Efficiency of Home-Working vs Office-Working during Covid-19 Pandemic, Assignments of Business English

Download Efficiency of Home-Working vs Office-Working during Covid-19 Pandemic and more Assignments Business English in PDF only on Docsity! BUSINESS ENGLISH 4 Mock Essay for Wednesday the 30th of September 2020, lecture 5. Word count: 980 Essay question: Is home-working more efficient than office-work? Introduction: Working from home is not more efficient than office – work. Since the pandemic, that arose from the virus Covid – 19, working from home became the norm. Whereas in the past, working from home used to be considered as a luxury where many employees only could dream of. Plus, employees were required to have a valid reason in order to get permission from their employer to work from home as well. Also, setting up a home office costs extra money and effort. Furthermore, working from home is not beneficial regarding team bonding and creating a feeling of “belongingness”. Moreover, it is difficult for the employer to monitor an employee that works from home. However, a severe worldwide crisis has arisen as a result of the dangerous virus Covid – 19 and already caused many lives. Therefore, working from home cannot be considered as a luxury anymore, yet more as a necessity. However, not every profession can be performed from home. As a result, one is required to commute to the workplace, whilst taking the risk to become infected by the Corona virus. This concerns people who work in the catering industry, airline industries, hospitals, public transport, import – and export companies and retail shops. As such, the people who work in these industries cannot work efficiently from home. In practice, working from home only applies for employees working in corporate and administrative area, and callcenter personnel. Moreover, not everyone has sufficient space to set up a home office due to many reasons such as having a small apartment, sharing living space with 1 others, and living in crowded and noisy areas. Also, some employees have children and a partner at home that could be distracting. In fact, during the intelligent lockdown in the Netherlands, which started half March of this year, schools were closed, and children were required to follow lectures online. Not only were employees required to work, they also had to take of children, and help them with their online lectures. To coordinate all these tasks and stay inside can be extremely exhausting and disadvantageous for one’s concentration. Plus, working from home can feel extremely lonely as there are no colleagues around to spar with and exchange feedback. Sparring and consulting with colleagues could be considered helpful, and therefore, important. Unless one is a freelancer and self – employed. Plus, evaluating each other work and giving constructive feedback is docile and could contribute to improvement and company results. Nevertheless, due to the advanced technologies of these days it is possible to communicate via several digital means such as Skype, WhatsApp, Zoom, Teams and FaceTime. The disadvantages are, however, are an overloaded VPN – connection, errors and not being able to observe each other, and thoroughly judge someone’s behavior and body language. After all, the latter is important as well as this says more than words itself. Being able to see if someone is representative cannot entirely be seen through zoom meeting. As a result of working from home these days, job interviews are held online as well. This was already common for employers who hire expats and exchange students. Nowadays this became usual for domestic job candidates as well. However, some companies choose to invite a candidate at the office for a personal meeting as well, after an online job interview has taken place. In case the office is open, that is. In practice, job interviews online did not make applying less complicated. In fact, it made it harder to estimates one’s chances, the setting in which 2