I am someone who works from home – pandemic or no pandemic. However, those people who have been working from home only over the past year or so, find that working from home is not quite the walk in the park they thought it would be. Maintaining a work-life balance is tougher than most people imagined because there is no office to ‘leave’ behind at the end of the ‘work day’.
Nithin Kamath is the CEO of Zerodha a company that offers institutional and personal brokering and deals in equity, mutual funds and commodity training. He feels that work should stop at 6 PM and not continue indefinitely.
The need to cope with several parallel work tracks can be detrimental not only to productivity, work accuracy and focus but may also impact mental health and wellbeing negatively.
Not all multitasking is bad. Doing routine tasks in parallel when both tasks do not require focus and studied attention can be a useful way to conserve time and manage it more effectively.
Some questioned the cut off timing suggested by Kamath and asked whether we need more flexibility.
The term ‘flexible working hours’ has lost meaning in recent times. Many employers expect employees to work at odd times, on holidays and well beyond actual working hours.
A lot of replies to Kamath’s tweet express support for his thoughts. Many feel that multitasking ends up fragmenting work days and prevents proper application of mind to important tasks.
There were many who expressed appreciation for the company, its policies and brand ethics.
The understanding is that since one is working from home, one has to be available at all times. This is stressful and problematic.
Since meetings are virtual, many managers and employers feel free to schedule them at all hours of the day. For many, this means little or no time at leisure and actually, longer working hours. Somewhere there is the expectation that time saved in the commute to and from work should be ploughed back into work.
People are hopeful that more companies will take a leaf out of Zerodha and Nithin Kamath’s book. Here’s to hoping that the future will see more employee-friendly workplaces and practices – during the pandemic and beyond; working from home or office.
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