During this COVID-19 pandemic, many people around the world (if they are lucky to still have jobs) are now working from home.
Until this time, I had not thought about what proportion of workers can actually conduct their work from home. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, less than a third of US workers are able to work from home. This includes more than half of information workers but only 1 in 20 service workers.
In pharmaceutical and biotech companies, work related to COVID-19 therapies, diagnostics, and vaccines has rapidly ramped up. Despite this, according to a report from Biospace, productivity within biopharma companies is slowing. Many workers, about 64%, are working from home full-time. Others (11%) are forced to work reduced hours, while 21% have been laid off or furloughed.
Why I made working from home work for me
For almost 3 years, I have been working remotely from my home in Philadelphia, 2800 miles away from my official workplace in California. The complications of being part of a dual-career couple necessitated my working from home. Remote work was not entirely by choice but has certainly been a privilege.
I work in late-stage drug development at a global pharmaceutical company. I can conduct all my work via laptop and in video conference meetings with team members. Given the wide geographic and time zone spread of my team members, my workplace does have a culture of flexibility. Even so, my full-time remote work is the exception and not the norm.
Supplemented with the occasional travel to various face-to-face team meetings, my remote work has been pretty successful. I haven’t even needed to follow all the advice about working from home touted by the experts.
Working from home as the “new normal”
Last month, California was the first state to implement a COVID-19 pandemic stay-at-home order for its residents. Many other states followed shortly thereafter. Almost overnight, most knowledge workers, if not laid off, transitioned to remote work. They joined the 3.4% of the US population that already worked remotely.
Even before the official stay-at-home orders came out, my employer had already cancelled work travel. Only workers with essential business should come to the company campus. They are still manufacturing and shipping our medicines to the patients that depend on them.
In the middle of all the uncertainty caused by the pandemic, my coworkers transitioned from the office to remote work. I started seeing headlines about how working from home is now the “new normal” for the knowledge worker.
First impressions about working from home
At our first virtual coffee break, some coworkers commented that working from home was isolating and full of distractions. They said it was not as productive as being in the office. A survey of biopharma employees about the pandemic's impact on their work also called out isolation and reduced productivity.
Some experienced difficulties in maintaining boundaries with the workday bleeding into the evenings and weekends. In many cases, my coworkers’ responsibilities at home grew to include caring for children or elderly parents. We also resumed household tasks that we previously outsourced.
As they developed their first impression about working from home, several people asked me if this “new normal” was my “business as usual.”
“You must already be accustomed to all this,” they assumed.
Well, if it’s not already obvious, on behalf of everyone who previously already worked from home, I want to make it clear. No, this is not what “normal” working from home looks like. This is definitely not “business as usual.” For me, here are five reasons why.
Five reasons why pandemic work from home is not normal
1. Zoom and videoconferences are exhausting.
One of the early surprises for me was how exhausted I was now that everyone else had started working from home too. I had previously been the one dialing into virtual meetings before, so what changed?
Now that everyone is at home, there’s extra pressure to turn on the camera during every meeting. On top of that, social distancing has dictated that socializing with friends and extended family also takes place over video. Trying to foster more connection during this time of isolation is actually pretty tiring.
It turns out that videoconference exhaustion, or “Zoom fatigue,” is a real thing. Research described in the Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace explains that during video communication, we lose the typical gaze awareness and facial expressions that help us detect attention, connection, disagreement, and irritation.
Because of this barrier to clear communication, we end up spending extra energy focusing on and interpreting coworkers’ reactions. I realized that all my other team member needed to adjust to remote work. Team leaders are now scheduling more meetings to tackle a problem that should have been resolved with just a single discussion.
The intensity of vidoeconferencing is also particularly challenging because we end up looking at faces up close all day. And then we work on documents and presentations on our computers, sometimes without taking visual breaks. Even looking at my own image on camera is now a new experience of constantly assessing imperfections.
2. Childcare requires creativity and hard decisions.
When I first started working remotely years ago, some of my coworkers assumed that I simultaneously also took care of my child at home. I laugh at this absurdity. If they sent their own kids to daycare or hired a nanny while at work, then why wouldn’t I do the same?
