News: Why work-from-home is full of challenges for young urban professionals-31-05-2020
Updated On: May 31, 2020
Why work-from-home is full of challenges for young urban professionals
From rising power bills to cramped work spaces, work-from-home is full of challenges for young professionals
Who are these people bragging about saving money while they work from home (WFH) during the lockdown? Satyabhan Singh wants to meet them, virtually of course, and tell them his story. The 22-year-old, who works in an NGO in Delhi, has been paying double the electricity bill ever since WFH began two months ago. Normally, his power bill would be around Rs 1,500 a month. Last month, it came to Rs 3,000. “Earlier, I hardly used the air conditioner at home. Now it is switched on two-thirds of the day. And the weather is only going to get hotter,” he says. It only means his electricity bill is going to rise further. His salary isn’t that big and even a slight dip in the disposable income makes a substantial dent. It is a double whammy. While many companies are not compensating for the rising cost of WFH, for the employees, the situation has only been exacerbated by pay cuts. Take Shashank Bharadwaj in Bengaluru. His phone bill has gone up three times since WFH started. Meanwhile, his firm has announced pay cuts. “Earlier, my mobile internet usage was 750 MB per day as I used office broadband for work. Now, I have to download several heavy files using my mobile internet, so the per day usage has gone up to 5 GB. My bill of Rs 800 a month has gone up to Rs 2,500.” In normal circumstances, Bharadwaj would ask his company to reimburse it. But with pay cuts, a compensation seems out of the question, says the 23-year-old communications professional. “I’m effectively at the same salary that I started off two years ago,” he says. WFH had a euphoric beginning. In the initial days of the lockdown, people enthusiastically shared online photos of their home workspaces. Then, Zoom popularised its in-call feature that allows users to change their background wallpaper during video calls — a blessing for those who felt their workspace was nothing to write office about. WFH became hashtag cool. However, soon the inequalities of access and opportunity began to surface, making the price tag behind this hashtag more visible.
When companies like Google and Facebook, among others, announced plans to extend WFH for employees across regions till the end of the year, it led to debates and discussions on the advantages, disadvantages and long-term feasibility of WFH. Yet, many young urban professionals feel their everyday challenges regarding WFH have been missing from the discourse. A lot of them are living in crammed spaces that they share with other flatmates to save on rent. Most of them don’t even have a basic workstation — a table and a chair — at home. Unlike their seniors who are saving a substantial sum on commuting cost right now, many at the junior and mid-level preferred public transport for their daily commute. Therefore, the money saved on travel doesn't help offset the additional cost of WFH for them. Back in their office, there was ergonomic furniture to help with posture, a coffee machine that always worked, a pantry with cookies, and unlimited access to internet and electricity. These are some of the perks that professionals, especially in their 20s and 30s, can’t afford to have at home.
Architects specialising in interior design tell ET Magazine that companies put a lot of money in designing office spaces to make them more comfortable for employees to spend long hours. It’s a trend that started with IT companies but soon percolated down to every other sector. There are rooms to enable team meetings, discreet meetings and impromptu catch-ups. There’s an open office layout that is supposed to ensure more interdepartmental interactions. Many offices have a gym, shower area and a recreational room to help employees unwind. Little touches like indoor plants and an earthy colour scheme add to the appeal of an office space. “These come at a heavy cost to the company, though, starting from Rs 8-10 crore for an office floor with basic facilities and going up to Rs 15-20 crore, if you include a gym, a shower area and water installations like fountains,” says Soumya Tripathy, 26, a Mumbai-based architect, who is also admittedly struggling to work from home in her paying guest accommodation. Tanya Shandilya, too, longs for the comforts of office. The 24-year-old from Gwalior shares a matchbox apartment in Mumbai with her younger brother, a college student. There’s a spike in all household expenses, right from food and electricity to phone and cooking gas. “We are eating all the time so we are spending a lot more on food,” she says. In the case of Arpit Sachdeva, a Bengaluru-based IT professional, the absence of a proper workstation at home has taken a toll on his back and neck. The 23-year-old, who hails from Rajasthan, says: “I don’t think the pain will go away if my work arrangement doesn’t change.” While some are weighing the physical and financial toll that WFH is taking on them, many are just looking for a quiet corner to do video calls, with little to no success. Like Rahul Priyadarshi. The 28-year-old product manager at an ecommerce company in Gurgaon has been living at his sister’s place in Vaishali, Ghaziabad, since the lockdown. It’s a family of four, including his brother-in-law and two kids, that stays in a 2BHK (two-bedroom, hall, kitchen) flat. Priyadarshi has been sleeping on their couch for the last 70 days. “Often all of us have calls at the same time,” he says. At least, he doesn’t have to worry about adding to their rising electricity bill as there is no AC in the living room, however nightmarish that may be in this summer.
