By Christiana Ioannou
The pandemic brought disruption into the work industry, with all corporations being forced to let a large percentage of their workers work from home. In actual truth, most companies had all their workers working from home. Now, remote work has become the new normal.
When the lockdown started, and everyone had to stay home, no one knew how the situation would end and its effect on the country (health, economy, education, politics, law, and so on). Man is naturally resilient and an adaptive animal, so people adapted to the new normal during the lockdown and did what worked for them. And now that a phase of the pandemic is over, we know that something has changed. Living through a horrible pandemic would cause that. Many unusual things have become the new normal.
One of the new normal is working from home. Seeing as everyone had to find a way to sustain their work, working from home was the only option. It seemed difficult initially for many people as people quickly voiced their complaints at the beginning of the lockdown. Now that the lockdown is over, many people are starting to opt for remote works. According to Gallup Poll data, 2/3 of the US labor force would like to work at home and not go back to working from the office.
Giant international companies such as Facebook announced that many of their workers would be allowed to work from home. At least half of the companies’ workers will be allowed to work from home.
One benefit of Remote work to the economy is that it increases workers’ flexibility and productivity because workers are not under pressure gotten from close contacts with colleagues and superiors. Workers’ input means increased output for the company, which increases the economy’s gross domestic profit.
Remote working also helped reduce the spread of diseases and viruses, seeing as staying at home was what guaranteed people’s safety during the lockdown and helped reduce the number of death polls.
Another benefit is that the population was evenly distributed. The craving needs to move to cities to get quality, and well-paying jobs reduced.
However, remote work had its disadvantages, one of which is that it became hard to differentiate between home and work. Work became an integral part of the home life, and it’s something that remote workers did at any time, even when work wasn’t not supposed to be done. This means that the line between home and work blurs. There was no difference between home and work, which lead to stress and isolation.
It also worsened inequality as educated workers coped with remote works while low-level workers, for instance, Americans who had like transport and healthcare face grimmer prospects. So, educated high-earning workers continued to make plans to advance in their careers. In contrast, the others at the bottom of the ladder were left with terrible prospects.