COVID-19 Proves Nothing about Working from Home

Image credit: https://www.pexels.com/@shvetsa

At different points during the work-from-home periods related to the COVID-19 crisis, I had business contacts and friends express incredulity that anyone could want to work away from a traditional office environment all the time.

When I said on Twitter that I didn’t understand why employees who could effectively work from home during the height of the crisis didn’t allow them to continue to do so for longer than simply the minimally required period, one person responded that she figured people wanted to go back into their offices because they missed the social connection.

One business contact of mine with whom I spoke briefly three months into the coronavirus crisis in the United States, who had transitioned to working from home two months before, said she didn’t think working from home worked for her and asked me if I’d had anyone at FrogDog tell me that it didn’t work for them either, after we transitioned to a distributed workforce structure in 2018. (The business world defines “distributed workforce” as a structure wherein the company’s entire employee base works from wherever and the company has no centralized corporate office. That’s us.)

Further, I saw articles flooding the web throughout the crisis period providing guidance from people with remote-working experience on to work effectively from home.

The problem with all this incredulity and advice?

Nothing about the COVID-19 crisis’ pushing of people into the home for a sustained period compares to working from home or working from wherever during other times.

Nothing was Normal During COVID-19

Pause a moment. Consider what we’ve all gone through with this coronavirus crisis. Did you experience anything normal whatsoever?

Did you conduct your friendships in the same way? Your relationships with family or partners? How about your eating and exercise habits—did those carry forward without any changes? Did your kids’ routines stay the same as always, without the slightest variation? Oh, and how about your mood? Pretty status quo?

No, no, and probably no on every count I could name.

Not a single facet of our lives stayed the same—so how could anyone assume that anything about working from home resembled anything like working remotely or working from wherever in “normal” times?

Changes Always Take Time

First, let’s start by pointing out that people who didn’t already work from wherever needed to abruptly relocate their office set-ups to entirely new environments and develop new work routines and habits—not the least of which involved acclimating to new workflows and new technologies to facilitate the new workflows.

Secondly, let’s address that no one had a reasonable ramp-up or adjustment period for all this work-structure change. When FrogDog transitioned from a traditional office to a distributed workforce structure—for which I wrote a how-to guide with best practices after the fact—we took the change in stages, provided a lot of support, and even still, two years later, found our workflow and structure continuing to evolve as we discovered new opportunities for asynchronous work and new technologies to facilitate the efficiency and effectiveness of our efforts.

No one thrives immediately after a huge change. Changes take adjustment and rebalancing.

And trust me: The time anyone needs for adjustment and rebalancing increases exponentially when the world adds a global pandemic to the mix.

Working from Home Doesn’t Mean Staying at Home

When I wrote my article on how to thrive when working from wherever (based on my experience and on my guidance to the FrogDog team as they adjusted to working outside a traditional office environment), I reminded everyone not to stay inside all the time.

If you read my recommendations, you’ll note that a lot of my best practices involve going out into the world.

Reminder: During the COVID-19 crisis, none of us could go out into the world. Even people who always worked from wherever—which often means working from somewhere other than home—couldn’t go anywhere. The coronavirus crisis erased many life-expanding things (work-related and otherwise) from our universes.

Even worse?

Everyone else who lived in the household stayed at home as well.

While adjusting to a new work situation—one in which they had haphazardly tossed together a workspace in whatever available places they could find in their houses and apartments—many people had to manage their jobs while managing family members and roommates at the same time, under the same roof.

Kids needed care, entertainment, additional help with schooling. Spouses and partners and roommates and other adults who might live in the same space found their stress and anxiety levels careening off each other, often to very toxic-environment results. Meanwhile, the entire group needed attention and feeding.

For people living alone, they needed to deal with full-time jobs and adjustments to workflow combined with severe and prolonged isolation and its attendant anxiety.

On a broader scale, both these groups of people needed to accommodate jobs and personal lives while shouldering an immense burden of stress and uncertainty around careers, the economy, children and families, health, and the state of the world. This stress led everyone into sleepless nights, poor diets, fights with family and friends, lack of exercise, and beyond.

Do you think these additional stressors helped you adjust to working from home? Right.

Don’t Use COVID-19 to Dismiss Working Remotely

Given all these discombobulations, no one can possibly imagine that what we experienced working from home during COVID-19 provided a true litmus test for working remotely on the employer, manager, or employer sides.

If you didn’t like the experience, who can blame you? Who liked much of anything in the COVID-19 moment?

Whether you go back into an office or stay working from wherever, don’t assume that working from wherever can’t work for you or that you don’t like it based on the COVID-19 work-from-home experience. Reserve judgement until you’ve had the opportunity to give working from wherever a real chance, one that involves a supportive transition and adjustment period and a properly set up workplace with the right technology, tools, and accoutrements—and without undue and uncontrollable stress, anxiety, and distraction.

As a big fan of the distributed workforce structure and the opportunity to work from wherever in an asynchronous format—I’d never go back to a traditional office or workflow—I vehemently hope that everyone currently unconvinced by the work-from-wherever idea gets a better opportunity than COVID-19 to experience it in the future.

P.S.—Click here for the full collection of articles I’ve written about distributed workforces.