With the covid-19 outbreak working from home became a worldwide necessity. Companies are now forced to allow their employees to work from home, for a chance to survive the crisis. However, the idea of the home office is nothing new, it started in the early 1980’s as an alternative to traffic in peak hours and captivity in small offices. Back then, only a few companies allowed selected employees to work remotely, while others worried about the potential organizational and social hazards. Ever since then, remote work has become a global trend. In the United Kingdom it has more than doubled in popularity in eight years to 2 million employees working from home, and in the USA it is currently representing over 8 million employees.
I have been working remotely for about 2 years now. I started first as a freelance recruiter working on various projects, which allowed me the freedom to be entirely independent in choosing my working hours, daily tasks and routines. However, I think I fully experienced the ups and downs of remote work in 2019 when I started working for Caissa Global. From my very start at the company I was a remote worker, meaning my onboarding was also done remotely. These experiences helped me learn more about remote work and the impact it has on individuals and organisations.
According to Grant, Wallace and Spurgeon (2013) remote work can be summarized in three key areas: well-being, work-life balance and job effectiveness. These areas are overlapping and working remotely has had both positive and negative impacts across them. The positive aspects can be outlined as increased productivity, the ability to work flexibly and from different locations. It is argued that there are numerous benefits to employers who seek to improve job effectiveness and productivity through implementing remote working practices. These include increased job satisfaction, a positive impact on productivity as measured by the quality and quantity of work produced, reduced geographic constraints and a higher level of commitment by employees to the employer. Furthermore, remote work has played a big part in overcoming work-life balance issues for organisations wishing to retain skilled employees. This has been particularly effective for those individuals who need to consider family arrangements or to reduce commuting time to provide time for other activities.
I personally succeeded in delivering and maintaining a high performance in my work with the help of activity measures like outreach messages response rate, conversion of CVs sent, conversion of final interviews etc. I found increased frequent contact with my mentor to be helpful in engaging and enhancing motivation, which led to my increased productivity. Further, remote working helped me improve my efficiency in today's globalized economy. For example, I was able to conduct late interviews with candidates from different time zones. Lastly, the personal benefit of remote work was that I learned to self-motivate, increase integrity and build self-confidence. I found that working from home was helpful in managing my “other” non-work duties as well as personal relationships.
On the other side, the negative aspects should not be overlooked. It is believed that it is harder for e-workers to build meaningful relationships with their colleagues and managers, as their main contact is online. That was described as a “professional isolation” in the research of Garg and Rijst (2015). Workers from home feel professionally isolated as they often lack “social barometers”. They struggle to figure out what is the acceptable level of humor, making it difficult to determine how they should behave. This has resulted in self-questioning if they insulted someone or made any mistakes. Additionally, they may feel excluded from the group of employees who work in the office. It is well known that one of people’s basic needs is to belong to a specific group. In my opinion, if not addressed, this might result in increased job exhaustion and unhappiness, which would increase the likelihood of departure. My advice is to include the remote workers as much as possible in the company’s events and gatherings, because employees with a strong sense of organizational identification will make an effort to keep close contact with the organization and make themselves loyal members of the company.
The big challenge for me was (and still is) the collapsing of boundaries between work and private life and the impact of being able to work 24 hours a day, seven days a week. In other words, having constant access to technology was making it difficult for me to switch off entirely from work. I was often logging-in past normal hours, was over-working, and had often worked instead of engaging with my family. Reading and answering late emails and changing the working culture that promotes “non-stop” working is something I still struggle with.
Both positive and negative experiences helped me discover more about myself and my potential. If I could change something and give advice it would be that companies should consider providing training for home-office workers and their managers before they take any move towards a remote workforce. Remote workers should not be allowed to become “invisible workers”, they may be very skilled at their job, but they do still require support to be effective. That is why as part of the training, managers should learn to over-communicate with remote workers, not just about work matters, but also psychological issues such as over-work, managing work and home boundaries and their stress levels. On the other hand, employees need to be open and maintain a straightforward communication with their supervisors letting them know of difficulties they are encountering.
Although the popularity of remote work has significantly increased after the covid-19 outbreak, and that is not surprising as it can offer so much for both the company and employees, still there is a group of people that find it difficult to adjust and prefer the old-fashioned way of office work. Before making decisions on remote work, it would be beneficial for employees to reflect on their competencies and personal characteristics, as remote work could have a big impact on an individual's quality of work and non-working life.
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