ost Co id employees wish to continue working from home

NATIONAL

MARCH/APRIL 2022 | 9

Post-Covid: employees wish to continue working from home

It’s official: on 15 February the government’s advice to mainly work from home was withdrawn. The new recommendation is going back to the office at most half of the working week. Although this represents good news in general, as it means that the Covid crisis is somewhat controlled, most employees are already longing for one thing from the pandemic: working from home.

Great desire to work from home CNV trade union surveyed more than 900 members who had worked from home during the pandemic. The results showed that 91% of the respondents want to continue working from home, or at least don’t want to go to the office for the whole week. However, one in three workers said that their boss would ask them to go back to the office when the government officially removed the advice to work from home.

According to the survey, two in three workers indicated that they are more productive at home, and 58% claim to have a better work-life balance. Moreover, 43% stated to have more motivation and better health at home, while one in three say they are also more creative.

Nevertheless, the positives also come with their disadvantages. These include some psychological complaints; for example, 45% of home workers said they feel lonelier. Also, 26% lack the appropriate conditions to work from home, such as a good desk chair or screen. Related to this may be that 17% have physical issues, such as sore arms or shoulders, and back and neck problems. Some workers show dissatisfaction with their employer’s current home-working policies. Therefore, CNV emphasizes employers’ lack of vision for a long-term plan on the subject and wants to fight for employees’ legal rights. “The homeworking policy of many employers is in dire straits: no long-term vision, often no cost-effective home-working allowance, and the physical and mental support leaves much to be desired, this study shows. This attitude of employers is unwise and a waste of capital, especially in such a tight labour market,” says CNV chairman Piet Fortuin.

Pros vs cons There are several factors to consider when deciding the viability and extent of working from home. For instance, Patrick van Oppen, director of Amsterdam law firm Loyens & Loeff, expressed how the work from home advice proved to be very limiting to its business, so he was looking forward to the relaxation. As a positive point to the office come-back, he highlighted the need for young people to be in the office. “Young people, in particular, feel the need to come to the office; they can also learn from working with more experienced colleagues. If you have just started with us and after a year have only been to the office a few times, that’s different than the regular office experience.”

On the other hand, right now there isn’t a law regulating the right to work from home, making things harder for employees. Whether an employee works in the office or at home is for the employer to decide; if the employer disagrees with the employee’s request to work from home, the boss may deny it and force the employee to come to the office.

Win-win? Is meeting halfway possible? Is there an approach that would make everyone happy in the matter? The Cabinet thinks so. Minister of Social Affairs Karien van Gennip says that a 50/50 split could prove to be a “healthy balance”.

The Cabinet is still formulating an official advice on working from home. Still, in the end, Van Gennip believes that the matter is a discussion that employees, employers, unions and industry organizations should have between them.

In the meantime, some businesses already have a work from home policy. For instance, ING employees are primarily working from home, and even with the government’s advice changing, they planned on continuing hybrid working. Other banks like Rabobank, ABN Amro and Volksbank agree on the hybrid work practice as the best route for now.

It remains to be seen how things will turn out, but it’s a fact that Covid-19 was a catalyst for a change in work matters. Whatever shape it takes, working from home is here to stay.

Written by Bárbara Luque Alanís

Spring now starts 1 month earlier than 50 years ago

As the Netherlands and the planet warm up, spring is starting earlier than we were used to, and these changes are observable and measurable in the natural world around us. Flowers are now blossoming three to four weeks earlier than half a century ago. Birds are singing ahead of schedule and spring-like insect behavior is observable in midFebruary. With pollen in the air before usually expected, allergy season has become longer for people with hay fever. Thus, according to the Dutch Nature Observation Network, February is becoming the new March for nature.

Contrarily to the start of astronomical spring, which is defined by the position of Earth in relation to the sun — the spring equinox around 21 March —, the start of meteorological spring is marked by annual temperature cycles, not fixed in the calendar but flexible and dependent on observation. And for meteorological spring, as reported by De Natuurkalender Observation Network, which has done observations of annually recurring phenomena in nature since 1868, “developments in nature are currently more than three weeks ahead of what we considered normal 50 years ago”.

2022’s average temperature until mid-February was 5.9 ºC, whereas 3.6 ºC is the average. 50 years ago 5.9 ºC was the average temperature of the month of March. The first half of February alone this year saw an average temperature of 7.6 ºC, against a normal average of 3.5 ºC. Half a century ago, an average of 7.6 ºC was usually reached in early April. This year, however, early bloomers such as snowdrops and crocuses were already in full bloom by early February. Hazel trees and hawthorns were already coming into leaves by that time, and common celandine as well as dogwood (normally later bloomers) were blossoming in several parts of the country in mid-February. This is also observable in the behaviour of birds, with finches and songthrushes singing weeks ahead of time. For many, these birds indicate the arrival of spring, but clearly spring is starting earlier nowadays. Insects are also already active, with firebugs observed already by early to mid-February. “In the end,” said Arnold Van Vliet, coordinator of De Natuurkalender, “climate change does no good to Dutch nature.” Whereas many species can move further north as the weather warms up, many others cannot adapt so quickly and are prone to disappear in time. Furthermore, sudden frosts and short bursts of freezing temperatures once plants are in spring mode can damage them for years.

And with pollen in the air earlier than expected, many humans are immediately affected as well. It is estimated that 25 percent of people suffering from hay fever are allergic to tree pollen, and so the longer spring means misery for them. Due to the warm November and December months in 2021, high alder tree pollen concentrations led to hay fever symptoms. And this year, the early blossoming of alder flowers is set to extend this situation even further. De Natuurkalender expected that alder trees would produce pollen until mid-March, immediately followed by birch pollen, which also produces hay fever symptoms in allergic populations.

Changes in meteorological seasons and spring times are of course not exclusive to the Netherlands, but symptomatic of a global climate crisis. A recent UK study analyzing flower phenology data between 1790 and 2019 concluded that the flowers from 406 plant species studied in the sample bloom in average one month earlier than before 1986. If the effects of the environment’s response to climate change are often difficult to quantify, flower blossoming behavior can provide effective measuring tools observable right at our feet.