Office Office In Covid Time

Working from home, or from office—how’s your workplace and your work adapting to the new Covid-churned ecosystem?

- Alam Srinivas

It took me 90 days to muster courage to make the first visit to the office. For three months, I locked myself at home, working in sequestered comfort. Or discomfort, as some would say. The only excursions included the weekly trips, on and off, to the nearest paan shop 20 metres away. To be frank, it wasn’t guts, but fear, which forced the decision. One set of fear—about the safety and health of my ageing mother—had kept me confined. Now, another set of dread—the one we still feel with trepidation—made me go to office. It’s that dark anxiety of losing one’s job. Masked with an N95—the New Yorker said those were used by the medical staff in the US—I reached the magazine’s headquarters.

Like everyone, who has been to office or hoped to go after the lockdown, I expec­ ted the obvious changes, but was ready for the startling ones. My mind was in a twirl—hopeful and pessimistic, brood­ ing and excited.

It’s a good time to check the mood of the workplace. And so, Outlook teamed up with Toluna— an intelligent techniques for web personalisation (ITWP) company that delivers insights on demand— for a survey among white­collar workers across India, the most definitive one on the post­Covid situation. The country’s first employee study of its kind succinctly captures the post­Covid socio­business changes in office spaces and reveals that there is no over­encompassing feeling of gloom­and­doom. Despite the crushing impact on the economy and businesses, employees can still see the positives. Their lives have changed, but it may be for the better to some extent.