Top 4 challenges while working from home
With Covid 19 making inroads in our lives at the dawn of 2020, the work-from-home setup has grown leaps and bounds. Many organizations have expressed their wish to continue with this setup in the longer run.
Although numerous industries are switching to work from home mode, a few hurdles could deter running the show effectively. Below are the top four challenges and their viable solutions.
1. Managing watertight compartments
It is intuitively true that our responsibility towards our work and home are different in most aspects. Our primary purpose in doing work is to generate sufficient funds to support our family. On the other hand, our home is a place that helps us bridge the gap between our family and us.
In such a scenario doing your home chores and office work in tandem is a daunting task. For the family members managing the home is the utmost priority, and for a person working from home, the work is a priority. Your home affairs and office work should not collide in such a case, and both must operate like watertight compartments.
However, we need to take care of our family members at home. Moreover, our near and dear ones know that we are at their disposal in case of any unforeseen contingency. In such a scenario, this watertight compartment theory doesn’t work.
The feasible solution: There should be strict office hours, and beyond that time, the employee should not be forced to work. Apart from this, office communication should happen within official hours so that the employee can handle the conflicts at home adroitly.
2. Improper working setup
Most managers believe that they can effectively run the work from home by providing computers and other necessary equipment. They fail to understand that sometimes the home doesn’t have adequate sitting space or a conducive environment.
Work from home requires much more than the essential equipment.
The feasible solution: The employers can provide the employees with special allowances for altering the layout of their workstations at home.
3. Too much monitoring: The other prominent challenge is too much supervision from the managers. The team leaders of the contemporary epoch leave no stone unturned to keep a strict vigil on their team members by making umpteen calls, arranging meetings, and deploying various software to check the time spent on computers.
Such strict monitoring is counter-productive and declines the output substantially.
The feasible solution: There is no denying this conviction that it is the bounded duty of the managers to keep a strict check on their team members. But they must give them adequate space to perform their tasks adroitly. To do it effectively, the managers must focus on the output and the achievement of targets rather than the nitty and gritty.
4. Social isolation for employees: It is a gospel truth that social interaction is a must-have for people to have a fruitful life. An office is where employees communicate in person with others and bridge the gap.
On the other hand, working from home leads to social isolation because the discussions are limited to family members or close friends. In a nutshell, it reduces the crucial face-to-face interactions dramatically.
In such a case bringing a paradigm shift is an arduous task because the discussions are often confined to trivial matters.
The feasible solution: The most viable solution to handle this conflict is to arrange informal online meetings of the employees where they can discuss everyday stuff. Such interactions would encourage them to bridge the gap between team members and decline social isolation to some extent.