Is working from home ‘not proper work’?
For most people, of course it is. To infer that everyone working from home is on the golf course or watching TV all day is an insult.
However, are there situations where being in the office all together would help outcomes? Of course there are.
Would most of my team go back to a full-time office environment? Definitely not.
And moving back to working 5 days a week in an office together might actually not be good for the business either. We would lose good people, I know that. We would struggle to hire good people, I know that. And insisting on it, we would be directly discriminating against working parents, carers, and certain disabilities. I know that.
As a recruitment business our consultants now work mainly from home and whilst there is no telling what performance we would have achieved if we were in the office, we have had 4 of our best ever years since 2020. So you tell me, are we doing ‘proper work’? We have a Team video call once a week whereby we share what we are all doing, share ideas and overcome any individual challenges we are facing as a group.
It is a hot topic, as illustrated by the BBC Panorama program, to which the title and contents of this blog refers to. So what about the demand from employees? We regularly get asked by clients what is the number one ‘thing’ is that candidates are looking for in a new employer. Almost without fail the first question we are asked about the company is “what is their hybrid policy”. So it’s important, to many it is very important. Yes some don’t have a choice but for those that do, the tipping point seems to be more than 2 days a week contractually. Anything more than that, you start to get questions, a few more at 3 days but when we start talking 4+, you see a big decline in candidates applying for office based roles.
And what about businesses? For those that have high rents and an informal TWAT policy (Tuesdays, Wed and Thursdays in the office), the boss who turns up on a Monday and Friday might quite rightly ask (and I paraphrase from an actual example) “where the hell is everybody, how can we solve our clients’ problems without working together”.
But for many businesses who have a flexible policy, they can recruit from a candidate pool of within 100 miles, rather than 25. And whilst they might lack creativity and problem-solving abilities from time to time (or it’s just slower), but might they have a better motivated, energised and calibre of employee in the first place? We are told we work in a digital age and for a lot of IT programming, analytical type roles, and dare I say telephone-based roles, might working in a confined environment with no distractions actually prove more productive? With so much data, a business should be able to track productivity.
But what was it like pre-covid, because advocates of a 5 day office week make it sound like a panacea where every business was highly productive, all problems were solved and we ruled the world (let’s forget the banking crash shall we). It’s like the nostalgia of yesteryear through rose tinted spectacles. I remember them well. I hardly saw my young children or partner during the week and people regularly came back drunk from boozy lunches. They were tired constantly by the 5 day commute and made mistakes, there was an issue recruiting a diverse workforce which reflected in the customer base, you took 3 days to write a simple report as you kept on getting interrupted. Of course there were positives but let’s not make out like it was a perfect, better world (I could talk about a synergy with the Brexit vote here but I won’t).
But I don’t think hybrid working is without big problems either. I find it hard to believe there is not a connection between mental / physical health decline and current working practices. We simply move less, are more sedentary in our house and can’t share our problems, as a species we are social beings. For those looking to learn new roles or learn how a business works (so mainly the young but could be anyone at any age) in-office work has particular benefits.
However, a balance of WFH and in-person office presence is, when taking everything into account, a positive option and should be championed. It should be based on purpose, not just for the individual benefit but for the business as a whole. So it is up to leadership and management to consider the whole and not just what suits the individual. It can be done and I feel it should be done for the benefit of a business, families and individuals alike.
My opinion is that yes, office working has massive benefits and I don’t believe many can (or should) work near fully remotely. Hybrid working should stay, business should invest in managing it correctly to ensure we are at our most productive. And besides, without this flexibility, how can I fit in my mid-week rounds of golf ?