“Flexible working is not a new phenomenon. It has been around for decades, with varying degrees of success depending on the companies and industries that have implemented it. You do not need to be a working-from-home (WFH) evangelist to realise that working patterns have changed in recent years. Certain jobs, such as lawyers or journalists, can tolerate a level of WFH without a noticeable impact on performance. However, it is important to note that prior to Covid, its uptake amongst businesses has been very limited. The only reason it is plaguing our economy now, is not because businesses and start-ups across the nation have realised the phenomenal improvement in productivity. Far from it. It is simply because government-directed WFH orders, subsidies, and now policies have created a false sense of normality as well as a false labour market. And it is doomed to fail, like many so many state interventions, created far away from business reality.”
– Andrew Barclay, businessman.
I was at a banking conference in Monaco (tough job, and someone has to do it) and this seemed to be the view of a lot of the folk present. Mind you, for a lot of my working life, my “office” is a table in a hotel business reception, airport lounge, cafe or my home. But I have done this for decades, and in my younger years (20-40) had the benefit of the cameraderie, mentorship and “culture” that comes with being in an office as part of a team. I follow a more “hybrid” approach these days, and it seems to work. (I actually think I work longer hours than when I was in an office.) I don’t see any reason for the State to intrude into this, either by penalising one form or working or encouraging it. A neutral approach is best. And what definitely should not happen is enshrining this or that way of working as a “right” beyond obvious constraints to protect life and health, both physical and mental. As ever (here comes the libertarian drum-roll sound), it is competition and vigorous enterprise that provides the best ways of people figuring out working patterns that suit them best, be they youngsters, middle-aged farts like me with or without children and dependents, etc etc.
Employers and employees should work these things out for themselves, each business is different.
The problem with businesses preferring Work From Office, despite its many, many disadvantages, is that the technology to effectively work from home is VERY, VERY new. The only reason we worked from home during the Covid thing rather than the many similar preceding plagues is that we COULD work from home this time.
And so it is that the normal processes of business are designed to be Work From Office because that is all that has been possible since the idea of an office in a city has even been a thing.
For work from home to be successful businesses need to adopt new business processes to take advantage of it, and let’s be clear, there are many, many advantages. And two years of covid lockdown did force this. But a lot of people, the aforementioned middle age farts, don’t much care for the change and want to revert back to what they are used to.
You see this by the way, in remote learning in school. It has not been good in general, but it was VERY beneficial for some (my son included.) The problem though is that teachers don’t havet he training on how to do remote learning, and if they did it could potentially be transformatively better. For example, some school in a small community could have access to advanced resources like reading tutors or advanced math, and it would disengage “teaching” from “school” making mobility very much easier. Of course that is why there is great resistance. That combined with the fact that school isn’t just about learning, it is also about providing baby sitting for working moms.
Regardless, as far as I am concerned, the great growth in work from home is one of the very few good things to come out of the Covid mess. There is a push to reverse it, but I think the genie is out of the bottle.
Back when I actually worked, long before Covid, before WFH was even a thing, we tried it for our quasi-law-firm environment.
Didn’t work well.
Newer employee development suffered greatly. In a corporate culture, there are various parts that need to be shown – exhibited, underlined, explained – that cannot simply be picked up by video or e-mail or even telephone. There are corporate-culture attitudes in litigation – lines in the sand sort of things – plus ethics issues that might not be apparent until you hear someone discussing them.
And, there are billing issues that arise, mostly from a lack of group control and oversight of what Joe is doing for all of those hours he marked up. Even in a corporate setting, you still have clients – other departments, mostly – and those clients don’t like being presented with huge bills that don’t lend themselves to being verified.
On certain types of cases, there are security issues when you allow WFH, with its attendant communication pathways. In a multi-billion-dollar case, yes, people are going to be attempting to intercept communications, and it becomes trivial to do when people work from their insecure home platforms.
You risk a divided corporate culture – those who are deemed trusted performers who get to work from home, versus those “not trusted enough” – which is how it is viewed, even by people whose job duties would not work in a WFH setting. Kills any team feeling.
Finally, when the lawyers are away, who’s going to watch those damned paralegals and secretaries? Motley crew . . . Some people have the work ethic and zeal for work that lends itself to WFH. But if you take those specific people out of an office environment, you have removed a lot of good influence and encouragement and supervision from those aren’t so WFH-ready, or whose jobs must be done on-site.
We ended that experiment.
My company has closed lots of offices in the regions, and even the main office in London could max accomodate 60% of the full time workforce. Going back to full time working from the office would require lots of investment.
Most likely, if corporate HQ feel that it isn’t working, that will just lead to an acceleration of offshoring for the more routine tasks, with client facing roles still based in the UK.
Personally, I’d tolerate an order to work from the office 3 days a week, but no more than that.
@bobby
Interesting points, and you might be right in your business, but here are a few thoughts.
Newer employee development suffered greatly. In a corporate culture, there are various parts that need to be shown – exhibited, underlined, explained – that cannot simply be picked up by video or e-mail or even telephone.
