Many organisations are talking about enabling more flexible
working as lockdown is relaxing and that’s brilliant. We don’t want to go
back to the days when most people who worked in offices were required to
be there from 9am until 6pm every week day.
Flexibility is great, it allows people to start earlier or finish
later to suit their preferences and responsibilities, it allows for
part time or condensed hours, it allows people to schedule medical
appointments without having to take time off in the middle of the day,
it allows people to work from home if they want, maybe every day,
perhaps once a week or perhaps while they wait for a plumber to turn up,
or for a morning if they have an afternoon meeting that’s closer to
home than it is to the office.
It’s also understandable that as lockdown eases, people want to work
from home as they have legitimate concerns about working in a crowded
office or taking long journeys in crowded public transport where the
‘mandatory’ rule about mask wearing isn’t enforced and therefore isn’t
obeyed.
As a freelancer, I work (in normal times) in a variety of places,
sometimes outdoors, sometimes indoors, but always my home is my office
base and I am used to that and happy with it (though I prefer face to
face working with students or colleagues.)
However, not everyone can work from home and statements about
flexible working can become virtue signalling from companies that
actually want everyone to work from home so they can save on office costs. My partner works
for an organisation that used to be very averse to flexible working,
requiring everyone to be in the office every day unless they had
meetings out of the office. Now, however, the same organisation seem to want to
push everyone to work from home all the time. My partner however is
looking forward to returning to the office and we don’t have enough
space in the flat to both work comfortably at home full time.
This new commitment to flexibility is tied to the organisation’s desire to cut costs and doesn’t necessarily help employees:
1. Some people’s homes aren’t ideal for working in:
You may be sitting at the kitchen table with a laptop balanced on top
of a cardboard box or on the sofa with your laptop on your knees. You
may be trying to balance working with educating your children. You may
be trying to do your job in one corner of the room, while your partner
is trying to do their job in the other corner of the room.
2. It’s important to realise too that working in an office does have benefits:
a) the ability to interact with colleagues more effectively, it allows
for conversations in passing, whether that’s a nice social break or an
interesting insight into a work project. It allows for the development
of a corporate culture (for good or bad!) and effective team working.
b) an effective separation between work and home, which many people find really valuable, if the commute isn’t too long.
Yes, there are times when video conferences are very useful (if
people are scattered geographically) but for many people they are more
tiring and less effective than face to face meetings.
It's also worth considering that the much vaunted environmental benefits of mass home working aren't as clear cut as many commentators seem to think. Yes, if everyone worked from home then there would be fewer vehicles on the roads and less air pollution and less fuel used. However, if everyone's working from home then it's likely that everyone will be given their own printer/scanner/photocopier rather than sharing the office equipment and lots of individual homes will likely be lit up and heated or air conditioned all day rather than just the offices.
As we move into the new normal that lies beyond the COVID_19 pandemic
we need to offer better working conditions to everyone and that means
that flexible working should allow employees to work as they want to, as
long as they are able to do the job they are paid to do. So it should
be equally fine for people who can’t or don’t want to be in the office
to work from home with good video links to their colleagues, but it
should also be fine for people to work in the office except for the
occasional bit of homeworking if they need to wait in for a plumber.
Plus, people should be supported in their choices, whether that’s by
supplying them with the required technology to effectively do their job
from home or by ensuring that the office is a safe place to work –
regularly deep cleaned and provided with the necessary protective
equipment, good ventilation and social distancing.
**
A version of this article first appeared here on Pendemic.
The Guardian newspaper has a selection of articles on working from home.
