Summary
In “Goldman Sachs: Bank boss rejects work from home as the 'new normal'” (2021) published on the BBC News online portal, we are told that, in some industries, working from home may not replace the on-site traditional workplace. According to David Solomon, CEO of the American company Goldman Sachs , lack of social interaction and direct mentorship are disadvantages of working from home policy, especially for innovation-driven companies like his. Jamie Dimon from JP Morgan shares the same opinion as he raises the concern about dropping work efficiency during work from home period. However, some bank executives disagree with this, saying that work from home policy will continue. Technology companies like Facebook and Twitter are also taking a totally different stand, where work from home policy is encouraged and may become their future norm.______________________
Response
Having read the article “Goldman Sachs: Bank boss rejects work from home as the 'new normal'” on the BBC, I strongly agree with the CEOs from both Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan that working from home may not be the future norm.
The arguments raised by these two CEOs against the work-from-home policy are the absence of social interaction, the lack of mentorship and sinking productivity rate. These are the points that I can relate to my own experience. As a teacher of German language, I also experienced a sudden transition from an offline traditional class at school to the virtual classroom on Zoom and Google Classroom as a response to the worsening pandemic situation. However, I realized that it is not easy to stay focused during an online class. One of the main reasons may be the lack of direct and indirect social interaction both between students and teachers and among students themselves. Furthermore, on a normal day at school, I myself usually observe my students through their gesture and the way they interact with their peers so that I know if more explanation is needed. This is almost impossible in an online classroom. In addition, I also heard lots of complaints from my students that they are stressed because there is no room for talking with their friends during the day while all classes are online. In contrast, students can at least interact with each other during the break at school, but online classrooms leave no room for talking at all. And I am sure that this argument is also applicable to online offices too.
There are also concerns about privacy issues and work life balance. Working from home may invade the most private space of a person, that is, their home. During the online meeting, employees may experience an embarrassing moment such as a sudden interruption from their family members, for example, mom calling them to do dishes or a daughter suddenly running to the screen. Moreover, the unclear boundary between professional and private life may have negative health implications on the employee, for example, the rising mental health concerns.
Despite its disadvantages, work from home policy may allow the employee to have more time for their family as they can save time commuting on the road. The more quality time with their family means the better mental health of the employee. Therefore, remote workplace should still be considered as an alternative. However, more study should be conducted to find out more about the positive and negative effect of work from home policy.
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Question
Reference
- Goldman Sachs: Bank boss rejects work from home as the 'new normal'. (2021, February 25th). BBC. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-56192048
Hi Anik—I have a mix feeling on the statement “virtual workspace/classroom leaves on room for privacy”. On one hand, I agree that it is less convenient to hold a virtual meeting at home than at the office. I worked from home 3 months ago and I found it was difficult to control the environment at my home to suitable for organizing virtual meetings. First, my bed room is the single room at my home that can be used to arrange a virtual meeting as it has a little noise. However, I felt uncomfortable to have virtual meetings here as I didn’t want my colleagues to see my bedroom even though they could see a small part of the wall. I really wanted to keep my privacy. On the other hand, I do not think that we cannot maintain our privacy while working or attending such virtual meetings, because many online meeting applications such Zoom and Google Meet offer ‘virtual background’ that can use to hind or camouflage our privacy arears. It helped me a lot during working from home, as I could change the background of my bedroom to a beautiful sunshine beaches. Therefore, I think I can keep my privacy arears.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I like teaching online for the convenience and comfort of working from home, I also agree with the point that Emma makes about privacy. In fact, when I started working from home using Google Meet, I rearranged my furniture to block most of my home that I did not want people to see. The mess you see behind me during our classes is a bit messy, but that did not worry me too much. But I moved a couple of large wardrobes into new positions to block the view of more personal parts of my life.
DeleteI've tried using background blurs or fake backgrounds, but I don't love those solutions either. Yesterday I was teaching another class and had turned on slight blurring of the background. When I held up some notes I'd written as an example, Google realized it was not my face, so blurred it!
Thank you for your summary in the considerable issue-working from home. The point that you raised is such a current problem with many employees and the company, adding on, also in my university too. Personally, I had studied online for two months after a new wave of endemic and I started to study onsite since middle of February. For that, there are some huge differences according to my experience. Foremost, studying at home has a lot of distractions such as environment and family members i.e. it invades privacy. I was easily losing concentration when postman arrived at my front door and called for someone picking up the mails. Nevertheless, virtual classroom gave me a lot of time dealing with other thing apart from sticking in the car for an hour. Moreover, my mental health is way better since there is no daily 8 hours socializing. That’s all form my opinion.
ReplyDeleteI originally came to reply to Emma's comment above, but since I've now read Mean's comment, I'll also share my own experience about being interrupted. I live alone, so am safe from family walking into the scene, which occasionally happens with my students. That doesn't worry me, but I can understand that my students are not thrilled when a parent or spouse wanders into the background. What has annoyed me a couple of times is when people have come to the door while I'm teaching - thankfully that has only happened about three times over the last year that I've been teaching online. I've warned my friends to always let me know, but on a couple of occasions, there has been a knock on the door that I needed to respond to, which meant a disruption to my lesson, albeit only a minute or two. The students are very understanding when that has happened, but I still don't like it.
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