During this past weekend, I found myself in the middle of a family conversation, where the topic of home office came up. My father commented that it wasn’t a good practice. “It’s not healthy,” he repeated several times while shaking his head from side to side in denial.
My cousin and I did not agree with him, as both of us (who, by the way, both work in the IT field) have seen huge benefits from working from home. We tried to explain, but he continued to shake his head and finally we left the conversation at that.
But since then, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. Is home office really healthy? Does it really have the benefits that I claim? After a couple of days of reflection, I found that this topic, like everything in life, is complicated.
We have already passed the first year mark of the pandemic, and from my experience and privilege, home office has brought a lot of benefits to my life (although here I only list 3).
The Good
- Job opportunities
This situation has allowed me to have a remote job, something that while possible before, I’m not sure I would have been given the opportunity so easily as a junior developer.
- More time for myself
I think this is the most obvious, as without having to travel (or even shower in the mornings) to go to an office I have been able to sleep more, spend more time with my family, and give myself time for me. I have been able to engage in more activities, which although are inside my house or with a limited number of people, I had not been able to try before; I didn’t know how much time of my life was only going in transport to other places.
- Greater mental peace
This was the point I wanted to get to, because I believe not everyone has experienced this, but for me (after the initial shock of confinement) my mental health has improved considerably. See, I have generalized anxiety disorder and there are days that I am very, very bad. Those days, when I had to work in an office, were terrible. The workday seemed eternal, I’m sure I aged 4 years for each day that was like that; I couldn’t concentrate during those hours and I felt horrible about it, feeling that my work was not worth it and not sure what I was doing there. It was a time when neither my mind nor my body could escape from there, the most I could do was watch a couple of YouTube videos, talk to colleagues or go for a walk; but that was it, your colleagues can only talk so much with you before they have to return to their tasks and after a certain number of walks your boss starts to look at you weird (YouTube videos are infinite, for better or worse).
But in the home office I have the privilege of working from my room, where I have all the tools I need to deal with those bad days, which not only are no longer terrible, but have decreased in quantity and frequency! Although it took a couple of months to reach stability in my routine and have the discipline to work from home, now if I start having a particularly terrible day, I’ll take a quick shower, go out to the patio, and play with my pet; and that will work as a reset to my body, where I didn’t lose the whole day trying to escape from my own mind, instead just 20 minutes in regaining composure. On less terrible but still difficult days, stopping each pomodoro break to walk around the house or play a game as a reward for finishing a task serves as enough incentive to keep a good mood all day.
The Bad
This is not to say that everything has been rosy, as I mentioned, it was a couple of months of work to get to this point. Also, I know I am speaking from a huge privilege, because not only was I lucky enough to have the equipment to work comfortably from home; but I had a place where to do it and a quiet environment, something that many people have not had.
Even so, with all my privilege, there has been a big point and an important topic throughout the pandemic: socialization.
- Socialization
As an “adult” that I am, I am starting to notice something that I had heard from older people: when you are an adult it is difficult to make friends. And in my first job in IT the best thing I took away were the friendships I made, because they are people that to this day I frequent and talk to daily; they went from being colleagues to close friends. Talking with them I like to tell them that really that office was not an office, but really we were in a reality show style The Office where they recorded everything that happened.
While, in the jobs/internships that I had during the pandemic I was able to meet incredible people, people I consider mentors, I can’t help but think that I would have a better relationship with them if I could have seen them in person more often. I also can’t deny that it is much easier to get help from someone if they are sitting next to you, even if it only serves as a rubber duck.
In short, I miss very much the human warmth that working in an office brought and it would be a lie if I did not say that I worry about losing the ability to make friends if this model awaited me for the rest of my life.
However, this is just one of the problems that working from home brings; I have not touched on things as important as that businesses save money if we are not physically in an office while we spend more by having to pay for the supplies we use to work without having a salary increase that reflects that saving on the part of the employer. This was not the point I wanted to touch on in this writing, but we should not take our finger off that topic.
What I Propose
So what is the solution? What would be ideal? From my young and naive point of view, and considering that this is a solution to my specific problems; I believe that the solution would be a hybrid model, 2 days of face-to-face office and 3 days of work from home. It could work in reverse as well, but personally I prefer the first option.
This would allow for an agile dynamic for situations such as meetings, planning or any other type of event that benefits from being physically in a room, leaving 3 days of space for the employee to work comfortably and in their own style from home. Also, if the office is already going to be open some days, why not allow employees who want to go work there? This could benefit, for example, someone who does not have good internet at home or someone who has children at home and does not have a suitable place to concentrate.
In this last example it also works the other way around, it would allow (if things return to something that resembles the past) for working parents to see their children more time after they get home from school, even allowing everyone to eat at the same time, at the same table.
In the end, like many of the beautiful things in life, I think everything should be left to the free will of people; that they can choose the model that works best for them, because I believe that we as humans are much more than a piece of meat capable of making money for a company and home office can be a support in our search for meaning and happiness.
If you are interested in more about the topic of post-covid life, I recommend this video by Ophelia Pastrana.
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