Due to the threat of radioactive leak, most of offices in Tokyo closed. The employees are instructed to work from home. I used to work for Japanese multinational company, during the spell of SARS threating, the company purchased notebook pc (laptop) for the staff in case of outbreak of the disease. The salespersons or managers were equipped with notebook pc already, only those who did “desk jobs” did not. Not just laptop the company purchased at the time, but also applied ADSL for those who will need to work from home. I forgot how much the company subsidized for the internet access (ADSL), however, it did cost company some money.
Later on, I also learnt that my customer, hp, needed to work in office 4 days a week. It’s official 5 working days per week in fact. But there was one day which was called, “home office” day, the employees were allowed to work from home.
Current technology and communication tools have made it viable for so-called, “desk job” to be done practically anywhere, as long as there is a desk and internet connection. Considering high rent of office in downtown, and time consumption of commuting, working from home might be a good idea to improve quality of lives and being more environmental-friendly approach.
The internet made communication cost drastically dropped for such an arrangement (working from home). Personal computer has so strong capability of processing data and storage, and i’s cost also drastically dropped in past decade. So, working from home is actually very affordable for most of companies, perhaps, it’s even cheaper to have an actual premise. The drawback is short of interpersonal connection or bonding, which posed a great challenge to the management. Besides, human is social animal, we need to get along with and interact with others.
From environmental point of view, working from home is far environmental friendly. The commuting consumed millions of tons of gasoline globally, and consequently produced huge amount of carbon in the air, which caused the earth warming.
“Working from home” is literally liberating human being from offices. I think so-called, “SOHO” is in fact a branch of such a trend. This radioactive leak crisis might as well promote such an idea, at least, in Japan. The big corporations will soon adapt such an arrangement. Perhaps, in practice, it will be like hp Taipei did some 6, 7 years ago, one day is designated to “home office”, when the employee does not required to be present in the office.
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