When COVID-19 forced many all over the world to send their employees home to work virtually, the rush to give them access to all the tools they would need to work from home was sudden for many employers.
However, after everyone settled in, what quickly became apparent to many office-based teams is that employees could be productive and focused when not in the office and employers everywhere began to understand remote working.
Now that we are in a post-pandemic era, is working from home the new reality in Oman? I do not think so. According to some employees that I spoke to, some of the biggest challenges are communication among staff members. In addition, working parents must juggle work and family priorities.
In Oman, work from home culture was good at the initial stage but now as the days passed by it became hard to maintain. It is hard to establish trust and develop relationships with colleagues and clients when you do not have a daily face-to-face connection.
Moreover, working at home with kids and family together creates distractions, as we cannot have dedicated schedules and space to work which makes it challenging to work from home.
“While at work, we communicate directly to our fellow workmates and it ends there. You ask a question and responded to immediately but being at home, I have to be on social media and to top it up, I make calls every other minute. So basically, it ends up staying more time on the phone than the laptop itself, making working hours longer than usual,” one employee told me.
Others say managing both work and home affairs is a challenge. “It is very challenging for most of us who have families. Lucky are those who have grown-ups at home. Unlike them, I have young children at home who make it difficult for me to work,” a private sector employee said.
To children, it feels good that parents working from home is a blessing but for parents handling them is not easy. “As I concentrate on my work, they come and want my attention, or they fight, or one comes to report the other. Sometimes it's fun and sometimes it's agitating,” she added.
Zoom, Google Hangouts, WhatsApp and other online meeting places flourished in the initial periods of working from home as professionals met the challenge with vigour and enthusiasm. Since then, this technology has become part of virtually everyone’s lives. Bedrooms were turned into offices and dinner tables into workstations.
However, the new normal altered the equation so much that it created tensions and anxiety. I believe that working from home infringes on the home environment and creates unwanted tensions as psychologists the world over were of the opinion that this could lead to serious relationship hassles and mental stress.
I think before we adapt to the work from home system, we need to consider how best to go forward. Whether we set our schedule or have specific hours we need to be working, creating a routine can help us manage our time and concentrate better on work.
There is also a need to create a ritual that indicates the start of the day. As an example, we need to set a daily routine to start our day. For example, this might include taking a walk before you start working; set a regular lunchtime because taking lunch at a particular time every day provides a much-needed break and grants one a time to refuel before getting back to work.
BLURB
Now that we are in a post-pandemic era, is working from home the new reality in Oman? I do not think so. According to some employees that I spoke to, some of the biggest challenges are communication among staff members. In addition, working parents must juggle work and family priorities.
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