The severity of the pandemic followed by the emergence of new variants of the corona virus has been forcing many countries including Bangladesh to impose episodic lockdowns for the last one and a half years.
As a result, remote working or working from home has become the only option for many.
Although working from home has become the new normal, the experience of working from home is different for every individual of different professions, not to mention, impossible for a vast majority of people due to the nature of their profession.
According to a recent report by CNN, the public transport sector is the first to suffer from economic losses when people work from home. Public transport workers are paid from the commute money of the employees.
Moreover, the livelihoods of other people, whose jobs are centered around those working in the office, are also affected to a large extent.
Since the onset of the corona virus pandemic, a large number of employees around the world have been working from home.
Salahuddin Ahmed, Marketing Manager of Reckitt Benckiser Bangladesh Limited shared his experience of working from home since the pandemic hit the country last year.
“In the beginning, we had to face some problems during meetings in terms of taking decisions while working from home, but soon everyone adapted to the change of course”, he told Bangladesh Post.
Describing his remote work experience, he said, “Being able to manage everything while working from home is definitely a relief as going outside or to workplaces could increase the risk of getting infected with Covid-19. Remote working has enabled me to spend more time with family, for example, having lunch together, which was never an option earlier”.
He said that one of the negative aspects of working from home is that there are no fixed working hours anymore. As a result, sometimes they have to work longer time and sometimes outside the typical office hours. Moreover, small talks or pleasant casual conversations with coworkers during breaks also create a positive impact on the work, which is missing now.
He mentioned that although the employees of their company worked from home, Reckitt Benckiser didn’t have to incur any losses, rather, their sales and profit saw robust growth due to the increased demand for personal hygiene products during the pandemic.
However, the concept of working from home didn’t work out well for everyone.
The educational institutions of the country have been closed since March 2020 due to the pandemic. The institutions have been conducting all the academic activities online since then.
Dr Sohela Mustari, Assistant Professor of the department of Sociology at Begum Rokeya University talked about the challenges faced by her while working from home.
She told Bangladesh Post, “We, as teachers, are used to teaching students while interacting with them through eye contact and facial expressions. We are not being able to remain satisfied with online classes as it’s difficult to comprehend how the students are keeping up with the classes”.
She further said that the shift from face-to-face lectures to online classes has posed a lot of challenges.
“Many students of our university do not have access to the necessary gadgets or IT support required to attend online classes. As a result, while the private universities are moving forward with the classes and exams, we are not being able to do so and, the strong possibility of session jam is increasing”, she said.
She expressed concern over the fact that the classes are becoming one-way. The teachers are delivering lectures but equal participation from the students is not being possible. Sometimes poor internet connection or other technological issues also disrupt the classes.
“However, we have overcome a lot of problems that were caused due to being unaccustomed to this new concept at first. The teachers and the students have now accepted the fact that we have to continue the classes in this alternative way”, she added.