Due to the COVID-19 epidemic, work-from-home has become today’s new norm. Although WFH has existed for a long time, the increase in the number of openings seeking to foster such an atmosphere is unparalleled. Both technological progress and shifts in employee behavior have contributed to a shift in the proportion of employees who regularly travel to and from the office and the number who sometimes or regularly do their jobs remotely. While there is widespread agreement that these linkages are shifting, scholars remain divided about the long-term consequences of these shifts. But the enthusiastic reaction of the public and businesses to these alterations shows that WFH is the phenomenon that will be absorbed into cultural and commercial standards.
Before the Covid-19 crisis, working from home was seldom considered an option for many people worldwide. Most significant conversations are conducted in person between companies and inside companies and organizations. Face-to-face (FTF) contacts formed the backbone of almost all business processes, including contract and sales negotiations, employee training and mentoring, recruitment, and promotion (Emanuel and Harrington, 2021, quoted in Bond-Smith & McCann, 2022). Just 5% of UK employees were full-time telecommuters before the covid-19 shutdown (Felstead and Feuschke, 2020, as quoted by Bond-Smith and McCann, 2022). However, the spread of the covid-19 epidemic completely altered the situation’s dynamics.
Hundreds of millions of people’s daily work live suddenly included WFH. The progress was aided by the widespread use of online meeting platforms like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, GoogleMeet, Cisco Webex, Skype-for-Business, and others (Bond-Smith & McCann, 2022). An estimated 50% of Europeans now work from home (at least part-time) as a result of the epidemic, up from 12% before the outbreak (Galanti et al., 2021). Worker and employer perspectives on their responsibilities in the workplace have shifted due to the ‘zoomshock’ learning that communities have experienced over the last few years. Widespread data shows that the pandemic-induced WFH teleworking opportunities favored advanced skills and upper-income groups, particularly in high-value service sectors and among those in management, professional, or financial jobs (Bond-Smith and McCann, 2022). Therefore, these are the professions that had the greatest time and opportunity to make use of these technologies and figure out how to implement WFH opportunities to their fullest capacity, both during the lockdowns and after they were lifted.
The pandemic experience taught employers and entrepreneurs that face-to-face (FTF) contacts are more important and required than web-based (WFH) ones in various contexts and concerning different challenges. In particular, both individuals and organizations have adapted to new ways of working and found that a wide range of tasks may be completed well without direct participation from one or more individuals in another location. On the other hand, it has become clear that virtual meetings are less creative in contrast to FTF, and many highly competent workers are less productive due to the fewer possibilities for interpersonal engagement that WFH provides (Gibbs et al., 2022, cited in Bond-Smith and McCann, 2022). Therefore, there is likely to be a spectrum of results among employees.
Some individuals and businesses may choose that due to the specifics of their jobs. Bloom (2020, cited in Bond-Smith and McCann, 2022) believes that this group will account for around 30% of the workforce due to their mix of job function kinds and personal preferences. Conversely, there may be significant savings to be had by outsourcing all office work to distant locations. Similarly, 40% of employees will use a hybrid approach, combining elements of FTF and WFH, to maximize productivity (Bloom, 2020, cited in Bond-Smith and McCann, 2022). White-collar employees are expected to spend at least 20% more time working from home post-pandemic than they did before the epidemic, on average, but blue-collar and lower-skilled workers are expected to spend no more than 10% more time working from home (Barrero et al., 2020 cited in Bond-Smith and McCann, 2022). This is predicted to result in an average of 1.5 WFH days each week; however, there are significant variations across nations and industries (Aksoy et al., 2022, cited in Bond-Smith and McCann, 2022).
Small firms may find WFH appealing because of the fewer risks associated with decreased operational revenue, supply chain interruption, and an improved cash flow position. These factors lessen the epidemic’s devastating impact and urge that policies promoting remote work and WFH be implemented as a response (Zhang et al., 2021). WFH has a beneficial impact on the performance of small businesses; however, this impact differs across different types of businesses. Increases in the WFH rate benefitted enterprises in the professional services, wholesale trade, and retail sectors but hurt those in the construction, health service, lodging, and food service industries. But just 2% of small businesses said they had no cash flow, while 75% said they had enough cash to survive between one week and two months, or three months or more (Zhang et al., 2021). This suggests that current views on WFH deployment in the corporate world need to be reconsidered.
Several studies over the previous few months confirm that working from home improves productivity compared to being physically present at an office. Those who work from home are 47% more productive, waste 10 minutes a day less, and put in an extra day of work every week (Zhang et al., 2021). Without touching on corporate efficiency or output, these metrics are consistent with the long-term viability of work-from-home setups. Given this data, it’s possible that certain companies provide more solid solutions that work well in a WFH setting or are better suited to this kind of company structure.
In conclusion, the work-from-home model of employment and business operations is the newly accepted reality of the modern-day economy. The change is evident globally as the countries in the European Union, UK, USA, and Asia are moving towards embracing WFH. This change is attributable to the increased resources in the technology designed for imitating face-to-face interactions online. However, it is not applicable to every business. New entrepreneurs in Construction, Health Service, Accommodation, and Food Service may desire to continue FTF practices given the nature of their work and declined cash flow statistics in the US during a pandemic. Other businesses may approach the subject cautiously, while with the implementation, immediate benefits are foreseeable among Professional Services, Wholesale Trade, and Retail Trade. Moreover, since recent statistics demonstrate increasing workers’ productivity in home environments, some businesses may succumb to implementing a hybrid approach to raise the overall productivity of the companies.
Reference List
Bond-Smith, S. & McCann, P. (2022) The work-from-home revolution and the performance of cities. The Productivity Institute Working Paper No.026. Web.
Galanti, T., Guidetti, G., Mazzei, E., Zappalà , S. and Toscano, F. (2021) “Work from home during the COVID-19 Outbreak,” Journal of Occupational & Environmental Medicine, 63(7). doi: 10.1097/jom.0000000000002236.
Zhang, T., Gerlowski, D. and Acs, Z. (2021) “Working from home: Small Business Performance and the COVID-19 pandemic,” Small Business Economics, 58(2), pp. 611–636. doi: 10.1007/s11187-021-00493-6.