The Prospects and Challenges of Working from Home (WFH) in the New Norm: Case of DIRI, Chittagong, Bangladesh

Abstract

Working from home instead of the conventional workplace is called teleworking, remote working, virtual office, location independent working, home office, and so on. Working from home is rapidly spreading during this pandemic situation. The practice becomes much more dominant when millions of workers, many for the first time, are forced to start telecommuting. The aim of this paper is to find out the prospects and challenges of working from home (WFH) that has been faced by the employees of DIRI during this pandemic time. The quantitative study enquires how employees and stakeholders experience working from home in the aspect of work-life balance, health issues, productivity, and socio and psychological impact on their life and work. A questionnaire was developed on a 5-point Likert scale as the survey tool which was answered by 100 respondents. Findings are that a better part of the respondents agreed that working from home has more prospects than demerits and they also agreed working from home brings more amenities for them, and ensures higher productivity.