We all know, working from home has lots of pros but we must agree that it’s not without cons. Usually, people intend to see the bright side only. We, Team Merit, have tried to weigh both, follow along to see the results.
The beginning of any research is of course at own place. So, we asked our team at Merit Immigration if they prefer coming to work or working remotely; 80% of them said they prefer coming to work. Can you believe that!
Since the pandemic has made most companies shift employees to work from home, we don’t usually talk about how employees who live with their family and friends balance their work and home responsibilities. It’s not an easy task for employees with young children or parents to find the time to work and look after their family’s needs.
We asked for feedback from two employees from our team to present their views on how they felt about working from home and here are the results:
Employee 1
“Being married and living with my in-laws, means we all have our good share of responsibilities at home. Adding work life and social life to that makes it already a little harder. When the pandemic hit the world, most of the workers had to work from home and I had to do the same as well. The benefits of working from home are that it’s very convenient and you do not have to lose time on transportation. However, I personally find it easier to work in person as, that way I have a more focused mindset, the work environment helps me to stay concentrated on my work, I have a time set in which I know I must work and complete all my tasks and the rest of the day is for all my own private tasks/life.
Coming back to work-from-home, one of the challenges I have encountered is that I barely get a break. Even during my lunch break, I try to fit in some family tasks or some tasks from the community work I do. I try to stay as active as I can since it feels very sedentary.
Overall, it has been a nice experience regardless of anything. It has helped me build new skills, manage time in a much better way, it has taught me multitasking and I also got to spend more time with my family.”
Employee 2
“As soon as Covid hit Canada, all companies started shifting towards working from home. We weren’t given any time to adapt ourselves and had to learn to go with the flow. I live with seven other housemates therefore the first problem we faced was the overload on the usage of Wi-Fi. There were days when the Wi-Fi didn’t use to work at all, making it exceedingly difficult for us to work. Another difficulty we faced was that one of our housemates had a dog and since she couldn’t go out that much with him, he used to get restless and bark all day. I started liking work from home after a while since it was easier to attend work calls on Zoom or Microsoft Teams. I felt the only pros was that I could wake up at my convenience and finish the day’s work but that’s not what used to happen. There were times when my housemates used to disturb me for mundane questions or there was the banging of doors or utensils going on in the house. This used to make me lose my focus. Being an extrovert, I felt that after a while I couldn’t focus on work as I used to miss my colleagues and friends. I prefer working on-site than online as I like to meet people face to face and there are fewer misunderstandings while working that way. “
Working from home has been a challenge for some and a convenience for others. What really matters is that employee’s morale and productivity shouldn’t take a hike. Due to the lockdown, the social engagement of workers took a hit, and a lot of people suffered from anxiety and depression. Things seem to look positive with most Ontarians been vaccinated and ready to get back to work on-site.