I wonder though if a different process would make this more successful. A different corporate culture that takes advantage of the online process (for example, all that underlying can be recorded, all that explaining saved for future review and so forth. And doing it all once so that you can optimize by providing a standardized, curated onboarding experience.) It is also worth saying that Zoom is a somewhat limited channel. Imagine doing the same in a more immersive environment. VR for example.
There are corporate-culture attitudes in litigation – lines in the sand sort of things – plus ethics issues that might not be apparent until you hear someone discussing them.
I don’t know about the first part, but obviously you still need to have discussions wherein any ethical issues would arise. But I don’t see why you can’t do that over a secure zoom meeting.
And, there are billing issues that arise, mostly from a lack of group control and oversight of what Joe is doing for all of those hours he marked up. Even in a corporate setting, you still have clients – other departments, mostly – and those clients don’t like being presented with huge bills that don’t lend themselves to being verified.
But how is that any different than in an office setting? How do you know that Joe isn’t just warming the bench instead of doing useful things? The ultimate change in corporate attitude is to measure success by measuring work product not time spent warming the seat. For sure that is an impractical change in your profession, but there is no intrinsic reason lawyers have to bill by the hour. It is just “the way it is done.”
On certain types of cases, there are security issues when you allow WFH, with its attendant communication pathways. In a multi-billion-dollar case, yes, people are going to be attempting to intercept communications, and it becomes trivial to do when people work from their insecure home platforms.
Mostly WfH setups these days have the client provide a computer to the worker which is heavily secured and managed by the client’s IT team. TBH I think most WfH setups are probably considerably more secure than in office set ups, perhaps because people think about them harder. For example, it is common in corporate settings to have open USB slots, so that you can copy docs off onto a flash drive. This is a terrible security practice, and I think every client machine I have worked on locks the USB ports down.
You risk a divided corporate culture – those who are deemed trusted performers who get to work from home, versus those “not trusted enough” – which is how it is viewed, even by people whose job duties would not work in a WFH setting. Kills any team feeling.
Right but if everyone works from home then you get a very different type of corporate culture. I have experience this a lot. It is generally a very positive thing.
Finally, when the lawyers are away, who’s going to watch those damned paralegals and secretaries? Motley crew . . . Some people have the work ethic and zeal for work that lends itself to WFH. But if you take those specific people out of an office environment, you have removed a lot of good influence and encouragement and supervision from those aren’t so WFH-ready, or whose jobs must be done on-site.
Again this is really an artifact of “the office” rather than “the work”. If you measure people by what they produce rather than by their ability to warm the bench or “look busy” you have happier employees and better work.
FWIW I have spent many hours “looking busy”. It may be the most soul destroying thing corporations do to people.
It might very well not work in a lawyers office, but it is a mistake to think that “in office” procedures work “remotely”. It requires a change in the business processes to be effective, in particular measuring work product rather than work hours. But those are very good changes anyway. I’d rather have some guy who did great work working two hours a day sitting in the hottub, than somebody who looked busy for ten hours a day and produced crap. The world would be a better place if we sold our work for money rather than our time for money. That is, as long as hot tub guy puts on pants before he gets on Zoom.
It gives people back two or three hours a day in travel time, allows them to work in their own environment rather than horrible, clinical cubicle farms, and gets people out of cities so that they don’t get cooped up in those liberal hellholes. And it saves the client a crap load of money not having to pay for these grossly over priced and over furnished offices. Why don’t managers want it? Because middle management is a poison on the corporation, a layer who are focused on their own empire building rather than the goals of the corporation. They like to walk the halls and see their minions beavering away.
Skimming through my work diary for the last decade, about half the work was “turn up to office base, work comes into office” stuff, half has been “get emailed weekly schedule of sites, drive there direct from home, do the job, drive back home” – so essentially WorkFromHome as Home was my base, and the zero point for mileage claims, etc. And this was back in 2014 or so, well before it became fashionable.
I even had one such WFH-type job around 1995, when for six months the work schedule was *posted* to me, and I just walked/bussed from home to whatever sites were listed. In that job we did have a weekly “staff” meetings, at two picnic benches at the local pub on Tuesday lunchtimes.
Fraser Orr – all good points. I should note that we tried this experiment before Zoom existed. (Heck, before smartphones existed.) We could call each other, we could do large conference calls, but no visuals. For that, we’d have to direct each other to somewhere on our computer system (“go here to view the pleadings we are discussing.”) And then we’d talk about the docs on the call.
And I may have been predisposed to dislike the results, by another factor. At that time, we had three small kids and a nanny. So, for me, the “H” in WFH was not an environment conducive to quiet contemplation, or important conference calls. Try keeping a 4,6, and 8-year-old out of your office room, or quiet when nearby.
