While looking for materials to read before I wrote this essay, I came across this video of Dr. Clare Wenham on BBC. The health policy expert was interrupted by her daughter, Scarlett during her interview about the paper she published in The British Medical Journal. The paper was about the COVID Pandemic, which has forced many people to work from home, and how it presents an opportunity for gender equality within the workplace and at home. While Dr. Wenham was discussing the salient points of her research, Scarlett can be seen busily rearranging the items on her mom’s shelf. She later explains that she was trying to find the best place to display her unicorn art.
Unlike Dr. Wenham, I do not have a young child interrupting my work. I am a young professional who is among those lucky enough to still have a job during this crisis. A job that I am now required to accomplish from home.
It may be hard to believe but it’s tiring to sit all day. Our homes are not designed for remote work. Many of us are using the dining table or our beds as temporary office spaces which strain both our minds and our backs. But the worst thing from working from home isn’t in the lack of ergonomics, it’s the lack of boundaries.
I thought that if I made all the necessary adjustments, I would be able to create boundaries between work and home but this prolonged work-from-home arrangement does not allow that. Work-from-home used to be a novel arrangement welcomed by many of us but it has now become a house guest that has overstayed its welcome.
“I am not romanticizing the office space or office culture. I say this not with longing nostalgia but from a purely reflecting standpoint.”
Offices are meant to be hubs of efficiency and productivity to maximize profitability. It is the birthplace of the adage “time is money” or more accurately its incubator. I resent all this as an office worker but one thing the office has going for itself is the boundaries it represents.
Once you leave the confines of the office, the assumption is you leave your work there too, and yet even before the pandemic, the lack of boundaries is already an issue. Better connectivity brought about by smartphones, tablets, and the internet has made us all constantly available even when we are not at the workplace. This has lead to the workplace phenomenon we know as burnout. The increase in burnout rates and extreme work fatigue was so concerning that in 2019, burnout has been recognized by the World Health Organization as an occupational phenomenon and has been included in the 11th Revision of the International Classification of Diseases.
Sadly, working from home creates even more pressure to respond to work communications. Because there are no clearly designated work hours, workers find themselves working for more than 8-hours. And even when we close the tabs on our computers, the work tabs on our brains, are always on. Burnout may seem like complete incineration at this point.
Without mass testing, effective COVID response strategies, and a vaccine, work culture will have to adapt to this new reality of remote work but this new reality should not breed the same workplace toxicity. The onus is placed on managers to lead by example and implement sensible work arrangements for everyone. The boss shouldn’t be expected to read emails past 6 pm and neither should their employees. If overtime cannot be avoided then employees should be properly compensated.
It would be even better if these policies go beyond our workplace and are supported by the national legislature. In 2017, France has given its citizens a “right to disconnect” by requiring companies with 50 or more employees to negotiate new out-of-office email guidelines with their staff.
But until then, one may find me staring blankly in front of my computer, passive-aggressively writing an essay about work arrangements and wishing that my only concerns are unicorns and BBC reporters named Christian.
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Photo by Estée Janssens on Unsplash
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