Poll Shows 62% of Employees Not Happy At Having to Go Back to Office to Work from 28 Sept

By
George Yang
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If you’re an office worker and are confused over the headline, then here’s the good news: your boss can technically get you to go back to the office to work from tomorrow (28 Sept) onwards, and you probably aren’t affected yet.

And here’s the bad news: you could be receiving a call in a few hours’ time, and days of sleeping in until 9am to show your face in a Zoom meeting before going back to bed 10 minutes later are going to be history.

Poll Shows 62% of Employees Not Happy At Having to Go Back to Office to Work from 28 Sept

For the uninitiated, here’s something you ought to know first: At this moment, the default working mode is to work from home. From tomorrow onwards (28 Sept), that will still be the default mode, but employers can now call employees back to the workplace.

However, the employer must ensure that such employees continue to work from home for at least half their working time, and no more than half of such employees are at the workplace at any point in time.

For example, for a full-time worker with a 6-day work week, he or she may be allowed to be in the office for up to three days in a week. Alternatively, an employer with 10 full-time employees who are currently working from home may split the 10 employees into two teams, and ask each team to return to the workplace every alternate week while the other team continues to work from home.

Returning to the workplace can either be initiated by the employee and agreed upon with the employer, or directed by the employer.

So even if you’re one who spends your entire workday in from of a computer and can technically work from home forever, your boss won’t be penalised if he or she asks you to go back to the office.

With this new arrangement, is it a yay or nay?

Personally, it’s a nay since it’s like a half-f*** arrangement—I’m pretty sure by now, people who need to be in the office are already in the office and people who aren’t needed are working at home happily.

It seems like I’m not the only one having this thought.

According to a poll conducted by The Straits Times, 62% of more than 7,100 respondents did not welcome the move to return to the workplace from this week.

They didn’t provide any reasons, but experts have weighed in on issue.

Messy Lah, Boss

So, other than the limited number of days you can go to the office, there’s also a rule on the working hours.

Office hours are going to be a thing of the past, as employers should allow employees to work partly at home and partly at the workplace such that they travel outside of peak periods, e.g. blocks of 10am-4pm or 1-5pm in-office hours, or return to the workplace only for meetings and work-from-home the rest of the time.

Also, half of all employees should start work at or after 10am. In addition, split team or shift arrangements must continue to be implemented, with each team restricted to one worksite where possible. Employers must also ensure clear separation of employees on different teams or shifts.

This is when it gets a tad tricky: we humans are creatures of habits. If you tell me that I’m supposed to work 9am to 6pm every weekday, I’ll gladly take that.

But if you tell me I’m supposed to come in at 10:30am to 3pm on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and spend the rest of my hours working at home, I think I’ll spend more time wondering what my exact working hours are rather than to work on my main tasks.

The CEO and co-founder of human resource technology firm EngageRocket said, “Task switching has a significant effect on attention and productivity, making it likely that being subjected to such a split schedule will cause a lot more time spent mentally wandering than focused on work.

“It is much better to have either the full day working in the office, or working from home.”

And another expert, Associate Professor Song Zhaoli from the National University of Singapore Business School, said, “Before Covid-19, most workers had regular working hours in a week. People knew when to go to work and when to come back home. Such certainty makes it easy to coordinate family time as well.

“Now, the new work scheme will lead to uncertainties in terms of which days and what time to go to the office and when to leave the office. This will likely lead to stress.”

I just realised I’ve become an expert, but that’s a topic for another article.

Moving on, if your company has indeed called you back to the office, you can probably show your boss this article.

Or to quote from our boss: “Do you know how much electricity I save from getting you guys to slog from home until 11pm daily? And now I’ve the coffee machine to myself, too.”

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George Yang
Email: [email protected]