WFH: More peril than perk?

As working from home becomes a big part of the (already overused) new normal, realisation is dawning that all is not sunshine and roses; often it is not as happy as it sounds.

In the new normal, we are the elephants in the room. And like in the idiom, we don’t like talking about stuff, even to ourselves.

In our Instagram posts and Tiktok updates, we show off how happy we are to be working from home — lolling around in front of our laptops in our pajamas. A #wfh hashtag scroll will throw up several jubilant posts from women who are apparently thrilled to be working from home sans make-up and bras, while men, who (usually) do not wear both, end up celebrating the fact that they need not commute to work. (For those ready to jump at this man-woman distinction, no sexism intended here — it is not that women do not celebrate the lack of commuting; on social media at least, they appear to be happier about the pleasures of being ungroomed.)

It takes a Satya Nadella (Microsoft CEO) to, well, point at the elephant in the room. In an interview recently, he spoke out sharply about the dangers of making remote working “permanent”. He warned about “overcelebrating” WFH while ignoring the adverse impacts it can have on the mental health of employees. He went on to say that productivity might have gone up in certain cases (like it apparently did with Microsoft), but at the cost of social capital built over decades. Another important, but often ignored point he made was about the “lack of touch” while working remotely. Citing his own example, he said he missed the ‘two-minute’ chance to connect with the person sitting next to him in a physical meeting — something a virtual meet can never hope to achieve really and wondered if switching from working in offices to WFH would eventually be like “replacing one dogma with another”.

While it is possible he may be overstating things, he is not completely wrong either. Vocational psychologists, who have long studied the deep connection between jobs and mental health, are speaking out about the challenges this sudden shift to WFH has thrown up. In his book “The Importance of Work In An Age Of Uncertainty”, author and professor of psychology David Blustein writes, “work connects us to the rhythm of the world and gives us a temporal sense of life.”

Ms Akanksha Pandey, consultant clinical psychologist at Fortis Hospitals, Bengaluru, says that for most people, jobs is not just about the money. “Work provides us with a sense of identity and makes us feel productive and useful,” she says, adding that in the 40-odd webinars she has conducted for corporate employees in the past two months, the one question that she gets asked most is: “How to manage stress caused by working from home.”

Unlike the impression created by social media posts, employees working from home are facing a host of problems, says the psychologist drily. And no prizes for guessing the biggest stressor that WFH is causing — “interpersonal clashes”, or simply put, constant bickering among family members. “Typically, work puts us into a routine; we get up at a set time, we eat and we leave and return at a certain hour. This structure has been disrupted, and for many, it is as if they have lost something valuable,” she explains.

Clashes with family members occur because of a lack of structure and the general atmosphere of anxiety we are all forced to live in now, she says. “In many families, it has never been the case that all the family members are at home all the time — this is quite the first time every member of the family is forced to live and work in the same house.”

Ms Pandey also makes a valid point about how when you work from home, work often never seems to end. “You are sitting with your laptop all day and family members feel “cheated” of their time with you...it is not that you are working all the time...you are surfing, reading up news on corona, worrying, working...rinse, repeat.”

Furthermore, anecdotal evidence suggests that WFH has substantially increased substance abuse, especially the consumption of alcohol. “Earlier, people were careful not to stay up late in the night or drink too much on weekdays, because they had an office to go to in the morning and colleagues to meet. Obviously, one couldn’t turn up drunk and red-eyed at the workplace. However, working from home means many have the flexibility to start work at a later time than usual and hide those drowsy eyes.”

Evidently, such poor “mental and physical hygiene” as the psychologist puts it, leads to more stress and anxiety, which causes sleeplessness, which weakens our immune system, which, of course, makes us all the more vulnerable to infections. The solution? “It is best to treat WFH as you would treat working from office. Maintain the same discipline — get good sleep, eat a balanced diet, do moderate exercise for half an hour, ensure ‘me time’ and spend quality time with your family members. And do not overindulge in anything; instead, practice mindfulness,” she advises.

Easier said than done, yes, but do we have a choice? A sense of unease and insecurity about our jobs and work will persist in these tough times. However, this pandemic is also an opportunity for all of us to sit back and re-examine our lives; perhaps, this global crisis is telling us in its own brutal way to learn to live in the moment and live every moment.

Now that ought to be the real ‘new normal’.