It is hard to believe that we are just five or six weeks short of the second anniversary of when the vast majority of the country’s employees were sent home and instructed to carry out their duties from their kitchen. This was often done through poor broadband with little notice. It was done at a time when employees had to share this poor broadband with schoolchildren who had been evacuated from their classrooms and forced to learn instead at the kitchen table.
Working from home back then was a novelty — a sort of free day every day. A new challenge, impacting their own sartorial choices, and creating a new sort of work schedule which differed vastly from what would have been experienced in the office.
It proved a boon too for those rural cafes (those which were able to open for takeaway ) as they had new clientele, buying elaborate coffees and muffins which would normally be picked up at a hostelry in the city.
Zoom calls brought your colleagues into your kitchen; they made a colleague of your dogs and eventually people either grew to love or hate it. Depending on who you spoke to, the reaction was different.
Part of this was the absence of socialisation — for those who eschewed the long coffee breaks at work, it suited them perfectly. For those who whom work was an excuse to go for coffee, the reaction was different. But like all things, the lack of vagueness concerning what your company was going to do eventually came to an end.
It was helped no doubt this week by the guidance from Government on what needs to be done to keep and placate the varying demands of the workforce.
There has already been much criticism of the heads of Bill produced this week by the Government, on the basis that it is heavily weighted in favour of the employers. That the criteria for refusal seem extensive — but such a list is necessary in order to be fair to employers.
However, for employers, there is an opportunity to be seen as a good workplace by facilitating where possible, as long as the quality of their product/service is replicated in a remote setting.
We have seen in this city in particular, the influx of tech firms and medicare firms who have built work schedules that mould more around the lives of their employees, more so that the Victorian model of the nine to five. Often the reluctance to grant working from home will stem from antiquated panopticon-like management processes in which an employer simply does not trust an employee to do the job in the hours they are allotted.
However, in a city populated by tech and medicare companies, we can see the new ways of working in which people’s performance is peer-judged on the basis of tasks and teamwork, rather than by a clock on the wall.
Such flexibilities have advantages in reducing the so-called traditional rush-hours for commuters which add another two or three hours to the time allocated to work for every employee.
For employees spending more than a working day a week stuck in slow traffic on the way in and out of this city, working from home has proved beneficial, not just to their demanding family schedule, but also to their physical and mental wellbeing.
Obviously and unfortunately, the choice of working from home is not available to all employees and professions. However, these employees should not be denied the sort of flexility that allows them to have a greater work-life balance.
The implementation of this flexibility will make for interesting reading in the months ahead.
