Winning Entry: Nay

I'm totally AGAINST working from home. My top five reasons:

1. I have an almost permanent headphone-shaped dent on my head from my never-ending, back-to-back online calls and meetings.
2. My tiny home is now a mess, with all my work-related clutter and paraphernalia taking up valuable space.
3. I miss being able to just saunter over to my colleagues’ desks for a quick chat, or have lunch with my team to share the latest gossip.
4. My electricity bill has gone up – I really took for granted the “free” air-conditioning in the office!
5. The lines between work and home are totally blurred now, and I find it almost impossible to “shut down”, literally and metaphorically, at a decent hour.

Wilson Loke, MCI

Winning Entry: Yay

“Home is where the heart is” and for people who love what they do, their heart is also in their work. For me, it is the combination of doing what I love and from where my heart is (home) that allows me to flourish.

My work in HR entails the recruitment of cybersecurity talent and the production of branding videos for internships. For me, the main advantages of working from home are being able to save money on expenses (food, commute, clothes), rely more on technology to get my work done, and keep my family safe from COVID-19 through reduced physical interactions.

As cliche as it sounds, the cost of living in Singapore is pretty high, and though I have a love-hate relationship with food delivery apps, WFH allows me to save more than I spend. WFH also means that interviews, newcomer induction, and interactions with my programme officers are mainly done online via Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and Skype, for which I am now an expert! Overall, WFH is better because the advantages combine to be both pragmatic and forward-thinking.

Muhammad Haziqnuddin, PSD

Congratulations Wilson and Haziqnuddin, you each win $100 in e-vouchers you can use to purchase portable IT gadgets. Continue working well from anywhere!

Other Winning Entries

Work from home: What's not to love? We get more sleep, less time spent on a crowded train, and more flexibility. The scales seem to weigh in favour of working from home.

For me, however, the ingenuity has died off after a lengthy stint away from the office. I miss the sight of having people at an arm's length away whom I can reach out to. I miss the casual banter over coffee and the clarity of projecting ideas across a room rather than over a screen. The worse of it is that my discipline seems to be chipping away. Yes, late nights and a lack of urgency in the morning can do that to a person.

So yes, I am all for returning to the office again, and then perhaps I'll start missing my bed... but that's all right, a bed doesn't miss anyone, only people do. :)

Alan Low, Enterprise SG

I’m definitely FOR working from home! When’s the next time you can simply roll out of bed and start working in pyjamas? Don't pretend, I know you do it too.

You can save on so many things and all Singaporeans enjoy a good deal, right? You can save a lot of money and time (plus the environment) by not commuting, buying fewer new clothes, and eating meals at home. I can spend more time with family and force my husband to massage my shoulders during lunch breaks. I am not sure about parents working from home, but I imagine it would be quite nice to see my child more, as opposed to spending all my daytime hours at the office (the famous last words of a person who is not yet a parent).

Of course, there are still many cons, like the lack of social interaction with colleagues, difficulty assimilating as a new hire, no clear separation between work/leisure time, having to try harder to keep students engaged, and tech difficulties.

Despite the cons, it has been pretty great. If only I could bring my office-issued laptop overseas, I would be somewhere in Europe, making use of the Vaccinated Travel Lanes, working from "home". One day (hopefully this month), I will pretend I am working remotely “overseas” at Sentosa...

Majella Tay, Republic Polytechnic

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