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It has been more than a year since the COVID-19 pandemic forced workplaces to ditch physical office hours for a work-from-home scenario. As the government is rolling out vaccines, people are now looking forward to getting back to their regular office workspaces. That allows us to look back at the work-from-home situation and why it did not work out in some cases.
Here are five reasons why some businesses failed to make the most out of the work-from-home situation.
#1 Poor IT Support
To ensure ideal work-from-home conditions, a company needs to ensure that its employees have access to proper IT support services. Be it a faulty computer, or a problem with software installation, businesses need to make sure that they have a technical team standing by at all times for providing remote support to their employees.
However, many companies fail to provide such services to their employees. They lack a proper business IT support system, which in turn fails to support the needs of the employees. So, the employees are often left stranded with tech-related problems that they are not capable of dealing with.
#2 Lack of Knowledge and Training
Businesses had to move to a work-from-home scenario without any prior warning. And while many had anticipated something like this, none of them were ready to embrace it. Many employees do not know their way around today’s technology. Hence, it became difficult for them to find their way to Zoom meetings.
Businesses can avoid such struggles with proper training. However, given how the transition to a work-from-home situation was very sudden, this became impossible to ensure.
#3 Poor Network Connectivity
A stable internet connection is arguably one of the most vital elements for an ideal work-from-home environment. It is technically the backbone of the entire infrastructure.
Without a proper internet connection, working from home becomes nearly impossible. Employees fail to attend meetings and sessions because of poor internet connectivity. They might even fail to collaborate on group projects or assignments. This communication gap creates major issues for businesses. As a result of all this, companies have to deal with unforeseen delays and even the cancellation of orders from their clients. Thus, the role of network connectivity cannot be overlooked in this situation.
#4 Unpleasant Work Conditions at Home
Even with proper IT support and a stable internet connection, an employee might still fail to produce good results while working from their home. The main reason behind this is the lack of pleasant working conditions at their house.
Unpleasant work conditions at home can be the result of many different scenarios. For instance, perhaps the employee has kids at their house. So it is always noisy and difficult to make calls. Or perhaps the desk and chair they sit at is uncomfortable for them. During the COVID-19 health crisis, it is also possible that they had to attend to their sick family members. All these things, and a lot more, manage to create unpleasant work conditions at one’s home. And hence, there is a noticeable drop in the quality of their performance.
#5 Mentally Exhausting
Initially, working from home seemed like a fun idea. After all, you get to work from the comfort of your bedroom. Besides, you do not have to deal with bad weather or traffic. However, a few months into the pandemic and people could see how the work-from-home scenario was anything but ideal.
Working from home is mentally exhausting. Employees are trapped inside their rooms all day long. They cannot go out, or talk to others in person, which makes them feel alone, isolated, and detached from their peers. Online chatting or conference calls could never replace the sensation of meeting someone physically. And on top of all that, they had to deal with news of the COVID-19 pandemic. People are getting infected and killed by the virus every day, thousands upon thousands all around the world. All these things affected many employees mentally, and they failed to perform.
While things might soon go back to the way they were, businesses need to think ahead. They need to look at the mistakes they made and act on them. You can never be sure when we might need to go back to a work-from-home scenario. And while businesses cannot tackle all the problems their employees face, they can at least try to deal with some of them. Hence, companies should prepare their employees accordingly for such work-from-home scenarios, both mentally and in terms of resources.
You may also like: How to Stay Productive While Working from Home
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