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Work from home or work from office? Work from home twice a week? Work from home for the rest of the year? Work from home for life? Open when government allows or wait until you can?

These questions are constantly bothering organizations and people these days. Few companies typically in the IT & Services domain have announced an extended WFH plan. Yet few companies are waiting for normalcy to come back and resume full fledged operations.

On the other hand, even some employees are keen to join back office while others are looking forward to a continued WFH option.

To understand the pulse of people and what really motivates and impacts them about this aspect we did a detailed survey of people across industries, cities, age groups and professions. The survey was done to understand impact of WFH on productivity, work life balance, relationship with colleagues, happiness of family members, advantages of WFH and WFO and pitfalls of both.

The survey against our beliefs provided some very insightful findings. To start with, as against willing to remain confined within the safety of their homes, 64% of people feel that they would like to join the work, within one week after getting government nod. This is true for people even in Mumbai, which is struggling with worst patient count in the country right now.  Only 22% people in Mumbai would like to WFM for more than a month. Which suggests that even though few companies are offering longer WFH options, the employees want to get back to office.

Survey from other Indian cities excluding Mumbai of people who are in business or self-employed suggests that everyone of them wants to get back to work within a month. In an interesting finding we realised that people in higher age brackets are keener to get back to office as compared to the younger generation.

On our question about the impact of WFH on productivity, people in Mumbai are equally divided between better, same and worse productivity during WFH, whereas about 14% more people in other cities feel their productivity has improved instead of worsened during this period. Higher number of business and self-employed people feel their productivity has gone down during WFH.

Despite being at home 24X7 majority of people feel their work life balance has worsened. 41% as against 33% feel that way in Mumbai, remaining 26% were neutral. In other cities the number was 52% against 34% and rest 14% were neutral. Younger people across all cities feel their work life balance has gone down as compared to people in higher age bracket. People above 50 years feel their work life balance has improved.

This is highly surprising because improvement of work life balance is the most basic expectation, we can have from WFH, for years people have been asking for it from their managers and organizations for the sake of improved work life balance.

Across cities and age groups, people feel that their families are happy with their WFH system. This is possibly because families are able to spend more time with them and are also able to take their help in household chores. There is no doubt that kids will be happy to see their parents at home even if they are working.

Majority of people, 77% in Mumbai and 82% in other cities feel that this has had no impact on their relationship with their managers. With respect to relationship with subordinates, 64% in Mumbai and 56% in other cities feel it has no impact. The above conclusion suggests that since relationships are built over a long time, a short period of 2 months may not have significant impact on relationships either this way or the other. This aspect needs to be re-examined if the WFH options is exercised for longer period like 6 months or so.

In our subjective question section, we asked people about what they miss not going to office. An overwhelming majority felt that they miss the physical interaction and socially connecting with colleagues. People were honest enough to admit that they also miss the informal chit chat, gossip, and tea breaks. People also felt that it is easier to resolve things being face to face.

If you thought that people are happy sitting at home in their t-shirt and pyjamas and working on their system, you will be surprised to know that one of the things people feel they are missing a lot is not getting formally dressed. Whatever amount of repulsion we must have felt during those busy office days, but we still loved to get up, get ready and show up at work. All 3 seems to be missing these days, with no fixed time to get up and no need to get ready and show up.

We also asked people what advantages they see in WFH. Around 80% of people see only, saving time, energy, and money on commute as the basic advantage of WFH. Some people feel they are able to take care of kinds, spend more time with family and a small percentage also believes that they are able to work more effectively at home. As a temporary advantage of WFH right now, people also feel guarded against corona infection in current times.

Answering our question about advantages of working from office, people said they value face to face interaction, convenience of guiding and managing teams, access to office infrastructure like printer, faster Wi-Fi, conference room etc.

People also feel that WFO brings in discipline and it helps to create clear demarcation between life and work. Currently these lines are blurred as you do not know when to start and stop work. People also valued better coordination, professional environment, team bonding and energy as perks of working from office.

Finally what do people feel as the pitfalls of WFH, our respondents shared that they find too many distractions at home, with no boundaries for work and personal life, they feel that the work get stretched and while they have their families around them, but they are not able to spend quality time as the work perpetually goes on. People also find it difficult to manage work along with house chores. Slow internet speed, laziness, and being confined to one place, were among few other pitfalls shared by people.

With the analysis of this comprehensive survey from people across the country, we feel that opting for a long term WFH option may not be best strategy for companies. We understand our workplace is not just about the work we do it means much more to us wrt connecting with people, getting formally dressed, informal interactions, professional environment, team bonding etc. While WFH may be able to get the work done, but it will take the life out of it. We as human beings always run after the experience and not just the core needs e.g., we go to an expensive restaurant not because only “their food” will satiate our hunger, but it provides us the experience we are looking for. Hence while getting the work done is a core need, but our office provides it the experience we need.

We should not forget that people are sharing this opinion, while they are currently under the threat of the virus and the willingness to go back to work is high despite the looming danger of contracting the virus.

This period has forcefully taught us as people and organizations to work remotely and this learning can be further leveraged to create new workplace models. These models will not mean that we will only work from home, but these models will mean that we should be able to identify the needs and wants of people and create a work environment which fulfils all needs with enhanced work productivity.

There is no new normal, our normal will continue to be what was normal for us 3 months ago. At best we will have improved ways or working with social distancing for the time being. And once the virus starts to exit, most of the organizations and people will be back to pre-2020 ways of working.

We recommend the best of both worlds, let us leverage the technology and provide people more flexibility in future. But at the same time continue to create those buzzing, energetic workplaces, which brings us together and brings the best out of us.