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Working from home a new normal for many but it's no cure-all
By Anna Patty
For people fortunate enough to still be working and doing that from the safety of home, there can be a blurring of time as one day bleeds into the next.
University academics who rushed to get course content online and office workers now using their commuting time to work on their laptops at home are starting to wonder whether these habits will continue after the COVID-19 crisis is over.
Will things return to the way they were before?
A new report suggests working from home may become the "new normal" for millions in the future. But not everyone likes it.
Dr Tinashe Moira Dune, an academic at Western Sydney University, with her children, Naya and Yarran.Credit: Brook Mitchell
Dr Tinashe Moira Dune, an academic at Western Sydney University, says she struggles to juggle teaching from home with an increased number of online staff meetings while her children yell in the background.
"The system was not prepared for this. None of us were," she said. "And some of us are scrambling with how we adapt. Women's work has intensified, for sure.
"While working from home is a privilege ... there is this feeling that you need to be present and log on and participate. My life no longer has boundaries and I find that really difficult.
"There is no time for me to rest, exercise, eat. You just squeeze in what you can when you can."
Dr Dune said academics had been under great pressure to get course content online in a short period of time.
Professor Sara Charlesworth from the RMIT School of Management said many people were using the time they had spent commuting to now work at home, blurring the boundary between work and life.
"Now that we don't have a marker from Monday to Friday and the weekends; people feel they don't have a weekend because they haven't walked out the door," she said.
"It is not good for us to be wired 24/7 ... being locked up with either Netflix or work is not particularly healthy."
Business NSW chief executive officer Stephen Cartwright said many businesses invested in technology which had allowed staff to work from home.
“We might see some changes in commuting to the office as well as some alterations to working hours going forward as there is trust in the technological platforms," he said. "But there will always be a requirement to get together with teams to workshop ideas and develop strategy."
The new report from the Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work predicts working from home will likely become "the new normal" for millions. It estimates 30 per cent of the workforce could work from home.
"The COVID-19 pandemic is probably sparking a more lasting shift in the nature of our work," it found.
But the researchers said working from home "is not a panacea for this crisis" because most workers, including those in the health, retail and hospitality sectors, could not do their jobs from home. The report also found a 24 per cent earnings gap — a difference of about $300 — between those who could and could not work at home.
University of Melbourne economics professor Jeff Boland said he would be surprised if there was a dramatic long-term impact on the proportion of people working from home.
"If we wanted to work like this before COVID-19, we could have been doing it," he said.
Professor Boland said it may be a challenge to get students back onto university campuses when it is safe to return because of raised expectations about online materials.
Some academics at other universities said their students were not enjoying the online learning experience.
David Burchell, National Tertiary Education Union branch president at Western Sydney University, said the coronavirus experience had shown academics that online teaching is not popular with students and it doesn't work.
"People are being very heroic in trying to make it work, but students don't like it — they don't like people seeing them at home," he said.
Professor Dubravka Cecez-Kecmanovic from the University of NSW business school said people would need to set boundaries around work-life and private life and establish a clear structure.