BY: CLAIRE KIM
Quarantined for over sixty days, two months, and a quarter of the year now, our adjustments to the “work from home” lifestyle have, to say the least, grown much more comfortable. Picking up phone calls for short one-on-one sessions; participating in zoom calls to conduct meetings with fellow employees; and working on projects collaboratively via shared documents and varied call formats; the changes in the workspace have been quite successful and, in fact, arguably even more productive than work completed in office settings.
With such efficiency on the rise and a lack of discrepancy between employees and employers, companies, like Apple, have shown a growing interest in the “work from home” lifestyle, shaping a potential initiative to continue this tendency in the near future. For some people, this change will be beneficial and preferable. For those individuals who live far from the main campus of their office, this will be a game-changer in terms of time saved working instead of commuting. Long hours in traffic and early wake-up times would no longer be a part of their routine, thus, allowing a more comfortable morning to get ready for meetings and sleep in if they need to. However, for those individuals who don’t have great internet access or rely on office spaces to get specific tasks completed–3-D printing, hands-on sessions for product development–, this change to a primarily “work from home” lifestyle will cause major challenges. In terms of tech companies, in particular, those engineers who focus on hardware elements will probably be most affected, while those individuals who work in HR or have management roles can rely on zoom meetings or calls to get their messages across.
My father, who currently works as a mechanical engineer at Apple, has stated that this change would inhibit him from fully immersing himself in his work, as on-scene lab sessions are necessary to get the feel of a product from a hardcopy blueprint. My mother, on the other hand, has different opinions. For her, working as a manager at Samsung allows her the flexibility to work at home as communication and research analysis doesn’t lend too much reliance on physical participation in the office.
Work from Home… It’s definitely a phenomenon that will cause some back and forth opinions.
claire kim. 