@ridmehta I think this topic on should a individual decide to go onsite or remote work has been the hot topic of these past two years since the pandemic began in 2020 which forced us all change of way of life and forced us to conform to a new way of living. With that being said I think work life balance is very important and it also has to be checks and balances in your life when it comes to working, home, family, fun, and anything else you do. Moderation is the key to work life balance and I believe too much of anything is never a good thing. So, with that being said I believe the hybrid model works best for the majority of working citizens because in order to maintain your sanity an individual has to be able to have options in life and not be stuck to an office cubicle all day with no outlet too breathe and smell the roses.
I am also one of those people who have worked from home for a while during the pandemic period. If we compare working at work and working from home, I would definitely prefer working from home. The most important reason for this is to get rid of commuting for work and gain more time for yourself. In addition, the elimination of getting tiredness when commuting. Of course, there are also harmful and negative aspects of working from home. it simply causes a decrease in socialization. but this is a situation that the person himself can prevent. Therefore, in my opinion, working from home is better than working from the workplace.
I personally love the hybrid model of working. I feel like it capitalizes on all the pros of both options. If you can telework a few days a week, you gain back your commuting time that you can use to complete chores, go to the gym, spend time with your family, or do anything else that makes you happy or needs to get done. It also allows you to work without as many distractions and accomplish more in less time. If you can go into the office a few days a week it makes you look forward to seeing your work friends. It gives you an opportunity to be social with people you have traits in common with and develop connections; something that has been hard to do in the past two years with so much telework. I also find that some meetings happen better in person and promote more team dialogue. Giving people more flexibility in their schedules can also ease some of their stress, especially with children, making it easier for them to pick up their kids from school and such. This led to, at least where I worked, happier and more efficient workers. I think that many companies that are not hands-on engineering or labs will turn into mostly remote jobs because the companies do not have to pay rent on the large spaces. Do you think that these companies will regret their decisions in 5-10 years as people become more and more used to not interacting with others in-person in a professional setting?
As a soon to be graduate and someone who will be starting my professional career following the spring of 2023, I look at this topic from a much different perspective. I personally would much rather prefer a role that is onsite and in the office rather than a full time remote position. For someone who has been employed for several years now it is easy to side with the fully remote choice as it allows much more convenience and comfort as stated as pros for many past posts, but for new graduates like myself convenience and comfort would not be beneficial. The major con to fully remote work that keeps popping up in every post is the lack of in-person interaction. This is such a major con for other soon-to-be graduates like myself. I believe the lack of in-person interaction could hinder the growth of new employees. Making connections, learning from co-workers, and understanding a companies culture is not something that can be easily attained through fully remote positions.
This then forms the question for those who have been a part of the work industry for some time now and would prefer a fully remote position, would you still prefer a fully remote position if you were just starting your professional career?
With the way everything is headed now, several departments have gone full time remote such as complaint handling, some regulatory positions, and even few Quality Engineer positions in my company. I am aware that this question may not apply to everyone, however would you prefer for the role your currently in to be full time remote position or would you prefer to go back into the office? Please justify using pros and cons.
I believe there should be an option to work remotely if the worker is not feeling well. However, I think one can get more work done in the office. This is because when you are at the office, you get motivated to work harder by your peers and can ask for and get help faster. Some pros of remote would be staying at home all day and dedicating a couple of hours to get all your work done in the day. Some cons for remote working would be having a lot of distractions if your family is around and more interruptions to your work, which leads to less work being done throughout your day. All in all, I believe work should be in the office; however one should have the option to take a couple of remote days per month.
After the covid, we all experienced 'work from home'. The main advantage of remote work is that you can work from anywhere in the world as long as you have a reliable internet connection. Still, if you ask me which one I prefer, I will say in person. Though both have pros and cons, I prefer in-person because I can connect with people more when I talk to them face to face. Remote work is better for people who do software based work. I work in a fully experimental lab, so I have to always be in person to run experiments. And this is another reason that I like in person better as I can experience it physically. During in-person learning, you can practice new skills with people, do hands-on experiments and learn from the experiences around you.
