#StayHome: how are we doing?

Three weeks into mandatory quarantine, and with another week ahead, we assess the situation of home office in Argentina.

Because of the COVID-19 outbreak and the mandatory quarantine disposed by the Government, citizens are discovering a new 100% remote work methodology. Before the famous virus, 970 thousand Argentinians worked from home. That means a 16% of registered workers according to ANSES[1]. Besides freelancers, whose nature is remote, a lot of companies in the last few years had started incorporating home office as a company reward.

But recently things started to change. With restrictions that affected transportation, entertainment and tourism, people were more and more attracted (and partly forced) to stay at home to work. Companies like Google, Mercado Libre and the top advertising agencies let all their employees work remotely from home.

As the situation progressed, something that started out as an option became an obligation, and today reality of most Argentinians is remote work.

According to Grant Thornton Argentina’s Management and Finance Manager, Marcelo Matilla, home office “lost its status as ‘company reward’ to become a ‘basic work condition’. Nothing and no one has pushed for digitalization and remote work as hard as this pandemic.”

The benefits of home office are known: you save time you normally would have lost commuting, you’re more relaxed and productivity increases. This, combined with the necessary social distancing to run away from a highly contagious virus, can seem like the ideal situation.

However, to Matilla, this home office is not the same as the one we were used to: “it’s not the same dynamic doing home office when your entire family group keeps their routines, you have access to goods and services without restriction and a dedicated space… than the current situation when the entire family has been living together 24/7 for the past three weeks and you don’t know for how much longer. In my opinion, productivity today, under these conditions, is the minimum you could achieve in regular conditions.”

HR advisor Adecco carried out a survey that included 4635 Argentinians to find out how they were dealing with home office. This unveiled that 6 out of 10 Argentinians worked more relaxed at home than at the office. The absence of the authority figure at the workspace, the possibility of having more flexible hours and, of course, being at home, could be some of the factors that influence this feeling.

Almost half (42%) spend more hours working at home than at the office. Adecco explains this is because there are no physical barriers that imply moving to go to work, and because personal and work lives get mixed up, which causes a difficulty when having to disconnect.

60% of workers keep in touch with their teams during the quarantine. It’s important not to lose contact and, besides, we don’t lack tools to do so: stars like Zoom and Teams are shaking up all kinds of companies, adding to the already huge amount of platforms we have to pay attention to like Whatsapp, iMessage and emails. Employers, on their part, have maintained or even increased internal communications, so as no to lose contact with employees during this period.

One of the fears circling social media is the Internet’s capacity to cope with millions of remote workers. Companies had to, according to InfoTechnology[2], “improvise the adaptation of their systems to a demand that will only grow exponentially as hours and days go by” and that sparked fear amongst users.

The ENACOM[3] shared good practices for a responsible use of Internet, like to avoid downloading heavy files and prioritizing work and education platforms on peak times. The Argentinian Internet Chamber dismisses a collapse, and its president Ariel Graizer states that “in the urban centers of the Argentinian Republic, the Internet’s coverage enables home office routines without alterations, because apart from the capillarity we have the quality to cope with this demand.”

The explosion of remote working is something that has been predicted for years, but not everyone was taking action to adapt. According to Matilla, “it came to stay”.

“In most companies, without migration plans or network stress tests, adding to mass implementations of VPNs and communication tools, thanks to COVID-19 in a few hours we became ‘digital nomads’ doing our work, meeting our obligations, learning how to communicate, how to adapt, without interrupting our services.”

Recalling Charles Darwin’s alleged quote, “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.”

[1] ANSES is the National Administration of Social Security.

[2] InfoTechnology is a recognized Argentinian online news site.

[3] ENACOM is the National Entity of Communications.