A return to work will feel like returning to school after an extended summer holiday for younger employees. Many in the US have taken the opportunity to travel around the country and find warmer and cheaper places from where they can log on. Rentals in San Francisco and New York nosedived last year as a result.
A survey on Blind, an app used by technology workers to discuss work anonymously, found that 43pc of professionals want to work remotely indefinitely. The topic has divided opinion. I just started enjoying WFH, but they want us back now, says one anonymous Amazon worker.
But some are growing concerned about their career development. When we all get called back into the office in summer, people working remotely will end up getting sidelined, wrote a Facebook worker. Mercer research found that 83pc of employers found productivity was the same, if not better, as employees worked from home during the pandemic. But it also found that employees were working three hours longer each day, with 41pc reporting increased shoulder and neck pain.
Working from another country might not be as blissful as it seems. Michal Bloch Ron, product manager at Microsoft Teams, was forced to work remotely for her new job when she became stuck in her home country of Israel because of Covid-19 restrictions ahead of a relocation to San Francisco. That meant 10 months of working 10hours ahead of her colleagues.
Bloch Ron would wake up and spend time with her three-year-old son before dropping him off at nursery and squeezing in a pilates class start working on tasks she set herself at 12pm. Then at 4pm she would pick her son up from nursery and start her evening shift at 6pm, finishing at one in the morning.
I even joined a review at 2am because there was a unique opportunity to present something, she says. But it really wasnt a good idea. Even though her team was supportive, changing call times so she wouldnt have to stay up so late, Bloch Ron felt the need to prove herself because she was not physically present. Now, three weeks into hernew life in Mountain View, near her team, she says she would do it again but would make sure she was prepared for the reality of working strange hours.
When I started the job my son was so small and I sometimes missed saying goodnight, she says. But that was my choice.
That said, she believes companies should offer the option for remote working. Even if you want to take six weeks to go and work in Barbados you should have the flexibility, she says.
Alexis Haselberger, a productivity coach for executives at Google, CapitalOne and Silicon Valley Bank and various start-ups, says that the pandemic has highlighted new issues.She works with seasoned executives who look successful externally but are dealing with a lot of internal stress.
They are able to get things done butthrough brute force or at the expense of their personal or family life, she says. Since the pandemic, this stress has not gone,it has just shifted.
Its funny. The two big things that come up with every single person I work with, regardless of their level inan organisation, is too many meetings and too much email. And both of those things have increased over the pandemic.
Even Haselberger, who has always run her productivity coaching and workshops remotely herself, is not convinced that workers will stay away from the office.
I dont think that this is the new way, she says. But I dont think it will go back to how it was before.
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Tech giants who made remote working possible now turn their back on it - Telegraph.co.uk
