Column: After lockdown we need to separate work and home

The online world may have helped us stay in touch during lockdown, but it’s a pretty limited substitute.

If I never do another Zoom call or Google Hang Out I will be a very happy man. The novelty wore off a long time ago. Sadly, lockdown didn’t – and, as much as the technology has helped us all stay in touch, it’s time to log off and step back into the real world.

Watching Fife Council’s online committee meeting was a challenge. Technical gremlins struck and it all got a bit Wheeltappers & Shunters as the mic kept cutting out, while, when one councillor spoke, he sounded like a piano going down a set of stairs.

But it did show how folk, and organisations, are adapting. Councillors have been given a quick tutorial in adding a generic backdrop so we didn’t get a quick neb into their kitchen. Some opted for a blurred out background, while John Beare looked like a castaway with his glorious summer beach scene. Either that or Markinch has gone very tropical…

It’s an effective, and simple way of separating work and home at a time when both have collided not through choice, but necessity.

BBC recently offered a whole bunch of super backdrops to add to your Zoom call. They had everything from Dr Who’s Tardis to the launderette from Eastenders. Such innovative ideas will also be needed as we make the transition from office to home. The days when they were kept separate are pretty much over.

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I saw a survey which said something like 74 per cent were happy working at home –– and content to do it for less money! We need to get a hold of these people and give their heads a wobble.

What we’re doing right now isn’t working from home. We’re at home trying to work during a global crisis. The two are very different.

We’ve accepted that our dining room tables are out of commission right now, and our spare rooms host makeshift office space, but, anyone who thinks this three-legged temporary structure is remotely stable needs to stop and think: do you really want to spend the next decade sitting five feet from your washing machine? I don’t.

Lockdown has certainly changed my view on home working, and I’d accept what we now must call a “blended model” – along with “the new normal” that phrase needs to get in the sea – but part of me resents the assumption that just because I can work from home, I must do so. I like to keep the two separate.

While I accept everything has changed, my home is just that –my home.

And working in isolation is entirely different to being in an office. Zoom meetings only partially replicate the interactivity that comes with a team meeting, and we need that human connection to spark great ideas, and even just have a laugh.

My lockdown has been much, much easier than I feared. I genuinely didn’t know how we could produce a weekly newspaper. We’ve smashed it every single week.

But it has gone on long enough now. Society has to be rekindled otherwise the cost, economically and to our mental health, will be devastating.

Thank you for reading this story on our website. While I have your attention, I also have an important request to make of you.

In order for us to continue to provide high quality and trusted local news on this free-to-read site, I am asking you to also please purchase a copy of our newspapers - the Fife Free Press, Fife Herald, St Andrews Citizen and East Fife Mail.

Our journalists are highly trained and our content is independently regulated by IPSO to some of the highest standards in the world. The dramatic events of 2020 are having a major impact on many of our local valued advertisers and consequently the advertising that we receive. We are now more reliant than ever on you helping us to provide you with news by buying a copy of our newspaper.

Thank you

Allan Crow, Editor, Fife Free Press