While in the middle of nowhere, who knew that a new disruption is going to emerge. Yes, we may have faced dreaded difficulties, but this new disruption is something that we had never expected.
I’m talking about WORK FROM HOME disruption.
We often saw a few people working from home once or twice a week. But due to the outbreak, the entire world is working from home! Yes, the entire world! this is one of the kinds of disruption which our world would see just like Uber 🙂
Is the world going to be different post COVID19?
Well, I don’t know it yet, But I feel there will certainly be a few changes which are way too new for us to accept.
In the United States,
- 36 million wage and salary workers (25%) worked from home occasionally
- 15% of wage and salary workers had days they only worked from home.
- 57% percent of workers had a flexible schedule in which they could vary the times they began and stopped working.
(source: U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics)
The work from home culture evolved.
If we go way back in time, everybody used to work from home (mostly agricultural work) and there was essentially no concept of downtown offices. After the industrial revolution (which happened in America during 1790 through the 1830s) there was a shift from man-made to machine-made goods.
A dramatic increase in production was observed. For this kind of shift, people had come out of their homes and work at their designated factories. Travel for work thus started.
Currently, we are in the information revolution. We process a lot of our information through Internet. A substantial amount of our economy has gone digital.
Internet is something a majority of us have access to. It gives us the freedom to be anywhere in the world and connect to any part of the world through its cloud-based applications.
Have you ever wondered, why do we have to leave our house just to work? I’m sure some of you have had.
Working from home gives people an option to work at their convenience which results in an increase in productivity and commitment of the workers. For an individual contributor, work from home is the most attractive alternative as he/she can save a lot of time in travel and avoid the travel exhaustion.
Remote work gives you the advantage of saving money on gas, saving from expensive cafe food, allows you to take breaks whenever you want, wear comfy clothes and no need to find a conference room for your call (no chatty co-worker ). 🙂
I understand what many of you are thinking: “Divya, most of the workers such as construction workers, factory workers, fishermen, wholesale/retailers have got no option of work from home”.
Yes, you are right. This is when my heart goes for all of them. There are people working hourly and paid by the hour. Huge part of economy depends on them and this outbreak has been proof of it. Major shutdowns across the world have impacted our base level workers and disturbed our brothers’ and sisters’ lives. Let me tell you, there is no economy without base-level workers.
For much of the world, work from home has already evolved to be the new disruption and may change the work culture going ahead. This saves a lot on personal finances and also avoid emissions. The world is a mix of people of all skills. Work from home will change the lives of some, but a major part of our economy is still held strong by our fellow global citizens who need to have their physical presence at their workplace.