Is working remotely really that great?

I believe its subjective. Many professionals have seen an increase in the productivity while working from home. There are advantages and disadvantages for both the scenario. But I personally enjoy working from office more because of social interactions and face-to-face communication!

I used to hate working at home when the pandemic first hit. It was a huge adjustment for me since I was so used to being in an office and around people all the time. But I've grown to like it overall - I find that I can be more productive at times because I have chunks of time where I'm not distracted and I can really focus on the work. I miss the interactions, the spontaneous conversations, and the ease of collaborating at the office, but for times where I need to do focused work, working from home has actually been really nice. For me I think the ideal would be a balance of the two... a few days in the office for meetings, planning, and discussion, and a few days at home where you can focus and work.

Working from home is nice but I prefer having somewhere to go and do work. I love being at home, but I don't love being at home all the time. For me, my home is where I can relax and do what I want. Having work tangled up in that all the time isn't great for me. Sometimes a couple of WFH days are great, but full-time WFH just isn't for me.

I would really like to see a hybrid approach where you can work from home and still go to the office but less frequently so you get the best of both worlds (productivity, comfort, and still social interactions)!

Sure, if you can manage your day and your productivity - it's great. After starting the quarantine, I found out several new apps that changed my workflow. Here is the list: - TMetric for time tracking; - Reminder; - MindDoc.

No.

When I worked in a corporate job, I used to stop at the gym on my way back to home, office lunch and meeting new people & many other things. What made me less happy was that I didn’t spend as much time as I wanted with my family, who lived in a different city. With just two or three weeks’ vacation, I did not have much flexibility. I would travel for short weekends, never feeling like I had enough time to spend with the people I loved. Now during this covid, working remotely gave time to spend with family or on myself. But slowly and steadily I realised that lunch hours or entertainment hours increased, and meeting people became less. Yes we do get to spend a lot of time with loved ones and save a lot of travel hours. But we do really miss a lot of things. Their are pros and cons of both working remotely and going to office. May be we can take both of them together in our office culture.

From my own perspective, I really enjoy working remotely. Hated commuting, and more productivity. Saved me a lot of time having to wake up earlier to commute back and forth and allowed me to work effectively. However, it's up to how an organization is able to continue to keep that social interaction. I am truly thankful to have joined several companies that have been able to implement social gathering in a virtual setting such as playing games and getting to know each other!

Working remotely is definitely great possibility for testing team communication and work process. But even in the best processes, people get tired of constant isolation, as it was with my team. I had to add more 1-1 meetings with feedback, become more attentive to individuals, help choose techniques for self-control and maintain motivation. And it's an interesting challenge for Scrum Master (if we speak about scrum teams)) - how to support the team and remove obstacles in a timely manner during WFH. As for me, I like the format of WFH + work from the office several times a week.