One of the loudest and most frequent defences of WFH (aka working from home) is that it is perfectly viable in this ultra tech-age. Perfectly viable that co-workers can connect without being practically conjoined in an office setting. Let me be clear: I consider office a category arching over everything from business parks built and expanding alongside universities – yes, academics are very commercial indeed; medical R&D – yes, a lab is a version of office; tech – yes, a quirky breakout room is a form of office; across to the ‘traditional’ floorplates housing staff engaged in admin, banking, insurance etc.
Now, one is all too often accused of modern-day Luddism for suggesting that all the above office models have to be preserved for our productive good. I must say there is some irony when those defending WFH accuse those who insist there is no productive substitute to collective working of being the modern-day equivalents of Ned Ludd. After all, this composite character captured those artisans who wanted to continue weaving textiles from their cottage looms rather than collect together in a textile mill to use “the blasted” Spinning Jenny – the tech-disrupter of its day. As for the ‘evils’ of once-contented cottage workers moving to “Satanic mills”, we must remember that working from home provided millers no security of income or chance to collectively bargain for better terms and conditions. Yes, it took time and struggle to achieve both, but achieve them they did.
I will not go into the detail of why in order to fully exploit economies of scale and division of labour, so as to be at our most productive, we need to collect together to gain critical worker mass. I want merely to make clear that it was the case in the post-industrial age, and it is no less the case in this post-ethereal one. For while we have never before had our heads so much up in the clouds, we have never more needed to have our bodies together.
That journalists imagine they can use
the unusual nature of their working routine
as a yardstick for the rest of us goes to show
how little they relate to the vast majority
Just as there was considerable productive gain in having looms in shared locations – not least to minimise the time and cost of repair and maintenance, as well as providing new apprentices with training and indeed mentoring – the same applies today in fortunately much-improved shared work settings. In short, collective working has been to our shared economic advantage. Just as there was greater cost if loom connections broke in one’s cottage than in a collective workplace, so there is cost when Zoom connections break at home. However, rather than seeing the use of Zoom as the modern-day disruptive equivalent of the machine loom, I would suggest the use of local satellite offices will be the true revolutionary change to British white-collar businesses across all the categories I opened this piece claiming as office settings.
I cannot discuss the clamour for new home-working freedoms without identifying the single greatest source of agitation for such unprecedented and, I believe, unworkable change: journalists. For them, working from home has long been the norm, being as many are in a part of the gig economy that is empowering not belittling: freelancing. That journalists imagine they can use the unusual nature of their working routine as a yardstick for the rest of us goes to show how little they relate to the vast majority as well as how badly they fail the voir dire test.
No less delusional has been the call from civil service-focused trade unions that their members can perfectly well perform their roles from home. Here again we come up against the fallacy of composition. Those with homes perfectly suited to have an office annex, as well as roles that can in part be performed remotely, assume all their colleagues enjoy such a privilege – which is particularly untrue for those far earlier in their career progression. For the latter, real not virtual face time has and will always be invaluable, both with peers and seniors; proximity provides patronage, motivation, competition and collegiate spirit (precisely the same reasons, in fact, why it is absurd to imagine a world of entirely remote university study). Can we really imagine looking forward twenty years or so and having a generation of senior managers who have been in virtual (sic) isolation through study and then work?
Those insisting on near-permanent remote working from home will soon find the patience of their employer exhausted
To recap, the part of the economy that entered this crisis extending generous protection to its employees, across broad aspects of working terms and conditions, is now at a crossroads. Those within this ‘protective office bubble’ insisting on near-permanent remote working from home will soon find the patience of their employer exhausted. Managements will eventually come to give workers unwilling to return to ‘old’ work norms this ultimatum: “If you persist in demanding to work from home, then please accept a change in your full-time permanent job status in favour of a casual contract reflecting your more casual approach to work. If you refuse to accept this compromise, your job is gone entirely and I will reluctantly have to hire someone more accepting of full-time office working.” No doubt such a stand-off will keep employment tribunals busy for some time.
As things stand, the UK labour market is set to return to normal or be shattered. I say shattered without prejudice or judgment because only time will tell whether those hitherto comfortably outside the casual gig economy, now demanding a more casual ‘work normal’, come to regret this. Regret, that is, giving up the worker protections – in relation to the assured terms of their contracted earning and working conditions – which took so much hard work to earn, in ‘favour’ of a flexibility many of those who have it in the gig economy would rather not, much preferring instead contractual security and workplace safety. Each of those agitating for a change to how they work needs to consider how this will also impact the way they are perceived were they to give up their full-time employee status. There would, for instance, be a change for the worse in mortgage and all other credit terms.
While a great many Britons have been forced by exceptional circumstances to work from home, and others to remain at home under the furlough scheme, the future interest of the UK economy is best served if we all return to the status quo ante coronavirus bellum. Return, that is, to all collecting together in our former places of work. This is not to suggest we should risk our immediate health by doing so prematurely, only when the all-clear sounds for us to fully collect together for work – a moment not that far off.
