Working from home or returning to the office?

Working from home has come with many benefits, such as:

• No time wasted or money spent commuting – This has made it easier to get logged on and logged off with no traffic and no filling up the car or paying for bus/train tickets. It is easier to have no stress of being late and so easy to get set up at home and logged off!
• It can lead to an increase in productivity as there are fewer distractions and a work environment created by yourself, meaning it is exactly customised to you.
• With increased technology, it has never been easier to connect virtually, making attending meetings a lot easier and no commuting hassle.
• Decreasing our carbon footprint – As well as minimising the commute to work and decreasing the use of gas, it also uses less energy to run your house’s air conditioning and lighting than an office.
• Less sick days – Being at home means not catching any illnesses in the office and also helps you not pass on any illnesses.
• Help save money – No petrol, lunch, or coffee is as much money spent. Making these at home can help save the pennies!
• Most importantly, a more balanced work-life – In most cases working from home means having a more flexible structure in your work day. Need to take the children to school and pick them up? Not a problem. Stressed and need a walk in the fresh air? Have a longer lunch break! The possibilities are endless, meaning a happier lifestyle and less stress.

All good things come with a few disadvantages:

• Increased isolation – It can get quite lonely working from home continuously. Human interaction within the office can boost communication and motivation.
• An increase in house costs – Using electric and gas whilst being at home will potentially increase your bills.
• Time management (overworking) – Being at home can make you lose your sense of time, and you could be overworking. This is important not to do as it could cause you to burn out and lose family time.

Overall, it is great to work from home for a more flexible lifestyle. However, it is making sure you do it smartly. Still have catch-ups with your team. Make sure you log off at a time you agree with yourself and don’t go over so you decrease your risk of burnout and save your pennies by not commuting!

Now we have spoken about working from home, let’s get onto returning to the office.

There are many benefits of being in the office:

• Building a community and strengthening connections – Being able to meet someone face-to-face makes it easier to really understand what you are both talking about and helps generate new ideas.
• Improves mental health – Being around people can do a lot for your mental health as well as actually training your brain! Social contact improves your memory and protects the brain. Learning to be able to share knowledge actually helps you learn better.
• Increasing creativity – Being around other members of your team can help generate creative ideas whilst also being able to improve ideas anyone else in the room has. Feeling the energy of others can really help your creative brain.

Once again, returning to the office has its disadvantages:

• More time going to commuting – Commuting can be expensive and time-consuming. Having to plan routes and keep an eye on traffic / sitting in the traffic takes a lot of time at most times and is difficult to avoid unless working from home.
• Time management – since working from home, everyone has gotten into a routine of fitting work in at home. A change of routine can be hard for some people and can reduce their motivation and productivity.

So, now we have gone through both working from home and returning to the office, we can see both advantages and disadvantages, but which do you choose?

We have recently spoken to Zoe Morgan-Kriek, an ICT Category Buyer from YPO’s ICT category, on how the technology has evolved and the ways it has improved over the past few years:

"As a Buyer in ICT, I’ve seen quite a change in the market over the last 2-3 years since the pandemic and the need for home working for many more organisations than before. ICT teams have needed to secure home workers from many points of presence from a security perspective rather than just within the Local Area Network (LAN ) or Wide area network (WAN). There were also challenges around getting hold of technology such as laptops due to increased demand but also sitting alongside technology issues such as the chip and semiconductor issues alongside lockdowns and breaks in manufacturing. As most IT Items are manufactured outside of the UK, Transport issues were also impacted as docks were closed for lockdowns and also by the war in Ukraine as this was an alternative international train route for some of our print suppliers, for example.

On the subject of print, the work from home adoption has had a serious impact on the print market, reducing print volumes drastically as people had no printer access and have either learnt other ways to work or used Hybrid Mail type options so printing to a print room or an offsite outsourced facility. A lot of these suppliers are diversifying now with document management and hybrid mail-type solutions to continue to exist in today's market. For workers who were working from home, challenges initially were around technology, childcare, and home schooling, but then the benefits kicked in for both organisations seeing the cost savings along with positive productivity, and so many organisations, especially in the public sector, have adopted hybrid working as an option going forward.

All this would not have been possible without the supporting technology and ICT teams. YPO has been happy to support our customers with our end-to-end framework solutions that cover all aspects of technology, such as hardware, software, security, networking, cloud and datacentres, and we now look forward to supporting them in the future in this ever-changing diverse category."

Are you in the public sector and looking for ways to evolve your technology for your employees that want to work from home? Check out our ICT frameworks and contact our ICT category team!