You wake up in the morning, go to work, sit in front of our laptop the whole day and sleep at night. This is the usual routine of any working professional. And you are all expected to do the same thing every day. And to add to it, you are being also judged on how long you sit in our cubicle/desk at the office! But is this the only factor to judge one's work? No, right? Let's talk more about it.
So what made me write this article?
Past week, I heard my colleague say that he can't join us on a tea break as he had been out earlier as well. It struck me right there! Will sitting in front of our desks improve our productivity? Or the company's productivity? What impact can it pose to an organization with people of this mindset? Let's list some:
1. Work Culture
The company's culture plays a vital role in achieving the company's goals. We saw some breathtaking changes in the corporate working style from allowing work from home to now slowly moving with remote working culture. With all of these current trends, having such a sort of mindset will surely take one organization backward rather than forward into the future.
Nobody really wants to be in a stressful work environment, after all.
2. Creativity and Productivity
Everybody has their own ways of finding creativity.
One just cannot create or impart ideas by sitting in front of their desks the whole day. Why do we take vacations or mini-breaks? For us to find peace which enhances our senses to work better, isn't it?
Creativity and productivity of an employee increase when you allow them to work in their own way.
3. Health Issues
I think nowadays everybody understands the health hazard of sitting for too long. Also, when you take short breaks in between your work, you stay more active in your work. There is a lot of research around work habits to avoid health issues of sitting for too long. If you haven't read yet, it is time to start reading it!
4. Employee Motivation
Giving employees the freedom to work in their own way, motivates them. Motivation is the key to take up new initiatives. Work culture has a greater impact on employees' motivation than any other cause I feel. It is often said that
Employees leave their managers not organization.
Managers with such a mindset can not only break their team but an entire organization. Employee attrition is a greater risk than employee hiring. Hiring correct individuals for your organization is very vital to its success.
5. Employee - Organization relationship
Last but not least, this toxic culture will break employee organization relationships. An employee will stop caring about the organization which will impact most of the decisions an employee takes for the better good. The organization will eventually see a lot of attrition or even closure in the end!
If you feel the same or have more points to discuss, feel free to comment. Also, do not forget to hit ❤️ or 🦄 if you like my thought.
Top comments (3)
Always remember: we are being paid to solve problems and not just write code. You can't solve a problem if you're hungry, thirsty, or need sleep. If you need to take a walk, do it. Your best work is done when you are at your best.
Don't let the perception that more lines of code written = productivity get you because it's false.
I found that remote work can be a lot more stress-bearing than working in an office.
This is actually for the same reason that giving your kid a tablet to keep them occupied instead of you giving them face-time and engaging with them can and does stunt their emotional growth and development. As social creatures we humans need that face time. Sure you dont need it 100% and *trovert styles do exist but over the long run you do need to need to be in the vicinity of like minded people to get through stresfull or nore importantly joyful days.
You really do need to 'smell' them and experience them looking at you and sharing that foul tasting muffin they made over the weekend with you. You need, in other words, for people to remind you that you're still alive in a way the reptile parts of your brain expect to be told so.
When you work in an office at least you have a big circle of friends. It's been shown that having a best friend at work can be 7x good for your productivity.
Personally I work in the smallest possible configuration for a dev team and all of our other team member are overseas. So it is a mix of off-shoring, remote from home and in-office. And only like 20% of the work is truly isolated, nost of it affecting a bigger let me say platform.
What it means is when you need to ask a seemingly 'cheap to ask' but important question you can't just peer over the divider and shout it out. Not to mention cross cultural or technical issues regarding accessing remote services AND servers.
So for me remoting is both good and if not done right can lead to a day where the normal healthy work stresses take too long to settle down and could snowball into something that makes the whole point of remote just moot because you've replaced it with a new set of novel but worse problems.
"Employees leave their managers not organization."
I wish every manager reads this. I have seen(and unfortunately, continue to do so) great professionals leaving because of the management.