed people. It started with the MNC’s whose businesses are on the internet or are internet-enabled. They are amongst the largest employers in the world. So they said, guys, if you want to stay on our rolls, continue to WFH.
I remember reading a report somewhere that on all online platforms, the largest selling product, during those COVID months when WFH became the norm, was workstations, as people created office spaces within their homes. Rooms were reorganized, furniture was rearranged, the whole life was reset. In the case of DINK couples, schedules of spending time together was rejigged depending on the time zone in which the clients were located. In families with kids, it wasn’t just the couple that needed connectivity. The kids did too for their online school!
I am not sure there was much euphoria about WFH in the early days as it messed up everyday living and people took a long time to understand the benefits of WFH. I remember the conversation was all about how cool it was to wear a jacket on your PJ for a videocall with the customer (the TV anchors had already set a precedent for this, decades ago). By the time the benefits were internalized and people began to breathe easy with the arrangement of WFH, the corporates sent out the clarion call: COME BACK TO THE OFFICE!
This article speaks neither for WFH nor against. It’s just a as-is-where-is report. I think those who benefited from WFH and hated the idea of going back to the drudgery of traveling for work were typically people who had reorganized their lives around it. They could spend more time ‘being home’ , whether it meant more time with each other, with kids, or with extended families; and they had a well-balanced ‘me-time’ to do whatever took their fancy –learning djembe, hiking, or learning to play pickleball. Remote working also meant they could travel and stay logged in. Tourism industry was the biggest beneficiary of WFH. Going back to office meant going back to the strait-jacketed ‘linear’ life –work and nothing else.
I also know many people who resented WFH. They missed the collective energy of the workplace, the animated discussions across workstations, the break for a cuppa, the sharing of personal confidences, the time away from the ameness of home.
Somewhere along the way, a hybrid model emerged where people could WFH most of the month and pop in at the office may be a few times a month. Many large corporates gave up expensive real estate in the hope that they could post more attractive P&Ls with bulk of their employees working remote. But the time frame is too short for any productive analysis of the pros and cons. Organizations that want their employees back at work say their ‘productivity’ has gone south with remote working. Employees working from home say there is no ‘switch off’ time at all when you are working from home. My guess is that WFH is here to stay. Not all organizations may embrace it. Not all employees may resent going to office to work. I think, like water, each will find its own level, best suited to itself, in the coming years.
