Two years ago, a small sector of Britain’s workforce worked from home. The stigma pointed to a skiving demeanour and an unproductive employee. Now it has become the norm, working from a makeshift office in a small corner of your house or your living room. The busy morning routine has become a serene roll out of bed. More hours in the day have led to the stigma being removed but more people caught in the dilemma of not being able to separate home life and work life.
On the surface, the benefits seem bountiful. People have invested in technologies to work remotely, innovation in video conferencing, telecommuting and other at-home technologies have improved. Work hours are flexible, and there are no clear-cut distinctions for when you should stop working. Inevitably, more work gets done, and businesses can pay less because the reality of the working hours is blurry. What once seemed lazy, unproductive and uncontrolled is now better for business, the ‘new normal’ and efficient.
It is clear to see that workers prefer the freedom to work at home comfortably. The working attitude and behaviour have changed significantly with younger workers – possibly those who have entered the workforce for the first time during the pandemic. This is their normal, and it seems to be working to their advantage. They cut the cost of travelling, learn in a more relaxed, less pressure environment and benefit from having more trust from their employer in the early years of their employment. However, this is not the mainstream first job experience. We can only begin to scratch the surface of the consequences that can unfold.
From a business standpoint, it seems viable to continue working from home, but in a century where there is importance on caring for the individual, how does this affect them? When presenting the option of working from home, people may fully endorse it. However, when it is no longer a choice, we may run into problems. The inability to separate work from home may have people struggling to maintain their sanity. A fast company article has pointed out that working from home can have long term adverse psychological effects.
The four major psychological effects were loneliness, anxiety, stress and lack of face-to-face interaction. Companies can find it hard to boost workers morale and improve their mental health when they work remotely. Another root problem causing these psychological issues can be the loss of a working day routine. When working in the same environment that we associate with relaxing, we can send mixed messages to the brain. We can see the effect of this being a person that works throughout the day- increasing their chances of burning out. Or we can see a person that is happy doing the minimum. Businesses have not figured out how to monitor people effectively at home, and there is no magic antidote for personal health.
When looking to the future, working from home doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. The market is running smoothly, and the pandemic has propelled Britain to make technological enhancements to the working sector. Bettering our outputs with lower costs. Businesses may cut on office space but use the new room in their budget to hire more people to increase productivity. But at what personal cost? What can be done to make working at home more mentally accessible for the average person?
Behavioural economics has taught us that people rarely go out of their way to change things. Symptoms of negative mental health can creep up on you without warning. Thus, in the short term, we may evaluate that workers are more efficient at home and we can profit more. However, the result may be disastrous in the long run, leading to another health crisis on our hands. We will swap a physical virus more a mental one, stagnating our economy again for years to come.
If Britain wants to move onwards and upwards, it needs to work out the defects in working from home. There is no way around it and no stream of profit to curb the creeping obstructive effects.