WFH is mostly great but depends on how well your employer supports you and if they see productivity as just ‘time in the seat’
Opinion: Would you like to meet in person or on Zoom?
I have been arranging research interviews in London and the overwhelming response is Zoom. A small sample size yes, but I am surprised how many people say they don’t work in the office any more or rarely head in.
Working from home (WFH) is a Covid hangover that seems entrenched there. But not universally supported.
Late last month, ministers were ordered to send their civil servants back to the office. Up to three quarters of them are still working from home and the taxpayer-funded offices are empty. Civil servants who refused to return were failing to pull their weight, screamed the press release.
As the UK is well ahead of us in living with Covid, they could be a petri dish of what is coming for us.
Will we all eventually be expected to traipse back to the office or is working from home for all or some of the week the new normal?
Pre-Covid, about 16 percent of us had some sort of arrangement with our employers to work from home, usually professionals or managers, and usually for part of the week. Obviously, retail, hospitality and factory work doesn’t lend itself to working out of the spare room.
During Covid alert levels three and four, about 30 percent of us worked full-time from home.
Studies on working from home mostly show it's a good thing (if you take looking after kids during a pandemic out of the equation). It results in higher job satisfaction and performance and you’re less likely to leave such a job.
“After having a taste of WFH, many of us want to continue WFH snacking, having a least some days at home.”
But this depends on how well your employer supports you and how isolated you feel. There is a risk of working too much as work is always there. If your boss is controlling and “time in the seat” equals productivity, it's not going to be much fun. And eight hours working on top of your bed in a cramped, damp flat isn’t a riot either.
Then there are the studies that suggest the inequalities in our workplaces can be intensified through working from home. Such as when working on Zoom and seeing into someone’s home life, we can be even more judgey about our colleagues with all our biases about race and class. Those who do come into the workplace can be prioritised, with those working from home left out.
After having a taste of WFH, many of us want to continue WFH snacking, having a least some days at home. However, history suggests it’s not going to be clear cut. After the Christchurch earthquakes where people were forced to WFH, demand for opportunities to stay at home increased but only some managers under limited circumstances allowed it.
As we work out the new (or maybe not new) ways of working, I think we risk conflating working from home with flexible working.
Working from home is about the physical space where you work. Flexible work is about how you work: work arrangements - outside the traditional working week - tailored to suit an individual employee’s needs.
Flexible work arrangements can just as easily happen in offices as they can in spare rooms. But they need a leadership mindset and organisation culture of high trust that values and measures productivity, not just when we clocked in.
Are our leaders bold and brave enough to accept that for us to be the most productive and effective, they need to cater for our different needs?
In this hot job market in New Zealand and with a global trend towards the Great Resignation, they’re going to have to think seriously about it.
