Recently I ran a quick poll about what would general public prefer to do as soon as lockdown is lifted. The results are not surprising. Except for workplace, majority cannot wait to start socialising again, mainly out at pubs, restaurants, and cafes. Maybe staying at home and working from home have lost their respective boundary to the extent that they are closely associated with limited freedom in this pandemic period.
Struggle to see how remote working will cease to exist post pandemic, I am curious to see how personal and professional development can grow out of working from home without physical interaction.
In particular, in-person observation and open face-to-face communication with colleagues at workplace enable spontaneous feedback as opposed to back and forth emails and limited Teams video calls. Truth to be told, social skills with various stakeholders require training at workplace, and working from home is as good as working in isolation, if one chooses to be. Potentially, this also seems contradictory to promoting healthy competition at workplace, which is key to excelling and driving organisational productivity – Competition can easily be felt at workplace with presence of surrounding colleagues or even in-person meeting instead of home. This necessary competition pressure inspires people to put in more effort, work harder, and become more productive (Entrepreneur).
Moreover, with so much going on at home, how does one ascertains effort dedication towards working at his or her very best? Especially when based on the above poll, people just cannot wait to get out to enjoy themselves, instead of looking forward to restoring work normality at workplace.
What is your take on this?
“Always do your best. What you plant now, you will harvest later.”
– Og Mandino
Isolation has different effects on people. When we lack human interaction, we try to get back that interaction as soon as possible. Just look at what happened once venues first started reopening. We became laxxed with the precautions of the pandemic in order to satisfy that craving for human interaction.