It had been a long time since I had been working from the comfort of my home. Only recently did I shift from working from home to working from the office in an entirely new city. As scary as it may appear it had been nothing more than a big realisation of my approach towards career and life in general. In this blog let me try to sum up my journey of realisation.
Working from home is a gift that we received in exchange for literally lost lives during the recent 2020 pandemic. When the world was putting down the shutters we humans came up with this brilliant idea of taking office to our home. It was an idea that was greatly appreciated from all across the world as in times of chaotic situations like those where the world was ceasing its operations, we found a way to keep going. The cargo ships didn't put their anchors, the software didn't stop updating, moreover, new software to facilitate WFH were developed. Some of us also got our degrees studying from home.
But few had no choice but to work from home. Healthcare professionals, grocery store workers, and other essential personnel often had to continue working in person to provide crucial services. So a few who can work from home accepted their home as an office, some got overly accustomed to it as well; while some who had no option of working from home, worked their usual hours - just with extra precautions of not catching the virus.
As the pandemic started to withdraw its presence from the air, LinkedIn was full of debates about what is better: Working from Home or Working from the Office. Most of the debate originated from the lack of human touch while working in teams. Some found that productivity had gone down while some saw a major spike in the work-life balance quotient. While the world was divided into two - I found myself in the 'pro WFH' group in my initial days of working for a corporate.
Before I started working in a corporate in India, I was in Australia studying for my master's. Australia as a country had received minimal damage from the pandemic as it was efficiently contained and controlled by the Australian government. Although there was loss of life in Australia due to the virus, the numbers were not as high as what the other parts of the world were experiencing. Being in Australia at the time of the pandemic, I was working in public (of course with great precautions) as I would before the pandemic started.
As I moved back to India the conditions here compelled me to look for a WFH job. And luckily I got one. A permanent work-from-home job in my desired field. All I had to do was wake up - log in - use my brain to get things done - log out and then sleep. And all of this in the comfort of my home. The comfort at my home watered the thoughts of WFH being the better option than WFO. This, while ignoring the disadvantages of WFH and advantages of WFO.
Let me briefly take you through the advantages and disadvantages of WFH and WFO -
Working from Home -
Advantages: the comfort of home, you get time to spend with your family especially your kids when they are growing up, minus the travel time to the office and utilise it for doing some personal or office related work, can move back to your hometown and avoid paying rent, flexibility of work timing depending on what process or field you involved in.
Disadvantages: lack of social interactions, reduced idea sharing, blurring of work-life boundaries as on certain days you are requested to or you have to be perpetually online through your laptop. Distractions. Equipment issues can add hours of delays. Reduced visibility for career growth. Isolation and Loneliness.
Working from Office -
Advantages: Face-to-face interactions, social well-being, easier to communicate with peers, focused environment, reduced interruptions. Increased visibility, networking opportunities, and mentorship. And the most important will be the physical separation of work life and personal life.
Disadvantages: TRAFFIC, the time spent travelling, higher cost of transportation and childcare if you have a kid and no one to take care of at home.
That's it!
For me, being an HR, it had become a very lonely job for over 2 years. Although I was always on calls with my teammates and the employees and job-seeking candidates, I always craved to be there for my teammates and employees when they needed help. I tried for 2 years to stay available but I realised that it was time I moved my base to OFFICE. As an HR you can only provide on-call assistance to the employee queries working from home. Which at times can be more than adequate, but there are times when I felt I could have helped better if I was physically present at the office. Especially while handling a conflict when two or more parties are involved. Also, I would get to closely work with my seniors and learn more from their style of working and general mentorship.
But there's a pre-requisite for this! And that is you need your teammate to come to the office too! The whole point of working from the office is to seek and provide face-to-face assistance, to work closely in collaboration with each other, and to improve on your skills by shadowing your peers or seniors.
Anyway, this is a great transition for me. I have had great experience working from home. I have great memories of the ups and downs shared with my teammates over the GOOGLE Meets. So here I am, hoping and looking forward to creating great memories and getting work done with the team. All I want and wish is that I could help more employees with fewer delays, get into new projects and smoothen/iron out a few existing projects. So yeah, working from the office over working from home.
That's my realisation.
Open to seeing changes in opinions as I spend more time working from the office.
But I am hoping for the best.
Best of luck to me!
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