Tag: Work From Home (WFH)

Is the business responsible for worker occupational health and safety during the era of work from home?

Articles, webinars, and opinion pieces about how office workers will never return to work full time are all the rage right now. According to all the pieces I see and read, people love working from home and will elect to carry on doing so full-time or only return to the office a couple of days a week - the ‘hybrid’ model that so many are talking about. While I am sure this is true for some, and indeed for the people writing these columns, I think many more are eager and even anxious to get back to the office.

COVID-19 has changed the way we work, not only through global hard lockdowns, but also with a hard reset in the world of work. The traditional sense of the workplace has met its demise and it’s time to think of the post-pandemic office in creative, new ways.

The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare the shortcomings of South Africa’s connectivity landscape, emphasising the fact that not all areas across the country have access to reliable, fast and stable bandwidth. As companies were forced to rapidly enable their workforces to work from home, it became abundantly clear that not all connectivity is equal.

Much has been written about the uniqueness of 2020 and all the changes and uncertainties that have come with it. What started as a localised and isolated health scare, very soon spread to a global pandemic. Despite fatality numbers being relatively modest as pandemics go, the uncertainty about the disease, and its transmission and propagation, caused an extreme leadership response.