Work From Home Forever: The Equity Case
by Dionne Co
In this privileged part of the world, in Vancouver, Canada, on the unceded lands of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations, the pandemic has slowed (or that’s what they’ll have us believe). People are buzzing about reopening. Schools, clubs, and concert venues are filling up again. Masks are no longer mandatory. Workers are asked to come back to the office, in person.
A few months ago, the CEO of JP Morgan and Chase, a multinational bank and the top funder of the world’s fossil fuel industries, ordered all employees to return to the office ASAP. “Working from home doesn’t work if you want to hustle,” the CEO recently said. His approach for those who feel uneasy returning to work? “Get used to it.” Relatedly, a research specialist named Portia Twidt recently quit her job when her employers required staff to come back to the office for a six-minute meeting. “They feel like we’re not working if they can’t see us,” she said in an interview with Bloomberg. “It’s a boomer power-play.”
Removing the option to work from home is a matter of control. Some bosses view working remotely as an interim measure, not a permanent choice. Why? For one, it’s a way for the boss to keep a watchful eye on their employees. Talks about returning to “normal” seem like a way to re-exert authoritative control. Sure, there were undeniably nice parts about working at the office. For me, it’s getting to know your coworkers, having lunch together. But mostly you were all there because the boss told you that if you wanted to get paid, you had to come in.
Working from home has plenty of practical benefits. Private firm FlexJobs recently surveyed more than 2,100 people who worked remotely during the pandemic. What they found wasn’t surprising: The majority of respondents (65%) said they want to remain full-time remote workers after the pandemic. Another 33% prefer a hybrid work arrangement, while only 2% say they want to return to the office full-time.
From a personal standpoint, beyond these practical benefits, I myself felt huge psychological and somatic benefits. After reading our CEO’s piece about their journey with ADHD, I felt inspired. As such, I decided to share my story in the hopes it might strengthen the case for having a permanent option for working remotely.
A Personal Perspective
Years ago I was diagnosed with complex post-traumatic disorder (C-PTSD). In many ways, I feel healed from it. Continuous therapy is important, and so is caring for myself and others around me. But in many ways, trauma never really ends. You learn to cope, and if you’re lucky, you cope well and you find your life worth living. I consider myself one of the lucky ones. Trauma didn’t disappear from my life, but I’ve learned how to live alongside it, peacefully.
One residual effect of trauma is my Sensory Processing Sensitivity. Primarily, I am hypersensitive to sounds and noises. For long as I can remember, I needed quiet. Growing up in a chaotic household, I felt constantly overstimulated without any spaces for refuge. “Synthetic” noises grate in my ear – watching TV is hard on my senses, and so is going to a mall. When I work, read or think, I need silence, or else my mind refuses to proceed.
Yet some folks are the complete opposite of this. Many of my dear friends work optimally when they have music playing in the background. Some prefer having lots of people around them. We’re all different! But removing the option to work remotely denies us our individual differences, and tells us, “There is one way to do things,” or “This is how things should be.” This imposition of having a singular way of doing things is rooted in the logic of neurotypicality, which denies neurodivergent people, like myself, the freedom to work in non-normative ways.
Beyond sounds, I am also sensitive to other things: smells, unwanted physical contact, the strange and anxious energies in the room. Working from home relieved me of all these. Now, I could plan my day predictably – food, yoga, work, rest, social time and my delightful walks with my dog, Horace. When you live with a dog, working from home makes the most sense for both of you.
My officemate and housemate Horace helping with bookmarking and other research duties.
In the “before times,” as someone who used public transit exclusively (outside of walking and cycling), the journey to work took up significant energy. There was the anxiety of being late, of being gawked at, of being leered and catcalled. By the time I reach my destination, I am already partly worn down. These days, instead, I’m usually within the vicinity of my neighbourhood, routinely bumping into familiar people and dogs, feeling comforted to know that home is just a five-minute walk away.
In the “before times,” I used to come home at the end of a long work day and feel absolutely wiped out. I felt irritable, anxious, exhausted. Soon I learned that overstimulation was real – that highly sensitive people needed different, calmer environments in order to regulate themselves, to get back to a “baseline.” It wasn’t odd that I needed to hide in a bathroom stall to find a moment to ground myself. Overstimulation used to make me feel more anxious around people. But now, because of the calmness of my environment, my social interactions now feel reparative instead of anxiety-inducing.
Beyond issues of space, working remotely also solves some issues around time. In addition to living with C-PTSD, I also have mild autism. On a regular day, I wake up between 5 AM to 6 AM without an alarm. After my weekday morning routine of dog walking and yoga, I am energized to start working around 8 AM. Throughout the day, I work in 2- or 3-hour increments, with small meals in between, and finally clock out at 5 PM. What some might call rigid, I find restorative. At the end of day, at Bakau, we validate what works for each of us.
How we do things at Bakau
If you read Cicely’s post, you’ll notice that we could not be more different in terms of how we structure our day (or not!). Yet somehow, we work well together. All my other co-workers at Bakau follow their own individual schedules too. While I have a steady burst of energy during mornings, some people, to my amazement, accomplish their tasks when it's nearly midnight! Still, even when we’re “out of sync,” we all manage to get things done, and more importantly, we get along well with each other. As our boss, Cicely has never imposed their own “work rhythms” onto us. At Bakau, there is a shared understanding that we all have different needs worth respecting.
Working from home during the pandemic has unburdened me significantly. It’s a huge privilege to have a home, and to work from home means that my labour is somehow skilled, credentialed and technologically equipped. It is not lost on me that the freedom I enjoy going to the local grocery store in the middle of the workday is not shared by the people stocking the aisles I browse, or the cashiers ringing up my fruits and vegetables, nearly all of whom are racialized.
Yet for those whose jobs do have the option of working from home, it shouldn’t be a question: working from home is not only more equitable, it is also more accessible and inclusive.
Keeping ourselves safe
Consider some findings about BIPOC experiences in the workplace. In a Twitter discussion on office microaggressions, people said working at home has largely spared them from having to deal with such incidents as:
having colleagues touch their hair
being mistaken for another colleague of the same race (a problem solved by having names displayed in video meetings)
overhearing insensitive commentary on or being pressured to discuss traumatizing news events such as racist violence or coronavirus outbreaks in their home country
fielding comments from passersby on their “angry” (actually focused) expressions.
Working from home won’t completely prevent microaggressions, of course, it is possible for people to act with ignorance or malice over Zoom, too. However – working from home does give me the time and space to calm myself down, go for a walk, cuddle my dog, or confide in my friends. I don’t have to grin and bear it and keep working, as I used to do, or else run home because of my distress, and end up missing whatever engagement I had. Working from home, to me, feels like a soothing and accessible middle ground.
Recommendations for Leaders
1. When people tell you what they need, be grateful. It means they have done the work of understanding themselves and the importance of communicating their needs.
2. Actively listen to your member/s. Consciously check in about their needs. Trust that people know what’s best for their own bodies and minds.
3. Prioritize. At the end of the day, if the work is done well, what does it matter that people take naps during the day, go for a bike ride, or cook?