Remote positioning and workspaces have become very prevalent because of COVID-19, which is excellent. Some of the pros of working remotely is being able to have family time without having to compromise your work. It allows people to be more productive if they may choose to be, which can also be a con. A con scam from remote positioning is losing that communication with coworkers and higher-ups. Many need those communication skills because they sit by their computer all day. As a fitness enthusiast, it is also a downside to people's physical and mental health. Jobs should make it mandatory to at least come in once daily and interact with others working in the same space as you. This summer, I will be a hybrid, and that is a perfect way to have a balance for remote positioning. Being able to go into the office but stay home when needed without suffering consequences is ideal. This shows up much more in the industry than academia because being face to face in academia is very important to connect on a different level and articulate different information easier.
I prefer to work remotely. It's very convenient for me to arrange my time more flexibly. However, as mentioned above, it depends on the job type. Full-time remote working is available for some drawing or documentation jobs. But I believe most job requires cooperation or specific instruments—for example, software simulation or data transportation. In software simulation, some device requires tons of simulation and computation before manufacturing. Unfortunately, not all employees have a testing ground or apex computer at home.
Moreover, when one of the employees tries to transport the simulation data or model to others, the internet speed decides how much time will be wasted. It's the same reason. Not everyone has apex equipment at home. Therefore, I think working in person still is more efficient than remote working.
Since COVID, working from home as become a huge part of the work world. For many it was a perfect fit for their lifestyle, but for others it may have been dreadful due to being on lock down for so long. Now that lock down is over there are many options when it comes to choosing the work life that works best for you. Working on site, remotely, or hybrid has many pros and cons. I never experienced a job that offered hybrid opportunities, but I had several jobs that were remote and even more jobs that were on site. Each has its pros and cons. After COVID, I was eager to get out, be around people, and move around. I did not realize how much I enjoyed working alongside my coworkers. The pros to working on site in my opinion is the social aspect. Sometimes, physically being around a good group of people having great conversations can make a job worthwhile. A con that comes with working on site is that it comes with demands that are strict and does not allow room for flexibility. A pro that comes with working from home are no commute times, which allows you to save on gas and time and maybe even being able to get a little more rest. A con to working from home is the lack of interaction. Some jobs require for people to be on site because it requires hands on work. For instance, working with patients or putting together medical devices. Other jobs like customer service, accounting, or data entry allows a company to decide if they want to be in office or not. In my opinion, I would like to experience a hybrid job to mix the pros for both on site work and remote work. Since so many jobs are suitable for remote and on-site work, overtime, how do you think it will impact the jobs that only require for the worker to be in person.
A new technological era has begun. Technology may easily strengthen all facets of human life as more tech-related items and apps gain popularity. Life is thus simpler and more fruitful. Organizations can now perform online management and training, as well as maintain regular communication with their workforce, much more easily thanks to new technological advancements in project management software.
Individuals are now interested in creating a digital nomad lifestyle, which allows them to work whenever and wherever they want and is no longer constrained by the typical 9–5 desk employment. While unwinding on the beach, managing and sending emails, and participating on conference calls, you can still be equally productive. Moreover, The cost of security, office supplies, office expenses, parking places, and refreshments are also reduced when employees are allowed to work from home. This has meant that the money saved has been put back into IT gear and software, providing personnel with the resources they need to perform their daily tasks just as well as if they were in the office.
I do realize that remote work makes it harder for team interaction. What ways could a company create a cohesive team mindset in a remote setting?
I prefer being in the office because I am more of a hands-on and visual worker. Remote work grants the liberty of being able to work from wherever but I feel it leaves room for error. Being in the office workspace adds a layer of accountability that may ensure progression because an in-person workspace is more personal. Technical difficulties can arise that may hinder certain objectives within remote work as well. Hybrid schedules give employees the best of both worlds. If there are tasks that require a more hands-on approach they can come into the office, but if not they still have the leisure of working from their setting of choice.
