Remote work — Version 2021
Why remote work may be here to stay
The year is 2021 and while a number of vaccines have been developed and currently being administered in most parts of the world, things are yet to return to normal. The number of deaths due to COVID-19 is still staggering (and painful to watch) and may be so (as projected by medical experts) for months to come.
Countries the world over are still requesting for the same safety precautions such as restricting the number of people in a gathering, wearing face masks, keeping the required physical distance etc. which were adopted in 2020 to remain in force.
For the vaccines, there is more demand than the available supply and so it may take months to vaccinate enough of the population to drive down the number of infections
I work in the tech space and the transition to remote work may have been easier for us than for many others. I want to share both the upsides and the downsides of going fully remote for the last one year.
The Upsides
It has been quite an adjustment, especially for people who had little to no experience working remotely. I found the following to be great upsides to going fully remote.
Time saved commuting to and from the office
If you are like me and live in a metropolitan city like Lagos, chances are you spend a number of hours in traffic daily. This means waking up early enough to meet up with resumption time and most people get in to the office tired. Working remotely has eliminated this and the result? People are able to resume on time.
More productive hours added to the day
Ever spent hours and hours stuck in traffic? This is time lost that could have been saved doing something productive. Working remotely has helped add hours that could be lost potentially in traffic back into the day, leading to greater productivity.
Potentially fewer distractions
In an office setting, there are a number of things that could easily distract one from the work at hand, it could be people randomly walking up to your desk to chat or in an open office setting, side chatter which you can’t seem to block off (except you own noise cancelling headphones). Working remotely for the most part, means you have less foot traffic around you which translates to fewer distractions and in turn, more work can be done in a shorter period of time.
Savings on office rent
A number of companies have scaled down on the amount of space they occupied before the pandemic and while this may be bad news for owners of the buildings, it has translated to savings for the companies. More money in the bank does not hurt after all.
The Downsides
It is certainly not all rosy with remote work and I spotted a few downsides that sometimes made me miss working from the office. A few of them are mentioned below;
More and more meetings
Before the pandemic, physical meetings were the norm. You had to commute to the client’s office for in-person meetings but with remote work, it is easy to jump on a Zoom or Teams meeting and this could go on and on throughout the day. I find that I attend way more meetings now than while working from the office.
Longer working hours
While working at the office, it was pretty clear that after close of work, say 5pm, most people will likely be on their way home. It was therefore a no brainer that you could not get much out of anyone at the end of the day and the expectation would be to pick up the conversation the next day. Working remotely however, everyone expects you to be at home and so you find longer engagements (and late night calls) happen almost on a daily basis. This makes it difficult to strike a proper work life balance.
Little to no socialization
Remember happy hour? Gone! everyone is holed up in their corner at their different homes in front of their PCs working almost non-stop. The casual conversations and catching up is not quite the same online as it is in-person. This is a sore point especially for extroverts who thrive on those social relationships.
Geographical barriers no longer exist as companies are now able to look beyond their physical locations to hire the right talent and this is not likely to change any time soon.
My key takeaways…
Remote work is here to stay. I believe it will never really go away even after the pandemic. It has opened up new frontiers in terms of tapping into the global talent pool. Geographical barriers no longer exist as companies are now able to look beyond their physical locations to hire the right talent and this is not likely to change. It may be better to properly define a framework on how to fully integrate remote work and make it part of the new normal instead of a temporary fix.
