In 2020, the world experienced a global pandemic in the form of the Covid-19 virus that had not been seen on such a scale since the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918-19. With this global virus came the need to instigate lockdowns on a local and national scale which had never been experienced in living memory.
This led to many employees being required to work from home or adopt hybrid models of working in the months that followed in an attempt to contain the virus and save lives. Approximately 60% of the UK population worked from home during the first national lockdown. For some, this brought about an improvement to their work / life balance and added increased levels of flexibility in how they approached their working week.
Whilst home working demonstrated that it was possible to work effectively in a remote setting for large numbers of people, it didn’t come without its problems. This article explains three distinct disadvantages of working from home.
1. A Lack of Culture and Team Spirit
One key issue with remote working is that it proved more challenging to cultivate and sustain effective working relationships. This can have a direct impact on reducing both the culture and the team spirit in an organisation. In an office-based environment, there is a distinct social element to the working day. Employees are encouraged to have lunches and coffee breaks together to build better working relationships, understand each other, and form improved ways of working.
By being isolated physically from each other, it became far easier for ‘silo working’ practices to develop due to a lack of regular communication. Today, as the impact of the pandemic has reduced, the need to get employees back together in an office environment has become more pressing.
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2. Reductions in Productivity Levels
Whilst it may be true that ‘self-starter’ employees with well-honed organisational skills worked effectively in a remote setting, this was not true of all employees. Some employees need higher levels of direction and assistance, which is especially true if they are new to the organisation or in the early stages of their career.
Whilst employees could easily seek help in an office setting (often just by asking the colleague sitting next to them for advice on a task), it is harder to achieve this in a remote home office. Normally it would require the employee having to wait for an email response or hoping that a manager was available for a quick video call. By having a physical office, these problems are removed, and productivity can be improved.
3. Varying Levels of IT Infrastructure
Any employee who has worked remotely for a period of time will have undoubtedly experienced virtual meetings where it was difficult to hear other colleagues due to poor sound quality or experienced frustrations resulting from a slow internet connection causing delays in loading documents or joining meetings.
Whilst all employees will have a home internet connection to enable them to work remotely, the speed and reliability of this and the IT equipment in general will vary considerably. In addition, many employees from a range of industries will have experienced difficulties in connecting to the corporate intranet to work on shared applications or retrieve important documents.
