In what must be unprecedented in work history, Singapore has undergone the most extensive work-from-home exercise, thanks to COVID-19.
What the Government struggled to encourage employers for years was achieved in mere weeks by the pandemic.
With companies forced to institutionalise work-from-home (WFH) or be penalised for not keeping to pandemic health rules, many scrambled to figure out how to conduct business without any in-person interaction.
It was a steep learning curve. Laptops replaced desktops, internet connectivity (and family relationships) were put through a thorough stress test, and everyone in the country now has a Zoom account. We were forced to adapt with a lack of alternatives and soon found considerable benefits to WFH.
We saved on commuting time and transportation costs. We worked in pyjamas and did less laundry. With flexible time, I could go to the gym at 9 am and have tea at 3 pm – so long as my work for the day was done.
Personal Finance Comparison site SingSaver did a calculation for two of their employees and found that working remotely helped them to save between S$400 to S$600 per month.
The benefits also extended to businesses as they cut back on office space.
DBS Bank plans to surrender about two and a half floors or 75,000 square feet in Tower 3 of the Marina Bay Financial Centre. Citigroup and Mizuho are also cutting space on the back of work from home success.
THE COSTS PILE UP
But we need to be clear-eyed about this dream scenario where everyone is productive and happy working out of their bedrooms. With the recent announcement allowing up to 75% of employees to return to the office, many workers are looking forward to the day we can head back to the office with no caveats.
For me, it was dealing with four children at home, toggling their home-based learning requirements, space constraints and steady Internet connectivity that got me longing for my old office.
I experienced the last factor first-hand when there was a power trip in the middle of a webinar I was delivering. This would never happen in the office – even if there were an outage, a backup generator would have kicked in.
The reality is that most of us are not born multitaskers and need distance to focus. National University Health System’s (NUHS) Mind Science Centre surveyed in 2020 and found that 61 per cent of those working from home reported feeling stressed, compared with 53 per cent of front-liners.
Stress is not the only thing irritating folks jaded with working from home. The space constraint is a significant problem. When we first bought our place in 2016, my wife and I planned our home space usage based on how we wanted to live, with little expectation that we would have to work in the same place.
I’ve had no choice but to work on the sofa, the dining table and even the bed when I needed to be in a quiet space for a meeting – all of which are horrible for work. After sitting on the hard dining chair for four hours straight, I learned that this was no way to work with a relapse of my back problem.
It is little surprise that senior principal physiotherapist John Abraham from Rapid Physiocare reported a significant increase in WFH injuries since the circuit breaker.
ARE WE MORE EFFICIENT?
Sure, surveys show we are more productive when working from home, but I wonder if that is because in saving time on commuting, we are simply converting these extra hours into work. It is not uncommon for people to start at 8 am and not leave until well past 7 pm.
But while we can get more done simply because we are spending more hours working, are we really more efficient?
I find myself spending more time playing Whatsapp/slack/email ping pong just to get a small task done. In an office setting, I simply walk over to my colleague and get things sorted in less than 10 minutes. The same exercise now can be as long as a tennis match with a back and forth of emails and messages.
Experts have long said that without face to face communication, we have very little to help us discern what the other person is trying to tell us because we can’t see expressions or hear the tone of voice.
Without these clarifying cues, we frequently “fill in the blanks” with assumptions and second-guesses, which lead to unnecessary and time-consuming misunderstandings or miscommunications.
Overall, communication has become far more tedious in a WFH setting.
The other thing that has taken a big hit is ideation. The Zoom experience does not permit people to raise their points quickly (there is a built-in lag feature to prevent talking over each other). There’s something about painting out ideas together on a whiteboard that makes creative ideas come about more easily.
This sense of collaboration and creativity dies when you are not in the room to argue, disagree and then come to a consensus. Zoom meetings, too, are often dominated by the one person whose job is to get a project over the line.
But the most important thing we have significantly missed by not being in the office? Socialising.
Aristotle said that “Man by nature is a social animal”. According to Julianne Holt-Lunstad, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Brigham Young University, a lack of social connection heightens health risks as much as smoking 15 cigarettes a day or abusing alcohol. She also found that loneliness and social isolation are twice as harmful to physical and mental health as obesity.
When I asked my LinkedIn contacts what they miss about the office, more than 700 professionals said they couldn’t wait to return to the office, and a whopping 60 per cent confessed they missed socialising most of all.
Most adults were lucky enough to experience this aspect of work-life before COVID-19 hit. Far unluckier are recent graduates and new employees who have no chance to meet their colleagues or speak to people along the corridor or in the pantry.
I realised how much I missed having lunch with colleagues – just for an hour or two – to offload and discuss our shared experiences made the whole work experience better; one reason why I’m glad socialising with your colleagues in groups of ten is now allowed.
Of course, COVID-19 won’t disappear just because we have decided to live with it. And we will still need to abide by safe management measures in the workplace and wear masks all day.
Not so long ago, Apple sent a memo asking its employees to return to the office three times a week.
In response, some employees pushed back. Their letter started from a Slack channel for “remote work advocates” with roughly 2,800 members.
The surprise is that only 2 per cent of their workforce is insistent on not heading back to the office. For the other 98 per cent of Apple’s total employees, perhaps, returning a few days a week is a much-needed desire to reset a most abnormal work experience.
I, for one, could really use a proper desk and some peace and quiet from home – so I can work.
