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| I can't recall where I found this particular article. It's from a source I know nothing about (Farmingdale Observer), and it's not a topic I'd usually comment on (except for the "happiness" angle). But okay, at some point, I dumped it into my pile and the random numbers pointed at it today, so here it is. Before anyone replies with "I prefer working in an office setting," remember that any conclusion like this, assuming it's a valid study, applies in aggregate. It's like claiming "going to parties is fun," which, while a majority of people might agree, some would vehemently disagree. The researchers are unequivocal: this flexibility significantly improves the well-being and happiness of employees, transforming our relationship with work. I'm betting many employers consider their workers' "well-being and happiness" way down the list of things they give a shit about. Their study, which was unique in that it began before the health crisis, tracked changes in the well-being of Australian workers over a four-year period, offering a unique perspective on the long-term effects of teleworking. One immediate problem jumps out like a kangaroo: can this be extrapolated to the US? Japan? Singapore? Italy? Namibia? Different countries can have vastly different work cultures, not to mention not everyone lives in a capitalist paradise. Yes, I'm aware that the problem is usually reversed: US researchers studying US people, and then projecting the result to the rest of the world. Point is, maybe there's something unique to Australia that skews the results in favor of working from home—like, maybe, not having to deal with the stress of knowing that all the wildlife is actively trying to kill you on your commute. Though here in the US, you can replace "wildlife" with "gunfire," so it might translate well after all. One of the first things we noticed when we started confinement was an increase in sleep time: almost half an hour more per night for teleworkers. This gain is not insignificant. Before the pandemic, the average Australian spent around 4.5 hours a week travelling for work. That sounds like a lot, I guess, but I just mathed the shit out of that, and it translates to a 27-minute commute time. For shiggles, I looked up the average US commute time, and discovered that it's, shockingly, roughly 27 minutes. Now, for most of my working life, I had a commute that was less than 15 minutes each way, so I may be biased. But half an hour doesn't seem that bad—though, depending on how they figured "average," it means that maybe half the people commute longer than that. Eating habits have also changed. The proximity of the kitchen may well have encouraged an increase in snacking. However, the study highlights a deeper trend towards healthier food choices. Again, I suspect this is a bulk result. It may be that more people chose to munch on carrots (or the Australian equivalent thereof) than gorge on cookies (are they biscuits there, like in the UK? I don't know), but the latter group may include people who, lacking people around to judge them, indulged their baser instincts. While some managers express fears about a drop in performance, sometimes pointing the finger at a lack of supervision, the Australian study, corroborated by other research, suggests that professional performance and productivity are maintained and even improved when employees work from home. Seems like it'd be easy enough to determine if someone's productivity has dropped or increased, whether they're remote or not. But I'm not a middle manager at a large company, and never have been. Working from home is not a universal solution, a one-size-fits-all model that can be applied to all situations. Rather, it appears to be a valuable option among others, capable of contributing to a better, more inclusive and flexible working environment. At least they acknowledge these things. Now, to be clear, being retired, I don't care one way or the other—except that if you take that average (let's round it a bit) half-hour commute each way, which is an hour a day, and consider the environmental impact of all those hour-long drives that may not be necessary. Eliminating that won't solve all our problems, any more than banning plastic bags did, but it could put a dent in them. And any corporation that claims to "care about the environment" while making its white-collar workers come in when it's not strictly necessary gets put on my greenwashers list. Yeah, yeah, I know, carpools, public transportation, etc. My point stands. Obviously, some jobs can't be done from home, but we're not talking about those. And some prefer the office culture, which would clearly be impacted if a lot of the workers chose remote work. There's no fits-all situation here; I just thought the study was worth taking a look at, if only to find ways to do more studies to clarify a few things. |
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