Is work-from-home as ‘new normal’ a myth?

There is no denying the fact that Covid-19 has impacted all aspects of our life. It has not only caused major disruptions in our professional life or workplace norms but also impacted our social interactions, family and personal life. Anywhere in the world, no one can claim to be completely untouched by this new reality which has hit us hard like Tsunami without giving enough time to prepare and react. On work front, there are many views being shared by experts on how this change will permanently impact our working conditions, norms, expectations and create a ‘new normal’. As one goes through debates, webinars or panels, there are many endorsements to the view that ‘work from home’ is going to be the new norm and ‘office working’ seems like an old practice.

Understandably many organizations, including my employer, have been practicing WFH earlier too and they already have some policies around this arrangement. Some companies which have been resisting even the concept of WFH, are forced to experiment now, even if reluctantly. For some, it has been a pleasant discovery that work can be performed from home without loss of productivity. Moving further, there are some companies which are revisiting their post-Covid workforce deployment model with implications leading to potential drop in commercial real estate demand. Some business leaders have also made bold statements on this aspect so, undoubtedly, there is a real paradigm shift.

So, is this is a ‘new normal’? Have we reached the conclusion that WFH will be a sustainable new model in post-Covid area? No doubt, we adopted this new norm quickly and it will increase and stay, but I’m still pondering over few thoughts here:
a) Is this change permanent in nature?
b) Will human beings change their behavior and habits permanently after the crisis gets over?
c) Will organization dynamics, undercurrents and politics let this happen on long term basis?
In my view, we may still be quite distant from the conclusion of ‘permanency of a wide-spread WFH’. Here is my perspective on these aspects:

Employee considerations:
 Humans beings are complex and they don’t behave same way alike. There may be a temporary alignemnt to group dynamics or herd mentality during crisis but they have different individual needs, wants, aspirations, compulsions and barriers. As soon as crisis gets over, they may start attaching value to individual priorities more than the system or norm.
 Human beings are social by nature. We may need to observe – how many employees can stay satisfied working from home for ever, not meeting other fellow team members and not having water cooler conversations? If we observe in many offices, employees tend to ‘hang around’ even after working hours spending time playing TT, carrom, gym etc. There is a big social element in having a tea at cafeteria or even stepping out for a smoke break. Moreover, some employees get their own ‘me time’ which they get pre/post office time or while commuting. They may miss it completely staying at home permanently and getting absorbed in daily chores. The assumption that almost all employees would like to trade it off completely with WFH seems a little far-fetched.
 One often ignored aspect is the lack of basic infrastructure at employee’s home. Except for some middle-level and senior employees, how many employees can afford to keep a room occupied by one member of family (worse if both spouses are working) for official work. It may get even more challenging if any family member is in shift-working. A typical middle-class family may have at most 2-3 rooms house where even joint family might be staying together. To add to misery, there may be frequent power cuts or changeovers, internet challenges etc. Many employees may prefer working in comfortable AC environment in office rather than juggling with multiple issues at home on daily basis.

Organizational Aspects:
 One important organizational aspect is manager’s need for ‘power’. In corporate world, at many places, politics revolve around a cabin allocation or workstation or the sense of power where managers love the employees asking for permission for going home early – how will that need be fulfilled? In a very empowered virtual meetings environment, there may still be a large set of power-hungry managers who may be feeling anxious by sense of losing power or control. Many of them may influence organization’s policy decisions to help them gain their ‘control’ back. It has been quite evident in several instances of managers taking first opportunity to call all employees to work location wherever government eased out lockdown norms.
 Another dimension to the situation is that a large quantum of work can only be done from offices, worksites or teams working together in physical proximity. While WFH may be a good option for some roles or industries like IT, ITES and even corporate offices, a large percentage of workforce works in other sectors. If we consider all industry sectors – say chemicals, pharma, real estate, manufacturing, sales and distribution, logistics etc.…how many employees can actually WFH? If it’s a small population that can potentially WFH, is it really a prevalent ‘new norm’ or is it more of a Corporate offices and IT/ITES dominated norm that is overshadowing the general perception?

In recent past, we have observed airlines business bouncing back after 9/11 or airline crashes. People tend to come back to their normal ways of working once perception of threat goes down. As Covid-19 threat perception goes down, we might experience similar comeback. Already, people have started roaming around in markets wherever relaxations are given by government. There is caution everywhere but the social activities have been increasing with change in Covid-19 threat perception as we started understanding it little better.
As the nature tries to attain equilibrium after chaos, the new equilibrium gets attained according to a situation or in response to a situation. Once the disruption is removed, it may again try to reach another equilibrium which would be displaced from the earlier one. But the quantum of displacement may depend a lot on the severity and duration of disruption. So, the duration of Covid-19 situation and its severity may be key to give us insights into new norm.
While, I am in a complete sync and a proponent that WFH will be a big shift in the new way of working, I think it is still far-fetched to assume that current WFH is a new norm on permanent basis and change the way of working for ever.
We might be moving towards a balanced approach of more ‘flexible’ workforce where periodic WFH is a win-win for both employees and organizations. Employees may keep on visiting offices and WFH intermittently as per role however, I have my doubts whether tagging a big population of employees as ‘permanent remote’ may be a new norm. Will it be a ‘big transformation’ across all employment sectors impacting a large population of workforce – perhaps time will tell us