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They track a habit of workers in remote mode that harms their performance and promotes poor work practice.
Figures from a study reveal that in the home office digital presenteeism inevitably leads to overtime without pay.
The new generation of professionals assures that remote or hybrid work is their future, although few companies implement it.
With the home office increasingly structured in companies and remote processes improved during two years of practice and error due to the Covid-19 pandemic, today there is evidence of a habit adapted by employees that could be harmful to the future of the work culture: the digital presenteeism.
According to a recent study by Qatalog and GitLab, the adaptation of physical activities to remote ones has made more and more workers see labor flexibility as a fundamental axis for the future, preferring companies that prioritize remote work over those with open hours. and traditional headquarters; however, harmful office practices have also changed within the new labor landscape and little by little new conflicts have been revealed in the workplace. home office.
For example, him study exposes that remote workers lose up to 67 extra minutes every day just showing their bosses and colleagues that they are connected, giving way to a new and harmful habit that they end up paying for with at least an extra hour of work.
“The pandemic gave us a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reshape our working lives and let go of the vestiges we learned in the office age, but It is clear that we are repeating the same mistakes. Workers are desperate to avoid suspicions that they are not working hard enough and are falling back into the same habits of presenteeism, tailored for the digital workplace. The costs are huge, resulting in dissatisfied and burned-out employees, reduced retention and lost productivity,” explains Tariq Rauf, founder and CEO of Qatalog.
Digital presenteeism: the new habit of remote employees
The pressure that generates the employees of home office Being present to their bosses depends on various factors, from the type of cooperative activities they can carry out remotely with more than two people, to the rain of notifications they receive every day in different messaging applications.
The Qatalog and GitLab survey alone, of a thousand American and a thousand British workers, shows that 73 percent answer calls outside of their business hours and 30 percent do so every day.
With the habit of digital presenteeism, these employees seek to demonstrate that they continue to work to gain individual recognition for their work now that many managers can no longer see their team physically and, although most say they do not want to return to the offices, more than Half (54 percent) say they feel pressured to stand out in the virtual environment and demonstrate their productivity for the day.
However, this harmful habit can also be promoted from high business positions, since Employees say they spend, on average, an additional 67 minutes each day making sure they are visible online by: sending and replying to emails (70%); answering conversations in messaging applications (53%); setting their status to “active” in Slack or Teams (52%); attending team video calls (51%); adding input in document editing tools (29%); updating project management tools and shared tasks (23%); and sending reactions in emoji or GIF mode in messaging groups (22%).
Also, these same workers accept that they are adapting old and bad work habits to the home office, even doing overtime that will not be paid, because digital presenteeism is a problem that many bosses do not see or are not willing to accept. And it is that the making sure you’re online can equate to 5.5 hours per week of your time.
In fact, 63 percent of workers consider that their organization’s management “prefers a traditional culture with employees in the office” to avoid greater work demands, while 54 percent find their colleagues a brake on adaptation by maintaining their old harmful habits, such as those who work “without the expectation of responding immediately to others, allowing them to get the job done at a time that suits them.”
Home office: the business lifesaver that you want to keep
After almost 30 months of the pandemic, telecommuting remained a labor trend that more and more young people have access to, especially recent graduates; however, only 5.7 percent of companies in Mexico plan to maintain the scheme adapted by the health emergency.
Universum’s global survey shows that 86 percent of the new generation of working population in Mexico have aspirations for remote vacancies; more than half could only settle for a hybrid scheme that includes face-to-face and distance activities.
Among youth perspectivethe home office it would allow them to increase their productivity (93%); have a positive impact on the environment (83%); have a better lifestyle (83%); and achieve a balance between their professional and work life (52%), while employers’ view is more inclined to return to face-to-face, revealing concerns in the operation of their organizations, such as less social interaction (68%); negative impact for physical essential positions (57%); lower commitment from talent (27%); and less ability to monitor and manage performance (19%).
Thus, while the trend of remote work continues in full swing, companies will have to measure their needs before offering any operational scheme in their vacancies, since the demands of new professionals continue to change and remote internships are not spared from generating habits harmful for them, so in the coming years, the reinforcement of a comprehensive and innovative labor system, emotionally and technologically, could lead the industry.
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