With the world locked down due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Work from Home became a reality for many office goers. Organisations that shunned Work from Home earlier found ways of allowing their staff to do just that. The security systems that they created, have been tested during the lockdown and they are here to stay. Many organisations have realised that WFH saves rentals for office space and many other expenses that came as freebies in the office. Some organisations have found that staff can be more productive at in WFH and all have found that the working hours for staff are no longer defined by the clock or even by the weekly calendar. No wonder some organisations have already declared that they will switch to a model in which only 25% staff will come to office at any given time. Refer TCS declares 25/25 work.
Working from home is convenient for staff as it saves commuting time, but it comes with its own set of challenges, especially in the lock down when the whole family is home and there are many additional responsibilities. But with the lockdowns being gradually lifted, the real effects of WFH need to seen and discussed.
Workers need in job to earn money to live, but they also see the office as a getaway from the life at home. The young need an opportunity to meet people, to socialise, to find friends with shared interests and, indeed, to find life partners. In WFH, it is too easy for people to be lonely and even to develop anti-social behaviour.
Office workers are not the only ones working from home, school and college students are also learning from home. It is easy for anyone to understand the need for children to go to school to learn to deal with others, to play games and to make friends, to escape from parental control, to grow up learn to be independent. There are many effective educational programmes available on the web but none of these can take care of the other reasons why children need to go to school. It is perhaps for the same reason that people like to go to office to work.
Office spaces are setup for people to work. Organisations provide not just the physical space but also appropriate equipment and furniture, facilities like printing, IT support, maintenance of equipment, tea/coffee/food, counselling for inter personal problems and even air-conditioning. In WFH, all these become the responsibility of the worker. Homes, typically, do not have the appropriate space for working. It becomes complicated, if there is more than one person Working from Home. While some people have found the WFH during lockdown as convenient, many others have tolerated it as a purely temporary phenomenon. If WFH is to be continued for a longer time, a better solution is required. People need better working conditions than the place of living can provide. Many women’s organisations are complaining about ill treatment of women by their partners and families.
Remote Working presents many advantages for organisations, for individual workers and for society at large. It reduces the need for transit within a city and eventually, within the larger context. Since meetings take place online, it is not necessary for people to live in the vicinity of their work place. People live in cities because they are big job markets. Taken to a logical conclusion, WFH may well create a single large global job market. Work visas may no longer be needed to work in a particular country, workers could work from anywhere in the world, from their own village in India, if they like. Jobs would go to the lowest bidder with the best qualifications, irrespective of bidder’s nationality.
The Win-Win-Win Solution
From Society’s point of view the place of work should be close to place of living, within range of non-motorised mode of transport. Many urban planners believe in a theoretical construct with decentralised commercial areas surrounded by residential areas. Urban economists believe that such a model exists only on paper.
From the point of view of the worker, the place of work should be within walking or cycling distance. It should provide good data connectivity, clean, air-conditioned space with furniture appropriate for office, security, pantry for tea/coffee and lunch, toilets, a place to take audio and video calls, to meet others and a place to rest.
From the point of view of the employer, the place of work ought to be secure for people and data, and be capable of operating with minimum oversight and intervention. It should be a low-cost solution, ideally paid for by the savings in money and time that will accrue to workers in WFH. The organisation will also save on the cost of normal office workspace, but these savings may not be available immediately because of the cost of social distancing in offices.
The requirements of the Society, the employee and the employer can be met by a network of small decentralised Remote Working spaces, available within or close to residential areas. Ideally such workspaces should be available for use round the clock and throughout the week. Young people do not always keep office work hours and offices with international operations, have more than one shift running. The level of activity in Commercial areas falls drastically after 6 pm and they are considered unsafe in the evening. Residential areas, on the other hand, are occupied 24×7.
Do urban zoning regulations allow de-centralised work in residential areas? In Mumbai, mixed land use is the norm, so it may be easy to create Remote Work locations close to residential areas. In Delhi, there are three types of middle-class residential areas – Co-operative housing with 100-500 apartments in mid-rise blocks, Government built walk up apartments with stairs shared by 2 apartments per floor, houses with 4 apartments on individual plots of land.
Co-operative housing is almost always a gated community, controlled by a Residents’ Welfare Association (RWA) who places restrictions on all comings and goings. If an apartment is to be used for work, it will require permission from RWA. It may be possible for residents of the co-op society to Remote Work within their own Society without objection from RWA.Government builthousing is also managed by an RWA but with fewer controls on how people use their apartments. Many commercial activities take place there and Remote Working may be easiest to be organise in such apartments.Space in 4 floor apartments on individual plots can be used as shared office space without any controls so long as it is allowed by zoning regulations. At the present, architects, engineers, lawyers and accountants can operate offices from their residences. A small change in the zoning regulations may be needed to include other ITES workers. Bangalore and Pune’s regulations are similar to Delhi.
The time is ripe to think about changing zoning regulations in Indian cities to make it possible for people to Work Remotely. If remote Working becomes a reality, it will be the biggest single learning that the Corona Virus would have provided us with. Ebenezer Howard’s utopian Garden City that never happened, may get a chance to be once again.
