Changing Dynamics of the Workplace.

Within the span of a few months, everything has come to a hold. To, maintain business continuity people are working from home and leaders are working round the clock to keep the workforce engaged and productive.

Work from home is the new normal. Really?

No interpersonal connections:

Work from home can be isolating. Talking to a man-made machine all the time and no real-life interactions. Being a sales rep, I get to talk to clients but what about interpersonal connections. Brainstorming on a new strategy. It is good to collaborate as a team and work on different challenges, having colleagues you can turn to with a problem.

Staying Calm is so difficult:

I remember taking casual walks in office premises, listening to music, and laughing away time with colleagues. Staying home all the time with limited interactions, no exercise, and no time for yourself has made me grumpy over time. It’s so important to take out some alone time for yourself, exercising, watching funny movies, and spending quality time with family.

Work-Life Imbalance:

I did not realize how easy it could be for my life to lose structure. You can no longer differentiate when work starts or ends. The lack of control on team interactions, since everything has shifted to video conferencing platforms; it’s so easy to lose track of time. Coming home and leaving the office was a forced boundary that separates your personal life.

Distractions:

No matter how much you try your family just don’t get it, that you’re working. They think you are home, but they don’t understand your mind is at work. And if you have kids, it’s so hard to create the boundaries that you need. How can one person stay on top of their game with so many disturbances? Distractions are so normal.

Leaderships and Employee Relationships:

The leadership and employee relationship set the tone of the workplace. With work from home in place, transfer of information is more tedious and no in-person interaction results in poor communication which can further lead to a host of problems like a missed deadline, confusion, or low morale.

Clocking more work hours and not the productive ones:

With the line between personal and professional life getting more and more blurred, the focus is always divided. Hence, a task relatively takes more time to be accomplished and that too with lesser accuracy.

Burnout:

With everyone working from home and juggling multiple things all together, they become more prone to burnout. Caring no more about the work we do or feeling detached are signs of burnout.

No more T.G.I Friday’s:

The opportunity to work and play together is no longer an option. Whether it’s happy Fridays, monthly team lunches, playing games, or watching movies together. Happy Friday’s help boosts employee happiness, creating a sense of teamwork and team spirit. It has been the best way to humanize the entire workforce even the senior folks.

Playing music:

Imagine arriving at work and your favorite music is playing. Cool huh?

Suddenly, your cranky mood elevates. You’re back in your zone. feeling happy and for a minute forgetting about your work obligations. That’s how my workplace used to look like, in the initial 20–30 minutes our company used to play music, and everyone used to be so happy all of a sudden.

The Yerkes-Dodson Law illustrates the empirical relationship with arousal (stress) and performance. Lower levels of stress translate into weaker performance. Elevated stress levels can improve performance. The moment stress becomes excessive, performance falls. Music helps in discharging negative feelings, creating a mental diversion to better deal with stress.

Source: https://hbr.org/2016/04/are-you-too-stressed-to-be-productive-or-not-stressed-enough

Conclusion:

Work from home has always been considered a taboo in India. This pandemic has tested us all in ways and means that we’ve never anticipated before. With changing times, every company will start making work from home an open-ended option for employees. Work from home policies will be more flexible. Do we need to accept the fact, that the desire to perpetuate a common work culture is next to impossible now?