As a measure against the coronavirus disease, many businesses in Japan have been forced to introduce a system that allows their staff to work from home. Transeuro is not an exception. All of its employees are now working remotely.

I believe that the vast majority of employees, including me, couldn’t hide their confusion at this sudden change in work style. We are used to working at the office after all.

Will I be able to focus while working at home?

I was worried if I’d be able to focus while working at home that is full of distractions like TV, sofa or even bed. But when I actually tried it, I found it was a lot easier to concentrate.

When you’re at the office, now and again your work gets interrupted by a phone call, an inquiry from other departments or a coworker who comes up to you for a chat. Even though it might seem that such activities last only a fraction of time, they take up a considerable chunk of the day. When working at home, you gain this additional time, meaning you can focus better and get more work done.

Moreover, everyone at the office can see that you’re doing something as long as you sit in front of a PC. However, when working remotely, none of the employees can actually see each other work. Since my boss or coworkers might think that I’m slacking off, I tend to focus on delivering better results even more. This feeling provides me with just the right amount of stress to boost my productivity.

On the other hand, unexpected drawbacks of this work style are becoming evident as well.

Communication becomes sparse

When you work from home, emails or chats become your main communication tools. At transeuro, we make use of the latest communication system, so we haven’t encountered any issues.

Nevertheless, waiting for someone to finally reply to my message gets me anxious sometimes. Plus, there is this feeling that by contacting my coworkers frequently, I might end up disturbing their work. That’s why I’ve reduced message exchanges to the absolute needed minimum. People tend to come up with ideas and find hints for work in casual conversations. Therefore, I think it might be a good idea to do something that would stop the social relations between coworkers from fading away.

With that being said, I was surprised by the positive effects of working from home.

An escape from commuting stress

Jumping on a packed train each morning to get to the office is sometimes enough to exhaust me even before I start work. Being in close contact with fellow commuters can cause significant mental stress. Once people are freed from the commute, their physical condition and motivation become a lot better, allowing them to tackle their work duties with a clear head.

Also, the effect of the reduced commute time can be expected to greatly improve mental health skills. This applies especially to those people who spend one hour commuting one-way as they end up with two additional free hours per day. If used effectively, this time could be spent on enhancing the quality of their daily life through cooking, doing sports, or studying for self-improvement.

If done right, remote work presents countless benefits. Security measures, personnel management, and other matters require careful consideration. However, the positive aspects of remote work, which including the savings due to the reduced office space and commuting allowances as well as securing new human resources, are too big for businesses to ignore.

Maybe we shouldn’t treat this change as something temporary to fight the coronavirus. If we keep up our efforts with a positive outlook to the future and if the remote working system is continued in the right manner, then the working environment in Japan might change for the better, bringing about a true “work-style reform.”

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