From my perspective, remote work offers a range of advantages. Firstly, the flexibility it provides is unparalleled. I can structure my day to suit my own productivity and personal commitments. This means I can better balance work and life, eliminating commute time and expenses while enjoying a comfortable, personalized workspace. Remote work also allows access to a broader job market, granting opportunities that might not be available locally. However, there are downsides as well. Isolation and a lack of face-to-face interaction can make it harder to build strong professional relationships, collaborate effectively, and sometimes hinder career advancement. Additionally, the boundary between work and personal life can blur, making it challenging to switch off and maintain a healthy work-life balance. Overall, remote work provides remarkable freedom and convenience but demands careful consideration of its potential drawbacks.
Working remotely from home as opposed to the office has been a topic that I have considered multiple times in my industry as well as academic life. With the transition during COVID during my academic BS of my undergrad, I saw that working from home was much easier in that there was no commute to school and then coming home exhausted after my 9 p.m. class because of the hurdles of in-person classes. As opposed to my remote class, I felt better and had more time to do things without distractions. The other downside was that there was this social aspect of not seeing my classmates and interacting with others while in class, as well as many different hurdles I had to undergo to take an exam remotely, while in person it was less invasive in terms of scanning my area as well as having the anxiety of an exam being flagged for any random movement. In my industry life, I had undergone mostly in-person work due to the nature of being in quality as well as operations where there needed to be personnel on-site where the work couldn't have been done virtually. There are some jobs, such as human resources, that can be completed virtually anywhere, and meeting in person isn't needed due to the nature of the work. I remember being asked in an interview if coming on-site would be a problem because I always showed up to work at 8 a.m. for the week, and the cultures of different companies definitely clashed. In terms of medical device development, I know there are some jobs that are not needed on-site due to the work that needs to be done, such as sales. Most salespeople I have encountered tend to be on the road most of the time, working with clients and demoing the product to them, as opposed to virtually, where the client would want a more personal feel for the product. If I were to pick between working remotely or on-site, I would prefer working remotely because it would open up more possibilities to complete more objectives as opposed to being distracted on-site.
As I'm writing this, it has been two years since the world returned to a sense of "normalcy" following the pandemic. I was actually in high school between March 2020-June 2021, experiencing what I like to call "senioritis to the max". Because the shift to zoom classes represented a changed environment for both students and teachers, teachers were doing their best to shift to the new situation, and students had little incentive to participate in class. Most of the work was being done online. While this sounds like an ideal educational situation for many, students would often get seemingly arbitrary grades from teachers. Though the option to email the teachers after class existed, this did not offer the same level of feedback that was presented with in-person learning without social distancing. As a result, many seniors, who already had little incentive to pay attention in class, lowered their efforts even further, while many freshmen-juniors were in a state of constant panic about their grades. While my story appears to go on a tangent, as I shifted to college and graduate-level courses offered in both in-person and virtual formats, I began to understand that the lack of motivation people experienced during my senior year of high school could have been avoided by simply educating educators about the changed environments and providing more resources to adapt to the situation. As a result, I still believe that remote work can be a viable option, as long as we take the experiences we learned during the 2020 shift to our present-day work experiences to ensure an optimal work environment.
From my experiences in the industry, I prefer working in an in-person setting rather than a remote environment. Yet, I believe a happy medium to be a hybrid environment, providing flexibility while also allowing interpersonal connections to be developed.
The common arguments for working in a remote environment are the following:
- Productivity remains the same at a fraction of the cost (no office rental, office supplies, etc.)
- allows employees the ease of working from ANYWHERE at ANYTIME
- Employees can join meetings and calls that are taking place anywhere around the world, not just in a local office.
While these arguments are true, one aspect that the remote environment lacks is the ability to develop interpersonal connections. In general, it is much more difficult to develop interpersonal connections via phone calls or video meetings than it is in an in-person office environment. For success in industry, you need teams to be comprised of individuals who have connections with one another and support one another. The only way to truly build these connections is in an in-persons setting.
So, in order to have both the flexibility of remote work and to have interpersonal connections develop, companies should use a hybrid model.
