No one would have imagined that society would be able to shift the majority of jobs to working virtual and at home. But with the COVID pandemic, exactly that has happened. But not everyone is happy with this change. Many individuals find working at home not as efficient, but many more people are looking forwards to keep on living this lifestyle even after quarantine ends.
This means that businesses and the government may just have to find a way to establish a more legitimate framework to keep this process, rather than think of this situation as a temporary response to the global pandemic. But this begs the questions: will employers really allow employees to be able to work remotely on a permanent basis? And if that is the case then who will be paying for the costs of working?
Recently the government passed legislation on working at home which legislated the “right” to be able to request to work from home from your employers. This does not mean that all jobs and occupations will have this benefit, nor does the employee have control over whether they will be allowed to work at home. Depending on the occupation, working remote has been fruitful for many employers, but with others they just want the staff to return to the office ASAP.
In terms of referring to your employment contract, this will usually indicate where your normal place of work will be. And in most cases that will either be the office or a site away from home. While remote working is a condition on there, it is usually only permitted in emergencies.
But there are also costs of running an office. Gas, electricity, heating, materials for the job. All of this racks up a remarkable high bill for the company, and in many cases, employers may benefit from employees working at home to boot that bill. Not only that but if you have a long commute to work, you as the employee may rather work from home to avoid those costs. For example, if you have to cross the M50 twice a day, once to and once from work. You’ll be paying around one-thousand euro a year just o be able to get to where you need to be.
No one can fully predict how the world will shape to be as the quarantine restrictions slowly lift, but one thing we can be sure of is that the world will never fully return to exactly the way that it used to be.
Lucas Zhang was a Finance major at Ohio State University. He writes about finance, mortgages, and technology for Irish Mortgage Brokers.
Relevant Links: Working from home statistics, state giving working from home option
