A Prescription for Working from Home from BAU SHMYO

Working from home, generally a model chosen voluntarily, has been applied out of necessity in some situations, as in the pandemic we are living through.

As we all saw, in 2020 the world faced the danger of a pandemic and many jobs had to continue from home. Not every sector was equally successful in this, but sectors with strong technological infrastructure and companies that could motivate their employees remotely and increase their psychological resilience managed their work successfully.

Although working from home has advantages such as saving the time spent in traffic, it can have many disadvantages if not well planned and managed.

Effects of the Physical Environment

Arranging the environment at the workplace is the employer's responsibility. However, an employee's home is often not designed in a way that suits productive work.

Even if employees have flexible working hours, they can increase their productivity by setting specific working hours for themselves. To avoid distractions at home, a room in the house should be used as an office, and while in that room, one should focus only on work and set other matters aside.

Psychological Effects

Professional and social isolation, resulting from a lack of interaction with colleagues and from not being aware of office chatter and rumors, workplace news, and new developments and events, can increase inner tension by creating a sense of loneliness in employees.

Effects on Career Development and Pay

With working from home, de-unionization and dismissal of employees can become easier as commitment to the workplace and solidarity among employees decline, and because employees' visibility at work and their relationships with managers decrease, their fear of missing out on promotions and other rewards given at the workplace can increase.

In addition, the lack of daily interaction and brainstorming, which is especially important in gaining technical experience, can negatively affect an individual's career development, as it can lead to work being done incorrectly or taking longer.

Effects on Organizational Commitment

Since working from home encourages autonomy rather than solidarity, it can also reduce organizational commitment and the ability to learn and adopt organizational culture.

Effects on Perceived Roles

People working from home may find it difficult to allocate the right amount of time to work and home activities. Maintaining self-discipline and staying motivated can also be difficult. Work and family roles pave the way for conflicts. Conflict increases particularly for women employees, who have to take on roles such as mother, spouse and working woman together in the same environment.

Effects on Job Satisfaction

Working from home causes stress in employees known as technostress. Stress factors related to technology and job characteristics lead to decreases in job satisfaction.

Effects on Performance Measurement

If managers cannot see their subordinates, they may not notice their strengths and weaknesses. This makes measuring productivity, building trust, supervision, evaluation and management problematic.

Effects on Data Security and Occupational Safety

Since certain data and information are confidential, there are threats and risks of them falling into the hands of unauthorized parties, being leaked, disclosed, lost, altered or destroyed.

At the same time, in terms of occupational safety, the increase in working from home has also led to an increase in home accidents. In addition, musculoskeletal problems can arise due to the lack of a suitable work design when working from home. In particular, curfews during the 2020 pandemic limited people's ability to exercise. Some businesses supported their employees with remote (online) exercise programs during this period.

Recommendations for Managers and Leaders: The most important role in successfully sustaining the remote working model falls to managers and leaders.

Striking the right balance is one of the most important issues.

Leaders should work remotely if necessary to understand employees and thus empathize with them.

They should keep communication strong and not leave employees in the dark.

They should also communicate with team members individually.

When things are not going well, they should give feedback without delay and help find solutions.

Performance should be measured and feedback given to employees.

• Technology use should increase: frequent communication should be maintained through virtual meetings, video conferences, SMS and messaging apps, phone and email. Considering that in effective communication words account for 7%, tone of voice for 38% and body language for 55%, video communication tools should be used more often.

• Be accessible: Employees should share their contact information with the people they collaborate with and make them feel that they are accessible even when physically distant.