12th January 2023
So, to another ‘HOT’ topic, and one that I have received lots of comments on twitter about (some supportive of my view, some less so) ….
WORKING FROM HOME
By now, most working people will be back at work after the Christmas season.
Many people continued to work work as normal through this period, amongst them are shopworkers, hospitality and of course many member of the NHS and Emergency Services.
Others have returned to their offices, factories and other workplaces. Their ‘normal’ workplace.
For a lot of working people, since COVID, their ‘normal’ workplace has changed, it’s now a short walk to the spare bedroom or the dining room table and Working From Home (WFH).
By its nature, this post concentrates on those that have been or still are working from home, fully or partly, rather than those who have attended their workplaces when required, due to the nature of their jobs.
I imagine 80%, maybe more, of those who WFH want to continue to do so, whether fully or partly. Those I have talked to absolutely love it, and want it to last forever.
Why wouldn’t they ?
No commute time, no commute costs, no office stress, claims of better mental health and claims of better productivity being amongst the benefits.
All true, to some extent.
But let’s examine this in a bit more detail. The following is not meant as an exhaustive discussion, but a quick review of some of the points relating to WHF and the advantages/disadvantages.
Commuting
Given the choice, who wouldn’t prefer to WFH ?
OR
Clearly if employees are not traveling into/from the workplace but rather crossing the landing to their spare bedroom which is now being used as a home office, they are saving a lot of time that would have been spent in commuting.
What are people doing with this time saving ?
Some will be having additional family time, doing additionalchores at home, exercise, socialising, relaxing, & improving mental health.
Very few will be using it for extra time working (why should it ?).
Many will use the time saved by not doing the morning commute for lie-ins 🤷♂️
Money
There is of course a financial difference, it’s often very expensive to commute.
Many people pay a big portion of the salary on travel costs. WFH can be a significant reduction in this cost. There are other savings as well, just the act of going to the workplace tends to result in some additional spending, workwear, a sandwich and drink at the local shop for lunch and various other things that people spend their money in the workplace.
Some of this spending is essential to local businesses and communities.
As an example, near where I live is a large employer with a site of approx 12,000 staff, split between production, engineering and the usual support staff.
The production staff carried on working on site during Covid (with a very short stop at the start) and still do, for them there is no choice, they have to work on site. The rest of the staff (approx 8,000) have worked from home since day 1 of covid, and mostly still do. On occasion, some attend their office, but its pretty rare.
But in the surrounding community, a number of long standing businesses are now struggling because of the huge reduction in custom. It’s not critical yet, and these businesses will need to adapt as best they can to the world as it is now.
The point ? A saving of money for an individual WFH is quite often a reduction in revenue, profit or employment elsewhere.
People WFH could spend the money saved in their local community, I literally lost count of the number of people in the local community who were WFH and having large garden remodels done during this time, many £1,000’s, no doubt savings made from not having to commute.
SOME people did very well out of WFH. And continue to do so.
Stress
Travel is stressful, commuting is stressful.
There is other stress though.
Many find workplace environments and interactions stressful, although the same ones usually find social interactions easy. Strange that ?
The reverse is true.
Many people love attending the workplace, finding it often their only or main source of interaction. Great for mental health.
Social skills are usually better developed with face to face interaction, certainly more than by people sat in their spare bedroom, on their own, and having the odd zoom meeting.
The point is that some will undoubtedly improve their mental health WFH but some need the workplace environment for good mental health.
Productivity
Many businesses, especially office and service based, do not have a great understanding of productivity, efficiency and effectiveness.
In some businesses, measuring productivity is simple, in others less so.
People I have talked with who support WFH, I suspect mainly because THEY WFH, usually say they are more productive. They would say that, as some justification of remaining WFH.
I suggest its not as clear cut as that.
Efficiency & Effectiveness
I generally find that people who are efficient, effective & productive WFH are also the same in the workplace.
And those that are less efficient, effective and productive are the same in both locations.
Culture
Workplace culture is very important, and it can be organic and grow naturally over a long period of time, or it and be molded and established much quicker.
However its done, my believe and everything I have seen tells me that culture develops better and stronger when people are together, rather than apart.
Training
Having done huge amounts of face to face and online training over the years, I have always found that face to face training was more effective for me.
Having also had some responsibility for arranging training for others, and measuring results I always found that face to face training was more effective for others.
It’s accepted that of course staff WFH can occasionally attend a particular location to undertake training in a group or team.
Mentoring
For many businesses, staff mentoring is VERY important. It’s very important to employee’s also.
It CAN BE DONE virtually …
My belief is that its done better Face to Face …
WFH can certainly be supplemented by Face to Face opportunities.
The £2m Coffee Break
Working from Home misses all the opportunities that arise when discussions happen informally and spontaneously in the workplace, perhaps chatting at the coffee machine or in a corridor & by chance finding the person that KNOWS exactly how to solve the problem YOU have been working on for days/weeks, or an informal discussion that sparks a new product or service idea.
This sort of interaction can lead to huge savings in costs or reducing timescales.
You just DON’T GET THIS interaction when Working from Home - that informal knowledge sharing that’s so important to an organisation.
Equality
It obviously depends on individual businesses and the sector they operate in, but WFH can promote or even expand inequality amongst its staff.
People able to stay at home in comfort of their own surroundings, saving travelling costs and time etc etc just because of the type of jobs they do, whilst others leave their homes …travel etc because of the jobs THEY do. Over time, I think that will affect the culture in a business. It certainly won’t develop a ‘one team’ or fair culture.
The truth is, though, not all jobs are suitable for WFH.
Now a company where all staff are WFH may not have that inequality but what happens where a company does have that split ?
Definitely something to think about longer term.
Effect on local businesses
Where WFH is practiced in numbers, local councils, local authority’s and the Government must think about the considerable knock-on effects on other local supporting businesses, cafe’s, coffee shops, other retail businesses. Many will be severely affected by employees being away from, until recently, their usual workplace. Many of these businesses will adapt, and many will simply close, losing jobs, business revenue and tax to the government.
Location and the Wider World
Another consideration I’ve heard is that by Working from Home people can work for organisations anywhere in the world, have limitless opportunities. True.
But also remember that everyone Working from Home is competing with every other person (with the pre-requisite skills & knowledge) on the planet. Jobs can easily be moved to locations that have employees willing to do YOUR job for far less money than YOU.
Somewhere in the world, in a place you have probably never even heard of, there is someone WFH, like you, who wants to ‘eat your lunch’, and will do your job, maybe even better than you, for far less money.
CONCLUSIONS
So where does that leave us.
Let’s look at what Forbes think about WFH.
And what about some WFH Statistics.
https://thehomeofficelife.com/blog/work-from-home-statistics
I do think that there will be a hardcore of company’s & employees that desperately want to be seen as “trendy wendy’s” and want to continue to try to make WFH work, but given time I would expect to see a gradual return for many or most people to their normal workplace.
Hybrid models where staff are partly WFH and are partly in the workplace will probably become commonplace. This seems to make the best sense, organisations and staff should determine how to do this, based on some of the points mentioned.
But I would recommend that this should start with return to workplaces full time as the default and implement other working practices from a position of knowledge & understanding, rather than WFH being the default as a hangover from COVID.
It’s time to get back to normal,
It’s time to get back to the office.
Just ONE MORE THING
Organisations in the private sector are at liberty to determine the employment model they want themselves and they may take some of the points in this post into account in making this decision.
However, it is my belief that Civil Servants should be back in their office environment, and that their option to WFH should be removed.
Thanks for reading.
Graham
Twitter : @apple_shwn
Please add any comments to my Twitter post at @apple_shwn
