Why working from home could extend past the Pandemic, The New Normal

Why not work from home? Of course, if your job requires face-to-face interaction or in-person duties then it would be impossible to do so. However, for those who can, is working from home a better option? Over the past two years trapped by the pandemic, I have experienced both studying and working purely from my home. Through this, I believe I have some sort of credit when I say, working from home is pretty great.

Before writing this piece I spoke with my brothers and father who all work mainly from our home, and we agreed that it is much less stressful and equally if not more productive. While we do share a living space, we have a system in place to not bother one another while we conduct our business.

This new normal allows us to reconnect with one another in a way that we haven’t been able to do so in the past. I am not saying that the pandemic was a good thing, but there are ways to look on the bright side. Previously, we would almost always have dinner away from one another. Most of the time either my brothers, my father or I would be out of the house busy with work or school but now we can always look forward to catching up at dinner and interacting with one another.

Working from home also allows us to save time as normally most of our days would be spent in the chaos that is Manila traffic, now we can either sleep a little more or have our business done earlier with the amount of time saved.

It isn’t just my family that feels this way, a study conducted by the Boston Consulting Group, SEEK Asian, and The Network found that up to 49% of Philippine employees prefer working from home. The survey had over 200,000 respondents with over 5,000 coming from the Philippines. It showed that pre-pandemic 52% of commercial workers were working remotely and during the number surged to 85%.

According to the study, 89% of employees globally would prefer going either fully or partially remote even after the pandemic. Of these, 24% of the respondents want to work from home for the whole week; 25% prefer going to the office for two days and working remotely for three days. Up to 64% of workers also now prefer flexible hours with only 36% interested in keeping the status quo of a 9-to-5 job.

“We have already established that people can work together while not being physically together,” said Karrie Ilagan, managing director for Cisco Philippines.

Ilagan also hopes to strengthen the new normal through Webex Suite. The project is a comprehensive cloud-based collaboration that aims to serve as the foundation for inclusive hybrid work and events.

“We are bringing innovations to our portfolio with that in mind, and with Webex Suite, everyone has a seat at the table, everyone’s voice can be heard, and it’s a platform where discussions are made equitable,” Ilagan said.

Source: CISCO, BCG, Philstar, Spot.ph,