Being able to work from home also requires ideal conditions that allow the worker's performance to be optimal.
by Luis González Nogales*
In recent months there has been much talk and written about teleworking, confusing it with the fact of having to work from home, a product of the different stages of confinement that countries have had in certain weeks or months.
From this column we want to do our bit to this discussion, in the spirit of encouraging the critical spirit and the exchange of opinions.
The work from home to which thousands of people have been forced to perform as a result of government decisions to confine certain areas in their homes together with the need for companies or institutions to maintain a minimum of operations and services, has led in general to the improvisation of establishing communication from the place of residence of the person with the company and / or its customers, proceeding at that time to make the inventory of the means that each one had at home, these being in most the fixed or portable computers for home use, personal or company phones, and internet connections with the bandwidth that each person could pay for their particular use.
From these general conditions, communication networks were established through groups in different social networks, the download of programs in their preference free and the support for the installation and implementation of these communication schemes by information technology professionals ("computer scientists") in those medium-sized companies that had this staff, and small businesses that mostly do not have these professionals turned to younger family members who had some kind of knowledge in these systems or through videos and tutorials existing on the network.
Large companies and especially those dedicated to communication and information technologies have had more possibilities of adaptation by being able to create better conditions for the personnel who have to work from home, quickly providing greater bandwidths to their employees, the remote installation of specific programs of the companies, VPN (virtual private network) with greater security strengths, as well as the installation of virtual IP phone numbers of the company remotely, as we already mentioned, as well as the remote monitoring of the machines used by its workers to avoid data leaks; but this, as we pointed out, only a group of certain companies had the opportunity to do so.
The worker
The worker was forced to an additional tension to those created by the particular personal situation of each family as a result of the health crisis, having to be connected and attending calls, videoconferences, seminars, etc. with the company in improvised spaces within his residence, with the normal and extraordinary interferences caused by other elderly people, young people and children who are equally confined to the house and sometimes pushing for the only computer equipment available to access their jobs or classes.
This situation is not teleworking regardless of the fact that the prolongation in time of these situations were gradually stabilizing a little the schedules and the limits of what could or could not be attended in such circumstances, but in another sense generating higher levels of emotional tension, having work activities to attend at any time of the day or night, without limit or respect for the "traditional" schedules that were had until before the confinement. This cannot be considered or named as teleworking, the closest thing would be "work from home" (under "particular" conditions).
Teleworking that has been and is a good option for many activities of companies and that has been put on the table and is one of the best times to sit down and consider each of the positions of the company and make the analysis of the cost benefit for the productivity of the company and stability of the worker.
First: after carrying out this internal analysis that the functions and activities of the position can be carried out in whole or in part from an external place of the company, in this case the residence of the employee who is hired or is already part of the workforce, and is to define what resources are necessary to provide to each position from the point of view of technological equipment, both hardware and software, as well as office equipment and periodic replenishment needs; also in the case of being partial the activities that will require their presence in the company or the sending and receipt of physical documents from the company to the house and vice versa.
Second: the visit to the place where the employee will carry out his telework and analyze its adequacy in terms of independence from other activities (remember that it will be the workplace) the connectivity conditions that the company must ensure for the proper fulfillment of the functions, the conditions of light, noise or soundproofing, the type of computer equipment to perform its work, in short, all the causes that normally occupational health and safety specialists analyze within the company must be in the workplace in the worker's home or residence.
Included if it is required to carry out any small work or adaptation of the place so that it has the necessary conditions to carry out its working day, this may include access control devices to record the hours of entry and exit, the installation of video surveillance equipment for this specific place that would not violate the privacy of the rest of the house, just as cameras are installed inside the company, in the consideration that this space is an extension of the company, we could make a simile with the situation of the embassies in the different countries.
Third: consider on the part of the worker that once he has established with the company that his position will be carried out in the modality of partial or total telework, he must consider that the condition of executing his work from his residence and that for this he has a specific space that the company, considering it in some way, rents in your house and whose equipment and its use are of the company and are intended to fulfill your obligations of contractual work agreed.
It also implies a mental process and self-discipline in the sense that you have an entry time for which you have to prepare properly and for this the recommendation is to carry out the activities of hygiene, clothing, planning of personal activities, etc., in the same way as if we had to move to the workplace, but with the advantage that travel times are won in personal times. In this sense, my personal recommendation is what I call "shine your shoes to go to a zoom meeting", that is, prepare as if the activity were face-to-face. From this are usually excepted those activities that are of a creative nature or deliverables by results where there are no schedules, but delivery of a result on a certain date.
The last thing is that just as the worker must prepare to go and fulfill his functions in the hours established from "the embassies of the company in the homes of the workers" in the conditions previously created and agreed; the company must respect these schedules and if a meeting or a time outside the established hours is required, it must also recognize it as extraordinary hours and also respect the advance notices that are given when the works are carried out in person; you must also be clear that emails, calls and messages left in the extensions of the phones (usually IP) of the company outside the established schedules will be treated in the same way as when the work is face-to-face and the employee has already finished his working day and has left the company.
Conclusions
As we can see, in teleworking a series of agreements, rules and procedures must be established so that this modality flows in a productive and agile way.
On the contrary, working from home has been an extraordinarily imposed need as a result of a situation of health origin that has allowed a qualitative leap in the sense that companies have been able to identify activities that can be carried out with teleworking, the next step is to create the appropriate conditions both technological and organization and procedures.
The task is set, the rest is up to us.
Greetings to all our readers.
* Luis González Nogales is the Executive President of INCASPRI. If you want to contact him, you can write to the email: [email protected]
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