Yesterday the WiFi in my home went off for some time. I took a walk around the house and realized that I stay with some other people. I met my parents, spouse and kids. I had a chat with them. Nice people. - This is a well known joke about the drawbacks of the digital age. However, as time passes this may not remain a joke anymore.
Those of us who have teen-aged and adolescent kids already know how they are addicted to being online. They spend almost all their waking hours with a device. But why blame kids alone? Even we adults are to blame equally. Most of us if not all of us are addicted to our online time. It is very common for a family to be under one roof and not interact with each other because all members are busy with their devices. Working online or work from home, with all it's advantages, is only going to make matters worse.
How?
For some time now, there has been talk of increasing online work in many industries. Many startups are adopting the model of work from home while minimizing their overheads. Other companies are too adopting this. Obviously this has many advantages. But it is going to have many side effects. The two main side effects are -
Firstly, the line between home and office will blur and disappear. Home will be office.
Secondly, more and more people will have a compulsion and a reason to be online for increased amount of time.
What will this mean?
When we move out of the house to an office we are physically moving away from the home and into a work place. This makes it easy to mentally transform to a work mode. If the home becomes the office, this mental transformation is difficult. As a result out domestic issues will have an increased effect on our work. Likewise, work related stress will get unloaded at home and on the family instantly. This is the result of being in the same environment.
A home or any other place selected for work will come with it's distractions. Avoiding these and focusing on work is going to be a major challenge. Even now in an office many people are distracted from work due to social media, gossip etc. Transport such people home and imagine the result!!
In a society like India where women are expected to do all work at house, their presence at home will lead to increased expectations from them. It will pose a challenge for balancing work and domestic life. It will lead to increased pressure for such women.
The millennial generation is already hooked to devices. If they start working online spending the day on the net, it will further reduce their ability to have meaningful face to face interactions and make friendships and relationships. This is going to have a major impact on the social structure in a few generations.
The concept of Sundays / Off days and personal time is also likely to get adversely affected. This is especially true in case the boss is a task master who liked to push the team members for completion of work. members will be expected to respond 24 X 7. The health and psychological fall outs will be severe.
How to prevent this?
Wherever possible, there should be a designated work room / desk at home which will be like an office. Our mind will associate this place with work and we can still have a mental transformation to work mode.
The role of family will be important. Respect the work time of a member working form home and leave them alone. Do not expect the family member to do something for you just because 'they are there'. After all, even now we are used to not having a working member at home and we do just fine, don't we?
We should insist on and push for family time. It may be meals or after meal chats. A holiday should be a 'no device day'. This sounds difficult to achieve but is not impossible. It is all about building it into the routine.
Companies should have strict policy on work hours. They should not expect their team members to respond at odd hours or on Sundays / holidays. This should be incorporated in the company policy.
Frequent face to face interactions and unofficial get-togethers should be organized for team members to form bonds and sort out important issues. Blended model of work is the best for this. (Blended model is the optimal mix of online and face to face work.)
In the end
Like any other thing, working from home also comes with pros and cons. If we are aware of both, we can maximize our benefits and safeguard our-self from the drawbacks.
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