Sunday 29 November 2020

The reality of working from home (WFH)💻

Good news from the government, saying a vaccine against Covid-19 could be ready by Christmas, while it does not mean the coronavirus pandemic will magically all of a sudden go away. Working from home perhaps is an ongoing new lifestyle, which is encouraged by many companies and are welcomed by many people. 

(Source: YouGov Survey)

However, there were many people, including women and men, calling in to the Talk Radio Show to complain they miss their workplace and the commute time from work. A single woman working in the law field said that she felt lonely and alone WFH and missed the old days working with other colleagues in the office. Nevertheless, another male worker said the lack of the split between ‘economic’ and ‘social’ life drove him crazy. 

Mature capitalist societies are marked by a split between ‘work’ and ‘life’ spheres. It is actually a new historical development in the human society. When dating back to the era of traditional economy, the total work is organised by a peasant household with different roles assigned to different family members, such as mother for caring child and father for producing materials (Pain, et al., 2014).  

Although we are now living in modern economic society, many women still take more responsibility of house work; now women might be happier with WFM as they can work from home in a more flexible way to deal with both job duty and household chores; while men may be thus sometimes engage in these household chores so that they eager to back to their office to avoid feeling guilty for this still-existing-gender-inequality between career men and women. And space matters, as some people also complained that not every house is suitable for WFH, and many have to work in the kitchen as they don’t have a working space at home.

A survey conducted by Henley Centre (1994) reported that people in Britain spend nearly 40 per cent of their time on leisure than they do at work (only about 15 per cent in waged work). Now if you work from home, the time for work and leisure might has been mixed together. As a result, due to the work-life imbalanced, the people who called in to the Talk Show thus claimed that WFM has influenced their mental health.

 Reference

Pain, R., Gough, J., Mowl, G., Barke, M., MacFarlene, R., & Fuller, D. (2014). Introducing social geographies. Routledge.

'I work from home, always' (source:Babe’s original film poster)


在家工作(WFH)的現實面

政府的好消息是,針對Covid-19的疫苗可能會在聖誕節前準備好,但這並不意味著冠狀病毒大流行會突然消失。在家工作可能是一種持續的新生活方式,這受到許多公司的鼓勵並受到許多人的歡迎。

但是,有很多人,包括男女,都打電話到廣播電台脫口秀,抱怨他們想念工作場所和下班時間。一名在法律領域工作的單身女性說,她在家工作孤而且孤獨,想念過去與辦公室其他同事一起工作的日子。然而,另一位男性工人表示,經濟生活與社會生活之間缺乏分隔使他發瘋。

成熟的資本主義社會的特性是工作生活領域的分裂。這實際上是人類社會的新歷史發展。追溯到傳統經濟時代,整個工作是由一個農民家庭來組織的,他們被分配給不同的家庭成員以不同的角色,例如母親照顧孩子,父親生產物料。

儘管我們現在生活在現代經濟社會中,但許多婦女仍然承擔著更多的家務勞動;現在,婦女可能更喜歡在家工作,因為她們可以在家中以更靈活的方式工作,以同時處理工作職責和家務。因此,男性有時可能也會要從事這些家務事,因此他們渴望回到自己的辦公室以避免因職業男女之間的這種還存在的不平等而感到內罪惡感。空間也很重要,有些人抱怨並不是每間房子都適合在家工作,許多人不得不在廚房工作,因為他們在家中沒有工作空間。

亨利中心(Henley Center,1994)進行的一項調查表明,英國人花在閒暇的時間是40%比花在工作上多(從事有薪工作僅花15%)。 現在,如果您在家工作,上班時間和休閒時間可能就混在一起。 結果,由於工作生活不平衡,call in到廣播談話性節目的他們都聲稱工作在家影響了他們的心理健康。

結果,由於工作生活不平衡,他們倆都聲稱在家工作影響了他們的心理健康。

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