The Bright SIdes of Work From Home

 It's been 10 months since the pandemic began, and by now, work-from-home using virtual tools has become an indefinite reality. It can be depressing at times, being confined to the same four walls of our homes for days on end, having to deal with family all day, the constant needs of children, and the elderly overlapping with the constant needs of the boss. It's no surprise that many of us want this to be over already and go back to the drab workplaces we once loved to hate. However, since the pandemic doesn't seem to be ending anytime soon, perhaps it could be good to take this as an opportunity to assess the upsides of work-from-home. Mind you, in this post, I am only talking about work from home as it pertains to adults over the age of 25. Why only adults? To know the answer, ask any parent who currently has to deal with children with online classes. Why above the age of 25? Because that is the age at which most people's prefrontal cortex is done developing (in other words, they have reached neurological maturity according to the most basic science out there), which means the socializing effects of meeting friends and coworkers in workspaces has a lesser developmental impact. I will first talk about what I think are the upsides and then talk about the potential drawbacks of those upsides, so please bear with me till the end.

First of all, not everybody hates WFH. Because the pandemic is a negative experience in general, I feel as though we are lumping all changes that have come in response to it in the same negative mindscape. On social media, people keep complaining that they want to go back to work already but in private, many people are saying that the WFH system is saving them a lot of time and energy. People are not restricted by strict dress codes and don't have to conform to 'workplace' behavior outside of Zoom calls. The feeling of being in a panopticon, where one's boss can always monitor your every move, has subsided. Work can still be monitored but not the actions and mannerisms of people that have less to do with work and more to do with 'workspace culture.' Besides, in many places where space is at a premium, such as Mumbai, WFH was a growing trend even before the pandemic for cost-cutting purposes. If we remove WFH's association with the overall traumatic experience of the pandemic, we might learn to embrace it more and therefore help reduce some of our pandemic trauma in the process as well. We must remember that many positive changes in history have come as a result of adaptation to less-than-ideal circumstances, and if that is what is happening right now, we must learn to recognize it.

Secondly, WFH can help with people's physical health. Long commutes, exposure to air and noise pollution, overcrowded transportation, the threat of accidents--all of these have negative impacts on health and well-being that we have learned to accept as a side-effect of modern life. Some of us may not have to accept it anymore. Also, it must be noted that COVID is not the first contagious disease in the world. Traveling in overly crowded modes of transportation, a reality in many developing countries, put people at risk of contracting many other diseases such as the flu, tuberculosis, conjunctivitis, and so on, and not traveling (or at least not being forced to travel every single day) can help ease the burden on already overburdened health and transport infrastructure.

Work from home can have large-scale environmental impacts. Remember when Arvind Kejriwal said that in order to reduce pollution in New Delhi, he'd enforce restrictions on driving? Maybe the answer was not to drive at all. After all, if WFH is adopted to its fullest extent, the dreadful office hour traffic and all the smoke, soot, and smog that goes with it can be eased. Also, this is not just a developing country issue. In cities like Los Angeles, commuting by car for three hours a day is a reality. Think of all those cars just sitting there on superhighways, guzzling gas, and exhaling carbon. All this to get to jobs that, as the pandemic has shown us, could be done at home! Do we all really need to be buying $100,000 Teslas if a part of the environmental problem could be solved by, well, fewer cars on the road? I also think that the reason that solutions like limiting driving privileges are suggested in cities like New Delhi is that it is much easier to regulate the behavior of employees, who have less power, than to regulate the requirements enforced by employers, many of whom are very rich and powerful and want to regulate the behavior of their employees using the confines of the workspace to reinforce that power. These issues of spatial politics are rarely brought up in public discourse, but since we all have a chance now, maybe we should reflect upon them.

Now let's come to the potential downsides of the upsides we have talked about. To start with, I agree that WFH is not for everybody and by no means want to advocate for it in a way that neglects the needs of people who need to be physically present at their workspaces in order to do their jobs. Not too long ago, I had such a job, so be assured that I don't mean that WFH needs to become the new universal.

Then there is the issue of disturbance and distraction that is bound to happen if one is working from home, especially if they are living in crowded intergenerational homes. However, I would point out that maybe if we expand our idea of WFH a bit then we can manage this downside. For example, WFH does not necessarily have to be within your actual home. Housing needs to accommodate for WFH as another need of its occupants. Lobbies and common rooms need to be used more efficiently to double as workspaces. Even within our homes, WFH plans can be made to avoid disturbance and distraction. With a little bit of planning, which would be possible if WFH was a choice instead of an emergency step taken in reaction to a pandemic, perhaps the home can become a multipurpose space better. I know a lot of people reading this right now are probably shaking their heads, but in my humble opinion, that may be due to our own lack of imagination regarding our work as we are used to work systems being imposed on us and then complaining about them rather than designing the system ourselves, and that is not completely our fault. 

WFH also brings to light the digital divide. Not everyone has the access to the same digital resources, and that can effect workplace performance. However, the digital divide may be an easier divide to conquer than, say, the transportation divides or the prevalent pay gaps. The time people spend commuting to work is essentially unpaid labor, and different people put in different amounts of it, which means that there was a divide there that we were not talking about because we took it for granted. One can suggest that companies should bear the cost of transport, but in reality, it is impossible to truly bear the cost of being crushed between two strangers for two hours a day on a train or sitting in your car and straining your back (and your brain) because your lane of traffic just won't move. If companies had any intention of bearing such hidden costs, they would be doing so already, but they aren't. Wouldn't it be easier to demand that companies take responsibility to help their employees with the digital gap than with every other gap in the world? Isn't the digital world, in some ways, just more equitable that way? I mean, the difference in my boss' car (transport) and home office (workplace) may be insurmountable huge, but the beauty of the digital world is that it is not bound by the hierarchal structures of money, space, and time in the same way. I think it would be reasonable to expect companies to take responsibility for the digital accesses of their employees, especially given their wealth and power. Also, perhaps we should take this as an opportunity to refamiliarize ourselves with community-level resources such as community rooms in co-operative housings and public libraries, which are institutions that have all been forgotten due to the demands placed by workplaces. Investing in those facilities can have larger positive impacts as they serve purposes beyond the profits of the company, and are in that way, more socially efficient.

Lastly, there is the issue of domestic and child abuse getting aggravated if everyone was WFH. Sadly, I don't have a solution for this. However, people shouldn't have to go to work to escape abuse. If that is the world we are living in, then we need to reevaluate it asap, WFH or no WFH.

Clearly, WFH is not for everybody. It has its upsides and downsides, and I wouldn't want to come across as overly optimistic about it. However, it could be worth assessing the ways it can help us now that we have no choice but to participate in it. There could be something positive to come out of these very unfortunate times, and we wouldn't want to miss out on it simply because we refused to look at the bright side.