I ended up going to a friend who ran a small firm near my home and renting an office from him during our experiment. Not the best use of WFH freedoms. Many of my co-workers who also had kids disliked the WFH idea for this same reason. Maybe it’s perfect for childless people. It sure wasn’t for us.
bobby b
Regarding the “kids keep asking me for cereal when I am trying to write this brief…. damn, he just spilled juice over these filings.”
I totally get that. It is perhaps an extension of what I am saying though. WfH requires a redesign of business processes to adopt it, it also requires a redesign of home processes too. You absolutely need an office with a lock, you absolutely need to set the appropriate boundaries with kiddos and with your “can you keep an eye on the baby while I run out to the shops — five minutes maximum” partner.
I have definitely experience what you did. But as with most things in life, boundaries are necessary.
And of course there are plenty of guys who don’t want to WfH because they hate being home. “Sorry honey I have an important business meeting and won’t be home till 11pm — in the pub that is.” So it might not be for everyone.
Oh and one other thing — free advice to anyone starting out from someone who has been doing it for a LONG time. Sometimes if you aren’t careful work and home blend together and you get a messed up work life balance. It is just as important to close that office door for you to “go home” as it is to keep home out when you are working.
Is it just me, or does no one else note the similarity between “work from home” and the old systems of mass production like weaving before centralized factories came in?
What is modern “work from home” but another iteration of the social situation obtaining before about 1790, with regards to a lot of cloth production in the UK and Europe?
We’ve been here before. We just forgot all about it; I’d wager that you’ll see another recapitulation of it all, as we go through it. The only difference being that today’s wage slaves aren’t sitting there in darkly-lit little rooms weaving cloth at a loom, they’re sitting at desks and working keyboards. And, possibly, being paid just a bit more…
I work in Israeli hi-tech. Israel is just now starting to build suburban rail after decades of sprawling growth. WFH gives most of us 1.5-2 hours back every day – time only the most dedicated sales/service types spent doing anything work-related.
It’s also a great positive for the large numbers of working parents. State-subsidized childcare typically ends at 3 PM. there was always a mad dash home by the working mothers.
These are enormous quality-of-life perks that really don’t cost the employer anything. And can save on the fixed costs of office facilities.
I have worked in the US, Europe, and Israel for decades… and I’ve seen that much office time is unproductive. And I’m convinced WFH makes it more difficult for non-contributing mid-level drones to hide their uselessness.
Currently Israeli companies in several info/service-driven sectors are moving to a hybrid week, with workers expected to be in the office 2-3 days a week. This allows for the networking and problem resolution that is best done face to face. “What is your ‘hybrid’ policy?” has quickly become a standard interview question.
It may be that people in hi-tech are better primed to use the new technologies, but the next generation of workers will certainly be comfortable with the discontinuous communication style of remote work. They certainly don’t expect any corporate loyalty, and are comfortable as free agents.
This is a natural progression as a result of information and communication technologies – or rather, a natural regression: people always lived near work, and only with the dawn of the industrial age did they have to “go in to work” – to service massive machinery. That is no longer the case in info/service economies.
My impression, even before COVID, was that WFH was far-less beneficial than flexible working hours.
In my last gig, which was defence contracting, we were ‘essential’, so we never stopped working during COVID. The shop couldn’t WFH, and so the engineering resources really couldn’t either. You can’t support a fabricator over the phone. Some of the admin and office people did some WFH, but there were always security problems, so it wasn’t much.
We got 100% more benefit from flexible working hours, the boss’s only stipulation was that we schedule hours at least a day or two in advance. There were no ‘core’ hours, as long as the work was done on-schedule, he did’t care when we were there, as long as he knew a day or two ahead. Sometimes, people would ask for adjustments for a FTF meeting or customer-facing stuff, but with most of our customers working remote anyway, never a problem.
That kind of thing probably won’t work for some kinds of work, but it worked very well for us. The fabricators would all work 4×10 and then all take off for a golf outing or ball game. Parents could juggle their childcare needs. Old farts like me could show up 8-4 every day. Each just as we pleased. The ability to Zoom or Teams was a useful added tool, as they had been before, but they just weren’t suitable to being the normal mode of our work.
llater,
llamas
@Kirk
What is modern “work from home” but another iteration of the social situation obtaining before about 1790, with regards to a lot of cloth production in the UK and Europe?
Yes, most people “worked from home” for most of human history. Whether on farms, or “living above the shop” for people like bakers, cobblers and other such artisans. What drew people into factories and cities was the need for centralized capital equipment (like huge automated looms for weaving, or metal smelting plants and so forth.) And that also lead to the idea of measuring people’ productivity by the time spent rather than the product produced.
If WFH “fails”, it will be because too many managers think they have to See You Work to do their job.
Obsession with making themselves Feel Important and Watch You Work vs. caring about your OUTPUTS is, well, typical middle manager or VP nonsense.
(At this point I simply WILL NOT take a job that makes me work in an office every day, without an immense pay increase.
My job – programming – is ideally suited, of course, and this is not a universal thing, but as far as I can tell the vast majority of office work does not need the office to happen.)