Amid COVID-19 industry conflicted with working from home

“Continue to work from home until contained” vs. “Indefinite remote working is infeasible”

Workers voice out fatigue and pressure from home “Would rather work from office”

The pharmaceutical industry is in a dilemma of working from home.

 

Pharmaceutical companies that have given an order to work from home to a part or all of the office are conflicted whether to continue or to stop working from home.

 

Depending on companies, some of them have already been working remotely for over a month.

 

But they complain it is impossible to keep working from home, because their work efficiency has plummeted.

 

In fact, some of them have given up working from home.

 

And if only making the decision to have salespeople resume external marketing activity was as easy.

 

The companies still have to calculate the possible loss they would face when a confirmed case is found within.

 

The simplest and the most certain answer to all is ‘an early end to the COVID-19 outbreak,’ but it is now a hopeful thinking as a mass infection has occurred again centering Guro-gu, Seoul.

 

Increasing number of pharmaceutical companies are contemplating on coming back to workplace considering the number of new confirmed cases has been lowered to 110, as of 12:00 a.m., Mar.

 

13.

◆Switching from remote work to shortened hours or dispersed hours According the pharmaceutical industry sources on Mar.

 

13, the companies are setting out different tactics switch out of remote working.

 

First, Dong-A ST and GC Pharma, where everyone works from home, have turned back into regular working hours from Mar.

 

9 for the in-office workers and researchers, except for the sales.

 

But Chong Kun Dang, which also ordered all employees to work from home, has decided to extend the remote working status until this week.

 

Companies that initially ordered the sales to work from home are also deeply conflicted by the situation.

 

Many of them are returning to the normal working status.

 

For instance, a Korean company that decided to have everyone work from home is considering on sending out the salespeople back to the field, except for ones assigned to Daegu, North Gyeongsang Province and Guro-gu, Seoul.

 

And another Korean company is considering on shifting towards shortened working hours or dispersed hours, despite their earlier decision to have all sales work from home.

 

On the other hand, most of global pharmaceutical companies have reportedly decided to continue working from home, until the outbreak subsides.

 

An insider from a Korean company commented, “Until the early last week, the company was positively considering on stop working from home as the number of confirmed cases in Daegu and North Gyeongsang Province has been descending.

 

But as the fear of community infection has gone up again with the surge of cases in Guro-gu, we have decided to continue work from home.” “Sales is the basics of a pharmaceutical company.

 

Indefinitely working from home does not make sense in the business.

 

But also, we cannot order the sales to resume visiting their accounts,” the insider added.

 

An associate from a global company explained, “Actually, the headquarters have urged for precautions as, unlike Korea, the outbreak in Europe and the U.S.

 

has intensified and the World Health Organization has designated the outbreak as a pandemic.

 

The remote working would be sustained for a while.”

Severance Hospital’s notice banning outside visitors.

 

With hospitals requesting salespeople to refrain from visiting, working from home became unavoidable.

◆Why the workers cannot wait to go back to their workplaces Besides the companies’ dilemma and decision, employees working from home complain that they want to rather go back to the workplace.

 

Their reasons vary vastly.

 

Some say their working efficiency has plunged and some say they cannot help it with the boss’ pressure on sales performance.

 

And some even say they are extremely fatigued by the company’s excessive workload.

 

A salesperson from a Korean company explained, “The company is assigning almost impossible tasks as we have been working from home for a long time.

 

Many of my colleagues say going back to work would be much better.” “Monitoring and interfering through KakaoTalk or other messenger apps have worsened over the time.

 

What’s worse is when the supervisor thinks I’m not doing anything, when the actual workload has gotten heavier,” the salesperson added.

 

Another Korean company’s salesperson said, “The company officially advised the sales to work from home from the get-go.

 

But quite the opposite is happening in the field.

 

The company may be advising working from home, but their pressure on sales performance is intense.” An in-office worker from a Korean company complained, “As we have switch to remote working without a proper preparation, most of the colleagues are frustrated.

 

Video conference always has glitches and work reporting via email is slow on feedback.

 

It would be much better to just go back to the office.” Another in-office working from a global company noted, “We’ve been working from home for over a month now.

 

The working efficiency has dropped noticeably.

 

We are holding on to it somewhat, but I have a ton of work I cannot do at home.”