I know a friend who used to stop working at 5 pm and spend the next 2 hours at the office watching movies or catching up on series. Asked why he did not just go home at 5pm, he said his bosses left at 7 and he wanted to give them the impression that he too was working for two extra hours. And apparently it worked, as far as his bosses were concerned, my friend was hard at work between 5-7pm. There is a term for this fairly common habit, “presentism”. Presentism can be defined as the practice of spending long hours at the office without the real need to do so or without being productive. Presentism is a consequence of the long held myth that long hours spent at the office = being productive. The idea that an employee can still be productive while working at home is one that has never been accepted even when the main tools of work of the employee are just a laptop and good internet. Until now. Since March last year there has been a pandemic-inspired shift to hybrid working i.e. working at the office some days and remotely from home on other days. And many work myths have been debunked in the process. The idea that employees can only be productive in the office has been upended. Companies did not collapse as a result of its employees working from home exclusively for the periods when we were under lockdown. Perhaps it is time that we revisit the issue of where we do our work from not just during pandemic times but for the future. Working in the office requires dressing up every day and commuting to and from work. The time spent on this is not compensated as it is not counted in the employee’s typical 9 hour working day. Moreover, many employees tend to be stressed while rushing to get to work. While working at home, many employees have converted the commute time into time for doing something more pleasurable like an early morning jog, more time to lie in bed or have breakfast with their family. This in turn has boosted their morale and enabled them start their work day with extra oomph. Many employees who became parents during the pandemic have enjoyed more time bonding with their babies than they would during normal circumstances. Under the labour law, paid maternity leave in Rwanda is 3 months. Typically, working mothers tend to add their annual leave of 1 month to the maternity leave so that they have 4 months with their babies before resuming work. Paternity leave is only 4 days. During the stay-at-home period, many employees with new born babies have been able to continue spending a more time with their newborn beyond the parental leave. They have also been able to combine this with work. And this has made work and life more fulfilling. Likewise, breastfeeding mothers who are back to work have been able to spend more time breastfeeding their babies. The labour law entitles a new mother to 1 hour per day for breast feeding for the first one year after delivery. While this is well intentioned, in reality, it is not very practical. The commute alone from work to home and back could take 1 hour and that is assuming that the employee can afford to use private transport as public means would take even longer. To address this, some employers allow their breastfeeding employees to come 1 hour later every day or leave 1 hour early and use that extra hour to breastfeed. But some employees fear to use this time as they do not want to be perceived as not taking their work seriously. While others find early mornings and late afternoons quite busy at the office and can hardly afford the luxury of taking that 1 hour off. Consequently, their morale suffers and this in turn affects their productivity. Working from home gives them the flexibility to work out what is the most convenient time to breast feed while still being productive with work. Even parents of older children have benefited from spending more time with their kids. Working from home also cuts out unnecessary meetings which waste a lot of productive time. Of course, for working from home to be effective, employers and employees would require a radical mindset shift. They could both borrow a leaf from the Consultant model. Consultants are not closely supervised by their hirer and are paid based on deliverables not days spent at the office. Granted, this is a model which would only work for professional jobs as these require less supervision, more personal initiative, creativity and simple tools like a laptop. Leaders and managers tend to associate remote working with loss of control. Perhaps they can adopt productivity and project tracking tools like confluence or Trello or Basecamp which enable them to monitor staff off-site. Working from home is not without its downsides. Old habits die hard. In some cases endless office meetings are replaced with endless virtual meetings while working at home. Employees working remotely now complain of ‘zoom fatigue’ a term coined for the exhaustion you feel after attending back-to-back virtual meetings often with poor internet connection. Culture, collegiality and collaboration are lost while working remotely. Working from the office enables new employees to get immersed in the culture and values of the firm through meeting colleagues face- to-face. Firm culture cannot be transmitted via Zoom presentations. Employees are also able to bond and constantly bounce off ideas with each other. This in turn boosts their creativity, team spirit, and their work. Extroverted employees particularly thrive while working alongside their colleagues as opposed to working solo at home. Also, some employees simply work better supervised. Once left to their own devices, productivity suffers. Moreover, without setting boundaries and dedicated workspaces, working at home can become very exhausting. The lines between work time and home time become blurred. Working from the office helps one compartmentalize the two environments and know that office time is for office work and home time is for family and relaxation. While, working from home may mean they have to combine responding to emails with playing with the kids in the morning and responding to work calls while having dinner in the evening if there are no clearly defined boundaries. And this is simply exhausting. There is no one-size fits all solution to where we do our work. Some jobs will be better suited for working at the office while others like professional jobs are more flexible. What we have discovered over the past year is that there are some benefits to working from the office vs working from home and vice versa. Perhaps employers and policy makers could consider hybrid working; say 4 days in the office, 1 day at home for a start. In addition, employees with babies could be allowed more time to continue working from home after their parental leave provided they deliver results. Who knows, hybrid working may bring us closer to the ever elusive work-life balance. The views expressed in this article are of the author and do not constitute legal advice. The writer is a business lawyer and Partner at Trust Law Chambers rbalenzi@trustchambers.rw Follow on Twitter @Richard Balenzi
