Science Secretary Fortunato T. de la Peña told ABS-CBN News recently that they are developing tools to encourage more Filipinos to work from home, as artificial intelligence threatens to displace up to 40,000 people by 2022, particularly in the outsourcing sector.
Working from home is a “very positive social development” because this will allow parents to have more time with their children and reduce the number of commuters on the streets, the ABS-CBN report said.
We agree. The commute to and from workplaces is getting to be too expensive in terms of not only money but lost time, so much so that “geographic compatibility” now matters even in personal choices, like where to work or what school to go to.
Factoring in transport costs today, perhaps, the best one is always the nearest one. The best school to go to is the nearest school. The best place to work is the one closes to your home (if not working at home), or the best place to live is the place closest to where you work.
We see a lot of condominiums being built conveniently near the Metro Rail Transit and Light Rail Transit routes. These railways are now the preferred modes of transport for those commuting to their workplaces, and they are servicing more people than ever precisely because transport costs eat so much into the daily income and there is so much time wasted in traffic that it’s quite impractical even for private-car owners to be driving to work every day.
Wages have barely increased and whatever trivial increases there have been are easily gobbled up by inflation. The limited living budgets we have depend on the small choices and the small changes we make every day. These turn out big when computing our expenses at the end of the month. Prices of everything are going up so we have to be smart.
There are plenty of examples to follow. Like the office people who ditched their cars and invested in good bicycles, which they now use to go everywhere for solo trips; or those drivers who have modified their driving habits and now take fewer trips, taking public transport on certain days or using carpooling services on others.
The condominium and housing developments that we see today are being built on the same principle, that the buyer would be within close proximity to everything he or she needs. Home is close to school, church, hospital and workplace. The community is self-contained.
In terms of legislation, there is a Senate bill filed by Sen. Joel Villanueva that seeks to give employees and employers an option to adopt flexible working arrangements.
Senate Bill 1571 espouses alternative work arrangements that allow both employer and employee to agree on something that works best for both parties.
It amends Article 83 of the Labor Code, which limits normal hours of work at eight hours a day for five days.
Under the filed measure, an employer has an option to implement any type of flexible work arrangement, which includes: 1) compressed workweek; 2) gliding or flexi-time; and 3) flexi holidays schedule.
We support this and similar measures.
Traffic jams in Metro Manila and other urban centers in the country are getting worse. We are all becoming weary of long commuting times and wish to work closer to home, if not from home. Being able to do so would immediately lead to savings for workers and their families; and the biggest and most important savings of all are time and stress—more time for our private lives with much less stress.