Granted, I am aware of a small handful of friends who did not have childcare while working. Their children must be more docile than mine ever was. There was no way that my infant would have slept according to my work schedule or stayed quiet during my videoconference meetings. Snowstorms that interfered with my regular childcare gave me immense anxiety.
So I want to call out this issue of childcare as a very important distinction between “normal” working from home and working from home during a pandemic.
With daycares and schools closed, parents are now shouldering the immense burden of childcare and/or homeschooling on top of their full-time jobs. My coworkers with young children are particularly struggling with not having the space, time, and energy to complete their work.
Some can trade childcare responsibilities with a partner also at home. Single parents or those with essential worker partners juggle everything on their own. My friend whose husband works at the hospital is barely sleeping because she cares for her young kids during their waking hours and then does her demanding job while they sleep at night.
Parents are making creative or hard decisions. Some healthcare workers are choosing to live separately to minimize the risk of infecting their families. Despite social distancing guidelines, some parents still need to hire nannies and babysitters. With that comes the worry and guilt of potential spread of infection.
Children (and pets) make regular appearances now during business meetings. This is not normal, but I sympathize.
3. All-encompassing pandemic stress.
I stress about my physician husband’s shortage of PPE and the fact that he has a single mask that must last him an entire week. I worry about getting infected while grocery shopping, then passing it to our toddler to subsequently infect my elderly parents, who are taking care of him so that I can work. Friends in my support network have similar worries that compound my own.
There is also an overwhelming flow of information that increases my stress levels. In addition to information about COVID-19 that I might seek directly from local or national government agencies, there is also a deluge of accompanying social and political commentary about the pandemic response.
I am being bombarded by more unsolicited information than ever before. Leadership at work, at every level from the CEO to middle managers, sends us regular emails of support or updates. Every expert/coach, corporate and community organization, and professional society is offering a webinar promising to transform my career, relationships, home, money, parenting… and the list goes on.
All the while, I am just trying to cope. Working from home has never been this hard and surprisingly unproductive at times. I blame it on the pandemic stress that didn’t previously exist.
4. Monotony and inconveniences replace previous routines.
Any experienced remote worker can share with you his or her strategies for balancing the isolation of working from home with satisfying the human need for seeking real interactions. These strategies might have included exercise classes at the gym, coffee shop meetups, or even midday grocery shopping trips.
Now, any outing has increased risks and stress. First, a mask is required. Some don gloves when grocery shopping. I am now extra vigilant of my personal safety given the increase in violence against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, particularly AAPI women.
Previously, even while working remotely, I looked forward to periodic in-person meetings with colleagues. We could work together on a complicated part of a project or strive towards a particularly important milestone. I also looked forward to attending scientific conferences to catch up with current and former colleagues. These may not resume for a long time.
The pandemic and necessary social distancing have killed these routines. Instead, we face monotony and inconveniences that are bound to have a negative effect on productivity, motivation, and engagement.
5. Mixed messages and uncertainties about expectations.
My coworkers and I are fortunate to work for a company that sent assurances about our employment outlook. Moreover, the message from upper management was to make our own health and our families’ health the priority over work deadlines or concerns about promotions.
Yet, early on during the pandemic, my department distributed a new guidance for promotions. Given the current pandemic-related stresses, both logistical and psychological, many people in our group have very real barriers to completing their work to the best of their abilities. Thus, while simultaneously appreciating the transparent guidance, I thought the timing was a bit tone-deaf, and the mixed messaging disappointed me.
I’ve also heard from friends who don’t have kids. They face higher expectations to step up and cover for coworkers who do have kids. Sometimes management vocalizes these expectations, and sometimes they are implied. Regardless, workers feel the pressures and inequities more acutely during this time of immense uncertainty.
Last thoughts
When everyone transitioned home to work, I worried about my peers’ negative impressions with working from home. Maybe their experiences would invite scrutiny and criticism of my remote work privilege. However, I have come to a new conclusion. Equating our current situation to my previous remote work arrangement is completely unwarranted.
Over the last few weeks, coworkers and friends say that they are struggling with working from home as the “new normal.” I want to assure them that there is absolutely nothing normal about working from home in a pandemic.
I have also heard from friends who normally work from home that they have struggles too. I had considered myself pretty well-adjusted to working from home before this pandemic. But because of the reasons I shared here, I am struggling too. Rest assured, friends, this is not normal.