As bitter as it may sound, the way people have lived their lives will change after the pandemic. Many of the changes you see in the way of living of the people today will continue forever even after the pandemic is over. That’s because people would not want to create yet another stage for another pandemic to start. It is the care and precaution that people will put in their lifestyles that will decide whether or not another pandemic occurs in the near future. Now, one of the biggest lifestyles changes brought about by the pandemic is the work-from-home culture.
People are now working from home more than ever. Employers have found a way for people to work from home and manage their work just as efficiently as they did from their offices. Does it mean people will enjoy a great, free, and desired lifestyle after the COVID-19 pandemic is over? Israel Figa differs from the general public opinion on this matter. He believes that the work-from-home culture is going to cause even more problems but people are just not aware of them right now. Here is what he has to say.
Health-related Problems Will be Rampant
At the moment, people are not really thinking about this factor but there will be a huge problem of health related issues when people start working from home. It is true that a lot of people go to the office and on their way, they find a way to walk a little. In many European countries, people actually take their commute as an excuse to do some exercise. What they do is they use bicycles to commute to the office. In a similar way, before the pandemic arrived, a lot of employers were considering employee health programs. They were making their employees healthy because they understood health problems were causing a lot of absenteeism issues.
On the other hand, sitting in one place for several hours and working while focusing constantly on the screen can be extremely unhealthy. That’s something everyone knows today but only a few people are able to get out of this vicious cycle on their own. When they start working from home, they will be stuck in this vicious cycle with no way to get out because they will not be able to get out of the house due to the lockdowns. Based on that, Israel Figa believes that health problems will become very common all around the world.
Productivity and Reliability Issues Will Occur
One of the biggest challenges that almost all employers around the world will face is of reliability and productivity. Offices are designed to be places of productivity. If you don’t have an AC in your home, you definitely have one in your office. In a similar way, the office desks, workstations, and the entire furniture is designed to make workers productive. In addition to that, offices always have power backups, internet backups, and other contingency plans to keep the work flowing even when there are power cutouts and other natural problems. That’s not the case with setups that people have at home.
They are not ready for these disruptions and they might not have power and internet backups at home. This causes a lot of reliability and productivity issues. As a result, the companies are not able to perform the way they did before the pandemic. Low productivity means low revenue, and it then results in employee layoffs and other measures that don’t prove to be pleasing for any employee in the world. Such things are going to be a trend in the years to come when people start working from their homes.
Final Thoughts
You can see that Israel Figa has some really serious and practical concerns with regards to the new world wherein most people are supposed to work from home. At the same time, you can observe that these problems are not just limited to employees but employers as well. People will have to think of ingenious ways to make things work for as long as things don’t become normal.
