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Always at work: WFH redefines the boundaries between private and office lives
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Blurred lines: The WFH scheme blurs the boundaries between office and private lives. (Unplash/Nick Morrison). (Unplash/Courtesy of Nick Morrison)
When your home becomes the office, how do you ever leave work?
More workplaces are applying creative solutions to keep tabs on their employees during working from home (WFH). Compulsory cameras, virtual punch-in cards and smartphone tracking are among the most common policies, and businesses have a good case to argue that these are necessary.
Work-home boundaries are being redefined. How far is too far when it comes to mixing home and work?
Even in virtual meetings, stories about an employee getting embarrassed by the sound of their mother shouting in the background, or having their private space exposed in the background, are rampant.
It is stories like these that keep Zakwannur, a 20-something e-commerce employee from Jakarta, on edge. He lives with his girlfriend, who works from home as well. "It's a bit complicated if we both are having meetings. We need to take turns to turn on our microphones," he said.
WFH, GPS and VPN
Most Jakartans have seen a variation of WFH policy as the COVID-19 transmission rate fluctuates.
Rizal Akmal, not his real name, said a sense of normalcy had returned to his workplace recently. "At the beginning of the pandemic, we worked from home for four months, with a 25 to 50 percent onsite employee limit [following local government recommendations]. With the recent Delta variant wave, we had WFH fully return for more than one month. Now, WFO [work from office] has returned with 25 percent onsite capacity."
"We were asked to fill out an employee health survey that would be tracked as well as our location, even on weekends and when we were on leave. Some friends also have supervisors who ask employees to send their location at random times," said the civil servant.
For Fadly Fauzi, not his real name, GPS tracking is nothing new in his company. The telecommunication company human capital official explained that his office had been using a proprietary application to record attendance that also has a GPS tracking function.
"So if you clock in from around the office, you don't need approval from your superiors, but if you are outside the office, you need it," he said. "There is no mandatory day-to-day GPS tracking because it is certain that every time you clock in and clock out, the coordinates of the attendance can be seen by your immediate supervisor."
For Zakwannur, the mandatory use of a company-made VPN on his laptop is the most burdensome. The VPN is necessary since the employee will not be able to access the company's system without it. Zakwannur's company claims that the VPN is intended to reduce the risk of hacking. However, the company does not provide a separate laptop for work.
Zakwannur said the VPN did not intrude on his privacy since he could turn off the VPN after office hours, however, it does cause an inconvenience. "It just so happens that [my field of] work requires me to open other e-commerce websites in turn. This VPN slows down the loading [time] of other sites."
On the other hand, Riani Sari, who works in a Japanese financial company, said her company took another approach as a security measure.
"Employees are provided with laptops that mirror the PCs in the office. So all employees can access all systems in the office," said the human resources manager.
A gap in the system
WFH might last longer than the pandemic. Riani admits that most work can be done from home in the future, but the implementation would depend on the business orientation and readiness of the company itself.
Employees like Fadly are fully prepared for a hybrid system — WFH with an occasional visit to the office. "But maybe a culture [should exist] — one that can tell the difference between work time and rest time because, during WFH, the challenge is that there is no distinction between work and rest. There are superiors who think that [because] we are at home, we have 24-hour access to a laptop [and therefore can work anytime]."
Fennieka Kristianto, a lecturer in legal studies and vice-chancellor of President University, says that the lack of legal protection within the Indonesian legal system is part of the issue.
Kristianto argues that these complaints show that the law should set a clear limit on this matter. "We don't really have anything about personal privacy within our legal system. When it can be proven that it can be categorized as a criminal act, yes, it is possible to associate it with the Criminal Code. We do have a draft bill on data protection, but in the end, we don't have specific [legislation] about privacy yet."
WFH has also blurred the definition of overtime, which is something that should be urgently addressed, she said. "If we reply to a text from our superior late at night, is it overtime? It might feel like it's not, but actually, it is. Our Employment Law is not very detailed about this, even with the recent omnibus law [on Job Creation]. Everything is still regulated based on company policy."
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