Siddhartha Kancharla can’t even be thankful for such small mercies. The 21-year-old, who lives with his parents, started his first job in Hyderabad’s IT services sector in February. Last month, a pay cut reduced his monthly salary of Rs 35,000 to Rs 32,000. The electricity bill at home, meanwhile, has gone up from Rs 4,000 to Rs 6,000. Kancharla is miserable that while the expenses at home are rising, his contribution to the family kitty has fallen by Rs 5,000. Work from home also means working more from home. WFH-led disappointment has many faces. In Lizbeth Jose’s case, it is the face of her four-year-old son. “Earlier I would come back home from the office and spend time with him. Now he feels I’m not there for him even though I’m home the whole day,” says the 32-year-old sales and marketing professional from Mumbai. For Anjani Vyas, a Hyderabad-based risk analyst, it is the face of his mother. “I see my mother slog in the kitchen while I’m swamped with work. I feel guilty for not being able to help her,” he says. A lot of professionals in the 20-30 age group complain about working over 13 hours a day during the lockdown. Ruchika Beri, a Jaipur-based HR professional, says it’s because they don’t have the ability to say “No” and hence end up toiling for longer, often attending calls at ungodly hours. Working from home puts a lot of people in junior positions and mid-levels at a disadvantage. They have to wait for orders or responses from their bosses. “Colleagues are in no pressure to take our calls, which often pauses our workflow and increases turnaround time for each task,” says Easwar Gopalakrishnan, a 27-year-old working in an OTT company in Mumbai. Digital divide creates yet another disadvantage. Poor internet connectivity at home, in place of high-speed office broadband, hampers work. "Because of poor internet, I've missed webinars and virtual presentations that I had organised in the first place," says Prajeet K, an IT professional in Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala, who is currently working from his hometown in Kollam. For the last three weeks, Prajeet has been getting a broadband speed of 3 Mbps in the morning. By 2 pm, this falls to 100 Kbps. "I'm able to work efficiently only in the first half of the day," says Prajeet. In Thiruvananthapuram, he spent Rs 1,200 every month on his mobile internet plan. Since the lockdown, he has already spent Rs 5,000 on data, says the 31-year-old. Like many, he, too, is trying to safeguard his job during these uncertain times by trying to stay relevant. "But it's affecting my confidence now," he adds. Lack of robust internet connectivity at homes is one of the biggest obstacles for companies that want to enforce long-term WFH. "My friends who are late to join office calls because of network issues are being labelled as 'too casual' by seniors. They think work from home is a privilege for us," says Rahul Gupta, 29, a Bengaluru-based IT professional, who hails from Siliguri.
As multiple industries mull over extending WFH, senior HR professionals say they should take into account some of these issues as well. "WFH may have started off looking like a privilege," says Sudhir Dhar, ED of HR and administration at Motilal Oswal Financial Services, "but people are realising its challenges now." Dhar asks managers to show maturity in these times. "This is the time to understand and empathise with employees' struggles, to make allowances for them on the basis of their circumstances."
