The Romanian society tends to look more and more like
\nthe dystopia imagined by Huxley, who envisaged a world of stability and peace
\nwhere completely despiritualized people used to live in false freedom and
\nharmony. The restrictions imposed to limit the spread of the dreadful
\ncoronavirus are changing the human nature in a very subtle way, which was quite
\nunpredictable in the early days of the pandemic. However, all these strange
\nthings like the lockdown, the limited freedom of movement, the closed theatres,
\ncinemas and restaurants is the new normalcy. And so is the remote working. In
\nthe following minutes, sociologist Vladimir Ionas is going to tell us more on how
\nthe working conditions changed during the pandemic and how they are influencing
\nthe psychological exhaustion phenomenon. <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Vladimir Ionas: The pandemic has altered both the behaviour of
\nthe employee and the employer. The idea of people working from home at first
\nraised a lot of questions related to productivity. However, productivity didn’t
\ndrop during the pandemic as expected, on the contrary. And employers started to
\nlike the idea of letting employees to work from home as much as they can.
\nBesides a lot of advantages related to rented offices and other costs,
\nemployers realized that productivity is on the rise and that’s a good thing.<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
No one would have believed at
\nthat time that one could raise productivity by working in pajamas and attending
\nZOOM sessions. However, there are side effects, like increased psychological
\nand physical exhaustion adding to the burnout phenomenon, as working from home
\nimplies a larger amount of work. Here is
\nagain Vladimir Iona\u0219: <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Vladimir Ionas: Employees are motivated by the uncertainties
\nrelated to keeping their jobs, and they want to prove that they can perform
\nwell from home too or even better. So they have doubled their efforts, trying
\nto finish the work faster and they start being affected by the burnout effect,
\nwhich has been reported in an increasingly higher number of categories not only
\nin the medical personnel who have lately been subjected to an increased amount
\nof stress. There were employees who worked without breaks in a bid to finish
\ntheir work earlier and they even worked at night. There are also children who
\nare at home now because schools have been closed down and they need attention
\ntoo. So, there are many factors as you can see, which may lead to this burnout
\neffect. <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Old vulnerabilities that we all feel at certain times
\nin our careers, have deepened during the pandemic mainly as the job market
\ndoesn’t look very good nowadays. This has also exerted more pressure on
\nemployees. Here is Vladimir Iona\u0219 with more on the issue.<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Vladimir Iona\u0219: The concern that we all feel these days about
\nour jobs has triggered in those working from home the need to prove that can
\nperform as good as if they were in the office. There were people even before
\nthe pandemic who said they can do their jobs from home, they don’t need an
\noffice, and the pandemic gave them the opportunity to prove they can be even
\nbetter at their jobs by working from home. Unfortunately, this situation has
\nprolonged and it proved that for some employees the amount of work they had to
\ndeal with proved to be higher than before the pandemic. Even now, there are big
\npercentages, around 60-65 % of the active population, who prefer to do their
\nwork from home because besides all the shortcomings there are also positive
\naspects, like more time to spend with the family and the loved ones and that’s
\na good thing.<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
School from home was also believed to be absurd until
\nthe pandemic but now it’s reality, significantly impacting the development of
\nthe young people’s social abilities. Let’s listen to Vladimir Iona\u0219 again: <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Vladimir Iona\u0219: Young people are bearing the brunt of the new
\nsituation as they were at the beginning of a new life, a student life when one
\nhas to go from hostel to classes and meet with friends and colleagues. They can
\nno longer enjoy the student life as we know it because most of the faculties
\nand universities shifted to online courses. And I believe these young people need
\nmore attention from the psychological point of view. The fact that 65% of the
\nemployees have voted in favour of home working even after the pandemic proves
\nthey are pleased with how things are going on right now.<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
A question remains though: are we already seeing the
\ndawns of the society depicted in Huxley’s book or is this just an impression? <\/p>\n
(bill)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Are we already living in a \u2018brave new world as imagined by Aldous Huxley in early 20th century or are we just going in that direction?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":137,"featured_media":143785,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42997],"tags":[43845,35342,28941,35416,42883,35436],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-143784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-society-today","tag-brave","tag-lockdown","tag-new","tag-pandemic","tag-society","tag-world"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n