Home is where the heart is, and it’s also the preferred working location for at least thousands of Indonesians who threw their support for a petition calling for WFH (work from home) policies to be the norm.
One petition on Change.org has seen a boost in popularity after receiving more than 15,000 signatures in the past couple of days. The petition, which was actually launched on the platform by a woman named Riwaty Sidabutar in November 2022, calls for policymakers to consider making WFO (work from the office) policies optional as people return to their pre-COVID-19 work routines.
“WFO does not necessarily make us more productive. Due to the long commute, I become more exhausted and my work performance is not up to par with when I work from home. At home, I feel more confident, more safe, and more comfortable,” Riwaty wrote, adding that full WFO leads to traffic jams and air pollution in the city.
“I ask that mandatory full WFO policies be re-evaluated. As a worker, there is value in being given the option of working from home.”
With the Enforcement of Restrictions on Public Activities (PPKM) protocol fully lifted at the tail end of 2022, employers now all but have the full say on where their employees work from.
That being said, it seems Riwaty has gotten the short end of the stick as it is now common for companies in Indonesia to enforce a hybrid of WFH and WFO for their employees after the past two years showed that the former led to increases in productivity.
