Is “Remote Work” the “Future”?

History

With the advent of new technologies right after the WW2 most of the nations grew into large economies. 

Along with the invention of new technologies specifically the internet and World Wide Web (WWW) , the ownership of Personal Computers expanded rapidly. Thus majority of the homes were connected to the World Wide Web even among the developing nations.

                       Image 1.1 Source : shutterstock

Evolution of Remote Work Culture

Remote work was invented with the above facilitators and remote work culture kept on evolving in the 21st century considerably with the invention of smart phones and mobile devices. Technology is now making it easier to work anywhere in the world, as long as one is connected to the internet (Hendricks,2014)

        Image  1.2 Source : shutterstock.com

Remote work can be simply put as the practise of the employee partaking in their job tasks from a physical location other than a central office operated by the employer.

Arguments against the Remote Work Culture and what does that mean for the future of the office workplace?

Since there requires no physical presence for the employee at the central office thus benefits the employee and the employer in saving the travelling expenses (Olson, 1983) .

        Image 1.3 Source :  dreamstime.com 

Nevertheless remote working often result in additional costs associated to the utility bills such as the electricity and the internet bills due to the increased time with more data usage that is being spent on internet and specifically on interactive sessions such as video conferences. This however does not be applicable on most of the developed countries. In the developing world such as in Sri Lanka this might be have a considerable impact.

The time spent on commuting to the central office from employee’s home could be saved from the perspective of the employee. The time saved could be utilized for his or her personal pastimes.

However, there is inevitably a temptation for any employee to work more in the commuting time as well since commuting is associated with the central work place. This could be argued as good or bad but from the employee’s perspective this can be considered as a con in allocating addition one or two hours for working.

                    Image 1.4 Source : pinterest.com

Remote work also reduces the Carbon footprint since remote working does not require employees to drive to work and environmentally effective as well by saving the CO2 emissions.

Furthermore employee could readily partake his duties even working from home (WFH), coffee shops, restaurants, gymnasium and at the library regardless of the distance to his or her workplace which also reduces employee stress levels. 

Structural daily regime of the employee falls apart along with the remote working culture. From the point of the employee, scattered work schedule may demotivate himself or herself in an unfavorable manner.

On the other hand, commitment to a assigned task at a given time could not be supervised by the employer as it was at the central office which could be proven costly when running under tight schedules.              

 

Image1.5 Source: forbes.com

The flexibility of the Remote Work Culture is of great value for employees since It assists in work-life balance (Armstrong et al, 2007). Flexibility entails increase in work presence that is beneficial for the employer. Much more family time is assured for the employee and his or her children also could be managed effectively by the employee attending to their matters timely as well. 

Overdependence on technology could be considered as one of those disadvantages that could be proven costly for the employer as well as the employee as he may not able to attain the effectiveness that he achieves at the office in the event of a laptop break down, hardware failure or even in a broadband disconnection.    

                     

              Image 1.6 Source : depositphotos.com

Personality clashes and tight observation along with workplace poltics remains at a very lower level with the remote work culture that also support employee’s mental wellbeing to freely engage in the tasks.

Regardless, peer to peer interaction at the office among the colleagues would not take place in a remote working environment and thus this would lead to loneliness,boredom, isolation due to lack of actual human interaction this signifies especially if the employee possesses an extrovert behavior and lives alone while require to work in a remote condition.

The Future of Work: In office, Remote, Hybrid

Considering the pros and cons of the remote work culture or teleworking companies have come up with a fluid approach known as the hybrid model where the employee gets a choice rather than forcing them to work upon the preferences of the employee. Workers are given the autonomy to decide which work culture or which combination of work pattern may suit him or her the best. Upon the acknowledgement he could change the in office or remote working. This offers ample flexibility to the employee thus could motivate him more. Employer could ensure higher productivity from the workers since the employees decide the working culture. These "Flexible working methods " will have many advantages such as good utilization of human capital (Kathenbach et al, 2010) , meet the employees concerns about balancing the demands of work and family over time. (Wickramasinghe et al, 2007)

Hybrid work culture could thereby be deemed as the future of the work and specially amidst the pandemic it could be put into action and most companies including Ford and Spotify have already implemented the approach in an efficient manner. 

                              References

Armstrong, D., Riemenschneider, C., Allen, M. and Reid, M., 2007. Advancement, voluntary turnover and women in IT: A cognitive study of work–family conflict. Information & Management, 44(2), pp.142-153.

Kattenbach, R., Demerouti, E. and Nachreiner, F., 2010. Flexible working times: effects on employees\" exhaustion, work‐nonwork conflict and job performance. Career Development International, 15(3), pp.279-295.

Kattenbach, R. and O’Reilly, J., 2011. Introduction: New Perspectives on the Quality of Working Life. management revu, 22(2), pp.107-113.

Olson, M., 1983. Remote office work. Communications of the ACM, 26(3), pp.182-187.

Wickramasinghe, V., Wickramasinghe, G., De Silva, C., Chandrasekara, R. and Jayabandu, S., 2019. Practice of Workforce Flexibility-Internal, External, Numerical and Functional Flexibility. Performance Improvement Quarterly, 31(4), pp.355-379.

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