When Coronavirus unexpectedly hit last year, it started world’s biggest experiment ever to see – What happens when everyone who could Work From Home, actually do? This was unprecedented, companies treated this as a contingency plan. And the thought-process was, err just go along ..its temporary.
But it’s been nearly year-and-half, even those who didn’t like it have got used to it as a new-norm. So as world is winding-down with vaccinations and offices getting ready to host employees again. Are you ready to head back to office with excitement?
Besides benefits of flexible hours, working in own personal space and with your family and pets. What other benefits apart from yours own are we going to lose? There is so much good achieved by WFH. So are we going to go back to old habits and give away all that?
Here are top 5 benefits of Working from Home which are saving the world that I thought you should know. Maybe will help convince in conversation with your boss to extend or make WFH permanent, i.e. if you are loving it so much.
1. Time saved in commute
People commuting to work spend on average 1 hour per day.[1] Its saying “Time is Money“, so not having to spend that valuable time could help you save 5 hours a week or 20 hours a month and by simple maths thats around 240 hours a year which actually is 5.7 days in year, imagine that!
By working from home people have essentially got nearly 6 days back to themselves. These days would have easily got lost traveling in boring public transport or other vehicle forms. Its like your office offering you 6 extra holidays if you WFH. Wouldn’t you take that offer?
If employees do return back to offices, the 9 to 5 expectation will also return. Above extra time gained in unnecessary long commutes to office and for lunch breaks, will vanish. Not to mention, this extra time that employees might have put-into their work, may also disappear when they start commuting to offices.
2. No commute means less pollution
- There are less number of cars on road to cause air pollution
- Water in rivers where water taxis operated are much clearer
- Less flights for office related travel means better air quality
- People started using bicycle more for going out to exercise
With people not commuting to work has let environment to recuperate. During the first six months of covid when all people were locked at home. There were reports of wild animals and migratory birds exploring the cities for first time and even dolphins swimming in Istanbul.[2]
WFH eliminates travel for employees who can work remotely. And it cuts out unnecessary carbon emissions and money spent on car or public transport. Read on to find how both employees and employer both can benefit not only to save money on energy but also time.
3. No dressing-up means less energy use
Not having to follow formal obligatories like getting dressed, washing those clothes every week or month and ironing those damn creasy shirts. You can only imagine the feeling of awakening of a person with wardrobe full of suit, shirt and ties who spend 1 hour in dressing up must have saved.
| Watts | Time | Cost Per Year | |
| Washing Machine | 2000 | 5 hours monthly | £19.20 |
| Ironing | 1100 | 5 mins daily | £3.21 |
| Hair dryer / straightener | 100 | 5 mins daily | £0.29 |
The energy usage, time and money saved by not having to wash formal office clothing, doing their ironing and getting groomed doing makeup using electronic device such as hair straightener etc. This in total could save average of above £22.7 annually.
4. Less Paper consumption
Paper consumption shrank by 5% in 2020, mainly due to COVID-19 pandemic impacting global demand.[3] With most people working from home, documents that were generally printed or passed around in office had to be digitized.
With WFH, not only the amount of paper usage has gone down drastically but energy needed to print, post, shred and dispose the wasted paper has also been removed from equation. Also use of one-time paper cups and towels to clean surfaces used up in office space goes on and on.
5. Offices saving a lot too
Office buildings are energy hog. Lights are ON even during daytime due to safety reasons. Elevators, Automatic doors, Fridge, Dishwasher, Vacuum cleaner, coffee machines right down to desk fans all add up to a huge electric bill. And on average an office inkjet printer consumes 400 watts when printing and a shredder uses 200 watts.
And most days in a year air-conditioner and heater both are kept fighting with each other, as no two people can agree on one optimal temperature in office space. With WFH and employee working individually this problem does not arise. But this problem with two different heating and cooling system could easily be solved by installing one Air Source Heat Pump (ASHP) system.
Energy saving at office will only works if all employees either work from home or from office. But if company decides it wants to do both, then total energy usage might double. So Hybrid WFH model might sound like a good compromise to employee and Employer but could worsen energy consumption.
Challenges and Solutions
The main reasons companies may want their employees back to office is because they might still be paying rental for empty office space and prefer employees to be physically present in order to increase employees time-keeping and productivity.
But companies are not seeing the bigger picture, sooner they evaluate the office expenditure vs employee collaboration the better. As most companies and countries were trying to cut down on carbon emission. In this case, the future solution is already in place with most workforce in the world working from home.
So why go back to old state only to increase bit of collaboration between employees. As if that’s a problem today with employees working from home, companies can easily solve it with new video and tracking software technologies.[4]
Now a days there are range of softwares from basic time trackers and monitoring to full-blown, data-driven digital surveillance systems.[5] And if used well with employee’s consent, these can easily help improve employees efficiency and output while WFH.
Revolution Electrified’s Thought
Life before covid was non-stop. Nobody thought people’s daily routine could ever change so drastically. With climate crisis at record high, planet and people needed a break to think about the consequences of carrying-on without consideration to environmental impacts.
So going back to old office will feel wrong, especially with pandemic still not completely over. And after seeing the advantages, most of employees are going to demand to continue working from home. Fact is best employees are going to look for companies that offer Work From Home more.
After all so much good has happened with this accidental experiment that I think it’s been tremendously successful, not considering for every person but for the planet as whole. And without the pandemic it wont have been possible to do.
Lot of people including me didn’t like WFH in the beginning, missing the social interaction with colleagues could not be substituted with video or chat. And I understand, for many with younger children at home, it would have been nightmare. But as school and nursery have opened WFH isn’t that bad is it?
Work From Home is an opportunity to change the world for better. So what are we going to miss about Working from Home? Is there going to be Hybrid working pattern evolving? Or is WFH here to stay permanently? Only time will tell.
