Working from home or working at office – which is better

The outbreak of novel coronavirus has made all the IT industries to work from home. No one is certain about, how long this exists. The communication possibilities of the digital age, has made virtual communication simpler and more achievable than ever before. Studies show a rise in work from home trend. But does this mean work from home is the feature of work? Does work from home completely replace work from office?  These debates are going at present in many organizations.

Let’s have a closer analysis of the pros and cons of working from home and working at office.

Pros of working from home

1. Flexible Working Hours: When you work from home, you have the freedom to choose flexible working hours.  You can also choose to work either in living room, bedroom or dining hall provided you get the good internet access. Moreover, you have the option to take tea / coffee breaks at any time, eat breakfast / lunch at any weird time that you’re comfortable in.

2. Save time: The biggest advantage of working from home is that you can save a lot of time. No need to bother about travelling on a crowded bus or to wait for signal at traffic. You save extra hours to sleep and continue with your day’s work.

3. Health Benefits: Able to prepare your food with no hurry and eat it fresh and healthy. You can choose your own lunchtime, can have your food when you feel hungry. Also, you have time to do exercise more when you are at home.

4. Spend more time with family:

Many people feel that they are spending their full day at office. So, they are unable to spend much time with their family. But, when you work from home means, you have more time to spend with your family. Especially, it will benefit more parents to spend time with their children.

5. Self-designed working environment: Another benefit is that you have the ability to create your own working environment. At home you are independent, you define your space for office location. You learn more about self-motivation and self-discipline. Even, you have no dress-code 😊.

Cons of working from home

1. Become lethargic: No one is there to supervise, when you work from home. We become lethargic and think of doing things later.

So, it literally leads us to work on early morning or late nights, not sticking to regular office hours. This makes us feel even more tired.

2. Interruptions in meetings: Due to technical issues like low internet access, dropping calls due to weak signal, you may not be able to stay online during meetings. So, this kind of situation makes you and your team members to bother. At times, your kids need your attention while you are in an important meeting.

3. Communication gap: When you work at home, it is difficult to get quick feedback from your colleagues or boss about your work. Of course, there are video calls and emails are available, but this may not be that much productive and knowledgeable.

4. Boredom: You may not able to spend time with your colleagues, no sudden lunch/dinner plans. It makes you feel like you are spending your whole day alone and spending time only with your family. There will be lack in social interactions.

5. Health issue: Some people are not comfortable with their work location i.e., they used to work lying on cushion or couch which causes them dreadful back pain.

Pros of working from office:

1. Gain knowledge:

 In office environment, you have someone to supervise your work, so you do your work on time without any delay. You can spend time with knowledgeable person and have support from boss and colleagues to motivate and encourage you and get time to learn something new each day.

2. Spend time with friends/co-workers: We always get happy and energetic when we spend time with our friends because it reduces our stress. So, working along with your colleagues/friends makes you feel positive and happy.

3. Easy to keep things confidential: We all know confidentiality in work is important. So, when you working in office, it is easy to keep the work-related matters confidential rather than working from home.

4. No distractions: You will be more focussed on work without any distractions when you work at office. No pets sitting along with you on meetings and family with you for discussions. Also, the competitive environment at office makes you to perform better.

5. Time Management: When you are at office, you fit to standard 8 hours of working. Adhering to office timings, helps you to learn about maintaining punctuality and time management.

6. Productivity: At office, your colleagues and teammates support you in your projects. You can have face to face interactions and discussions.  Entire team gives energy to work focused throughout the day.

Cons of working from office

1. Traffic issues: One of the biggest problems when you work from office is travelling and traffic jam. It may probably take long hours of travelling back and forth to office. This leads to frustration and creates unwanted stress at the start of the day.

2. Health issue:

Continuously working on laptops and seeing the computer screen throughout the day will automatically strain our eyes which may affect our vision. Also, sitting on a chair for the whole day without any action or movement leads to body pain, back pain, irregularity in blood flows etc.,

3. Uniform lifestyle: one of the worst things about working in an office environment is that, whether you like it or not you stick to your lap for long hours. you run behind your clocks each day. No rest on deadlines.

What happens when all settles back to normal?

The covid-19 has forced most employees to work remotely. But it really made many to experience the new workstyle. Either it is work from home or work at office, both carries its own pros and cons. Some people are comfortable work at office environment and some are comfortable work from home. It’s up to you to decide on which to continue with.

When all set back, still the social distancing is expected to be followed by all. Remote working is not effective for all the companies. Now the companies want to organize an environment that are safe for employees. It is expected that, a part of the organization continues to work from home and rest will work at office following social distance.