As we all know, remote work has exploded during the pandemic, becoming much more widely practiced than ever before. In the wake of pandemic (receding or becoming “new normal” in more areas, especially throughout USA in March/April of this year), there’s a lot of discussion of whether/how to bring workers back to the office.
On the worker side, I’m seeing lots of posts (on LinkedIn) by workers extolling the benefits of remote work, including eliminated commute (saving time), easier childcare (?!?), increased comfort and better for marginalized communities (e.g., no need for code-switching). To my mind, the most compelling argument in favor of remote work is the benefit for workers with mobility or sensory issues, as traveling to -or being in- the office can be onerous at best and unsustainable (meaning they can’t keep the job) at worst.
However, I feel like many downsides to office workers switching to remote work are being overlooked, such as offloaded infrastructure, space/network limitations, and health consequences.
As preface, I’ll outline my history with remote work, which extends longer than many who are experiencing the “renaissance of remote work” that sprang out of the pandemic. As caveat, I’ll mention that my experiences are of a relatively privileged white-collar salary job with benefits (including sick time, vacation time, health insurance, etc.).
I started my career in the software industry in 2000, and way back then, we had desktop computers with high-speed internet, but no way to access it remotely. If we experienced a major snowstorm with impassible roads (as can happen several times per winter in Massachusetts), we’d have a snow day, where we were sent home or told to stay home, unable to work, but with no change to our paychecks.
Around 2005, my team gained the ability to “remote desktop” into our work computer from our personal home computer (using our personal internet), though this was the exception and not the rule (i.e., workers still came to office 5 days a week, with rare exception). This quickly eliminated the snow day, and instead of having a day off to clear snow from our homes or parking lots and otherwise relax, we were working as usual, just without the commute. The 2nd casualty of this access (as all of us were fortunate enough to have home internet and PCs) was that folks started “volunteering” to work from home when sick, instead of taking sick time off. And that morphed into a kind of unspoken expectation that if one was busy and on deadline, they would be expected to work from home if sick.
Subsequently, our desktops were changed to laptops and through a 2013 acquisition and office move (to a more distant location for most of us), lots of folks started working from home one or more days per week. This changed the workplace a lot – some days I’d go in to a sea of empty cubicles, with just 1 or 2 folks I’d interact with in person, although other days, it might be 75% full and I’d have a nice lunch with my work friends. At that time, working from home was completely optional and we all had reserved space in the office, where we could personalize it (naturally, I made a mural of fabulous postcards to cover my beige cubicle walls). Basically, we had most of the benefits of office work, but also remote work (when we wanted).
Starting March of 2020, as per many offices, we were told to work remotely 100% (and not allowed to work from office). And with my full team remote (since 2020 and through today in 2022), I became familiar with more challenges and obstacles with working from home.
For one thing, companies who don’t have reserved office space for employees save a lot of money, and some of those infrastructure costs and services are offloaded onto employees without compensation – including home internet costs, home phone service, printing costs (if applicable), and perhaps most crucially, electricity costs. I saw a pretty big spike in my electricity costs starting with in March of 2020, and the higher electricity costs have persisted (although admittedly, some of that spike is due to more non-work hours spent at home also).
IT support is another challenge. Prior to remote work options, IT support would be primarily in-office; if you had a broken computer, you would bring it to the IT specialist. And when you had a new hire or got a new computer, IT support would install the basics and get it working. However, during the pandemic, my business group got acquired, and I had to do on-boarding to the new company completely remote – which meant I had to re-image my computer, installing Windows and all the basics myself. To be blunt, this was a complete nightmare. And if IT support is needed (for me it was), it’s remote-only, which is a lot less efficient than physically handing over a computer to someone else (e.g., it requires you to be present as “passenger” in case they have questions or need you to click something).
Meeting-wise, people with pets and children at home (especially dogs or young children) suffer from distractions and noise interference. Moreover, if multiple adults are working from home or kids are doing online schoolwork, the connection can lag or drop (if home bandwidth is exceeded), which was not really a problem at a regular office with professional size network bandwidth. I do not have kids, but I struggle to understand the online comments from parents insisting that childcare is easier when working remotely – I guess they mean for older kids who are at school (during non-pandemic times)? Most parents I know seemed frustrated with pandemic home-schooling while working from home…
Many people do not have sufficient or comfortable space for a home office, especially when pre-2020 they were planning to work from office, or due to very expensive space in many cities. I think some house-dwellers forget that the majority of humans live in apartments in cities, not in big houses. An individual living in a small studio apartment (or sharing a space with many people) may thrive when going to office 5 days a week and socializing primarily outside the home, but being forced to work remote from inside may be very difficult and can even result in injuries if insufficient space / equipment exists.
It’s also worth considering people who involuntarily reside in physically or emotionally challenging environments (e.g., financial dependence on a toxic spouse or family member). For such people, being unable to leave home on a regular basis for work can have negative emotional outcomes.
In addition, there are potential health consequences from long periods of inactivity (e.g., embolism, type 2 diabetes, as well as less severe ailments). For those of us working at a computer, having to travel to the office and move from desk for meetings is a lot more daily activity than sitting at home in an office chair, barely moving for the full workday.
Another argument I’ve seen is that remote work is better for diversity, in that marginalized individuals are spared judgement and code-switching. However, I disagree strongly with that assessment. While I agree those aspects could be beneficial to a marginalized individual at a personal level, reduced interactions are counter-productive for diversity and inclusion at the company and for society. The best way for diversity to be come accepted is increased exposure. And if privileged individuals rarely or never have to interact with “diverse” individuals, then their (our) biases and ignorance aren’t challenged.
While I agree that being able to work remotely can have huge benefits for some people, it’s quite a skewed perspective to say that 100% remote is universally better. Personally, I feel that hybrid remote / in-person with option to do either 100% is probably a better option for most remote-eligible work. Personally, provided that the commute is minimal, I much prefer in-person work, which I think is better for diversity, social, emotional and physical well-being, as well as productivity (at least for me and most able-bodied, neuro-typical individuals).
