Working culture faced diverse changes in the past few years. Emergence of the pandemic Covid-19 leads to the introduction of a new working model called WFH. The entire home changed to the atmosphere of an office.Initially it turned out as a hectic task, but later it increased the convenience of the employees.Engaging in entertainment programmes and gathering enhanced the experience of WFH. From the beginning stage itself there were comparisons between WFO and WFH.Initially the comparison emerged in the minds of employees, but now it gained the face of open discussion.The interest towards WFO and WFH depends on the convenience and mentality of the employees.some preferred for WFH whereas, others chose WFO.Mostly married women and working mothers preferred for WFH and others chose WFO. In order to maintain the equilibrium and to give due consideration to everyone a new method called Hybrid Model emerged;which is the combination of WFO and WFH.
The topic gains its importance by discussing the merits and demerits of both WFO and WFH.
BENEFITS OF WFH
1) Increased convenience
WFH increases the convenience of employees especially working mothers.It helps them to focus on their personal as well as professional career.It eliminates the risk of priorities too. Thus it improved the convenience.
2) Reduced cost
It helps to reduce the travelling cost as well as the cost for maintenance of office and the premises.It helps the employees to earn more and have more savings too.
3) Increased flexibility
WFH increases the flexibility of the workforce especially the breast-feeding mothers. It helped them to take care of their kids along with their duties and responsibilities of their job.It helped them in maintaining the flexibility and enabled better management of tasks.It enabled the employees to take rest during the work.Prevention from the monotonous working environment acted as an added advantage. It helped them to engage in any activities like a mild sleep, meditation or listening to music to improve their concentration and to improve their productivity too.
4) Access to quality workforce for employers
It helped to access the qualitative workforce all over the world. Business Process Outsourcing regained its importance and qualitative workforce from the remote location can be accessed. It helped to improve the overall productivity of the respective organisation and entire IT industry.
DRAWBACKS OF WFH
The visibility and accessibility of the employees are decreasing in the WFH model. The fluctuating internet and power issues are also affecting the quality of the workforce.
For improving the quality of work, a lot of care and attention is required. Increased flexibility may harm the practicability of the company policies and procedures.
The important demerit of the WFH model is the low suitability. For occupations that require high security and sensitivity in nature is not suitable under the WFH model. The leakage of the valuable Information acts as an additional threat to the respective model. The risk of the lossage of important data is also prevailing in this new system.
BENEFITS OF WFO
1) Customer satisfaction
Most of the clients and customers prefer work from the office. They prefer more qualitative output. In office teamwork is possible and it helps to eliminate the possibility of mistakes and errors. Thus more customer satisfaction and customer retention is maintained in WFO.
2) Improvement in employee engagement
According to Gullup’s state of the American workplace “only 33% of the total population of employees are involved in work”. WFO creates opportunities to develop various strategies to improve employee engagement. It helps to eliminate the barriers between top management and employees who engage in day to day operations. Furthermore, it supports the managers to introduce various tools to monitor, analyze and improve employee performance.
3) Reduction of risks
WFO helps to reduce the risk of data loss and data leakage. It ensures more security to the data especially relating to the introduction of new products or client meetings. It helps to reduce the risks relating to the quality of performance too.
4) Visibility of data
If the employees are following the WFO culture the visibility of data is high. It can be easily monitored by the top level managers. Thus mistakes can be eliminated at the early stage itself
5) Teamwork
WFO creates teamwork. as the employees are working together, better teamwork is possible. It helps to enhance the bonding between the employees. Engagement in leisure activities will help to improve the attachment among employees and towards organisation. Thus it provides opportunities for increased productivity and qualitative output.
DRAWBACKS OF WFO
Like the two sides of a coin, WFO has some demerits too. To begin with, the possibility for distractions is always high. The working environment may lead to high stress. Continuous meetings and heavy work pressure always affects the productivity of employees. In addition, it always lacks flexibility. Employees are working under a predetermined procedure. They do not have many opportunities for engaging themselves in leisure activities. It may lead to poor work-life balance too. Furthermore, WFO affects the privacy of employees. Since employees are working together, more conversations and communications may happen and maintenance of privacy may get affected.
CONCLUSION
WFH and WFO are the two systems of working culture. Both of them have pros and cons. The suitability of the system depends on the nature of the job and attitude of employees. Both of them affect productivity in different ways. WFO improves productivity by teamwork and better communication, whereas, WFH improves productivity by the reduced mental pressure and stress of the employees. Both the systems are helpful to the organization as well as employees. Suitability of the system depends on the nature of the job. For jobs requiring more concentration and security WFO is the suitable method, whereas, jobs requiring less security and low data visibility WFH can be introduced. The deficiencies of both the systems can be eradicated by proper planning and leadership. In short, both the system will help the employees and organisation to reach the epitome of success along with the high productivity.
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