It’s safer at home

IN this last week, I experienced the death of a family relation due to Covid-19.

The numbers are soaring to dizzying heights, and I’m sure I’m not the only one for whom Covid-19 is getting closer and closer to home.

Yesterday, the government announced some changes in work from home policies. Government offices will enforce an 80% work from home quota, while private companies must have at least 40% of their staff working from home.

This is an improvement from the previous policy, which only restricted the number of management staff on site to 30%, with employers given the discretion to determine what percentage of staff are allowed to work from home.

It is a step in the right direction for the government to now force private companies to require 40% of staff to work from home.

Given the direness of the Covid-19 situation however, I am sure many Malaysians hope that private companies will not treat this 40% quota as a bare minimum.

As part of our whole of society approach to battling Covid-19, private companies should insist that every single employee who is able to work remotely now work from home instead of coming into the office.

I’m obviously not talking about restaurant cooks, mechanics, or other professions which clearly require employees to be on site.

I’m talking about accountants, administrative staff, programmers, designers, and other professions that can 100% do their jobs from home.

Reports from the ground seem to suggest that many employers of such staff are still insisting that they come into the office, even when their work can be completed entirely from home.

When employers force such workers to come into the office for dubious reasons, it causes a great deal of stress to said staff. They are now essentially being asked to risk their lives in order to keep their jobs.

The effects this has on such workers is bad enough, but this is not even by any means the worst outcome of this policy.

The worst outcome is that this policy can literally kill - and not just employees, but those around them too.

By forcing workers to commute back and forth to the office when there is no genuine need, unethical, profit-oriented employers are jeopardising not only the lives of their employees, but the lives of their families, their housemates, and most importantly - every single person this employee comes into contact with: at the grocery store, on the LRT, at their apartment guardhouse, and so on.

We are entering into a phase of the pandemic that threatens to completely overwhelm our healthcare system. The entire country could be on the brink of collapse or turning into India.

At a time like this, are we still seriously talking about productivity and profits?

“Productivity” is the most common excuse that employers use for insisting that their workers still come into work.

Based perhaps on the reprehensible age-old capitalist attitude that workers are inherently lazy, they claim that when employees work from home, their productivity suffers. Lower productivity means lower profits.

If you are any kind of decision maker with regards to company policy, I am fairly sure that you are not at an income level where you will experience an economic crisis anywhere near the crisis experienced by people vastly poorer than you.

Nobody wants your company to go under. Firstly however, a temporary drop in productivity is not likely to make your company go under. Secondly, people working from home will double or triple their productivity (from home) if they knew it was the only way to keep the company alive and their jobs intact.

I heard of one worker in a company’s finance department - a worker whose work can 100% be done just as effectively from home as in the office.

When this worker and other employees in this company asked their boss if they could work from home, the boss called for a meeting, rejected the request, went on a rant about how the employees should be grateful to have their jobs, and said if they didn’t like the policy, they could quit.

If that sounds to you a little too much like the ranting of politicians who insist we be grateful for their ‘leadership’, and racists who tell non-Malays to leave the country - I’m sure you’re not the only one.

Like any half decent writer, of course I must try to give the other side of the story.

Question: if every single person who was eligible to work from home was allowed to work from home, would productivity throughout the country be 100% what it was when everyone was required to come into office?

The answer is probably no. I can almost guarantee that yes, in a total population of 32 million people, some workers may slack a little.

On the other side of that coin, I also bet there are some workers who may actually end up being more productive, because of less commuting time, and less distinction between working and non-working time.

In any case, let’s assume that on aggregate, productivity suffers a little because of work from home. My question is: so what?

I’m sorry if that sounds cold, but in every single corporation, the downside that we are talking about here is reduced profits.

Sectors that are truly vital for the country to continue functioning properly have long been exempted from most MCO rules. Fair enough.

But again, we are talking about jobs like accountants, administrative staff, programmers, and designers.

If – and this still an if – their productivity dips a little, then profits may dip a little.

But honestly: so what? We are in the middle of a life threatening pandemic for the love of God. Take one for the team! You can afford it, and many others can’t.

Fining a burger seller RM 50,000 is not going to make a dent in fighting this pandemic. Fining stubborn employers who are putting their profits above the lives of ordinary Malaysians might.

The government has called on us time and time again to do our part. There are probably hundreds of thousands of Malaysians out there who are dying to do their part, and stay home to break the Covid-19 chain, but are prevented from doing so by irresponsible employers.

Just as unbridled communism was a failure that cost millions of lives, this type of unbridled capitalism is going to bring Covid-19 closer and closer to our doorsteps.

We can’t stop employers who want to risk their own lives in pursuit of unrestrained greed. But we can – and rest assured we will – fight back against employers who want to risk our lives trying to do the same.

NATHANIEL TAN is a strategic communications consultant. Employees who are being forced to work on site can anonymously share their stories here: http://bit.ly/WhyNoWFH Email: [e-mail]