Let’s Go Round Again
I started this Not-Newsletter with the intention of commenting (OK, ranting) about what was being debated on the interwebs during the week. I did not expect that a little more that a year later it would be the same bloody topic - returning to the office.
But here we are, this issue seems to be dominating the future of work conversation and this week’s mindless contribution comes from our very own The Rt. Honourable Jacob Rees-Mogg MP, a resurrected former contender from the ‘Upper Class Twit-of-the-Year Show’ and ‘Member for the 18th Century’.
Proving that our politics is now truly in the post-satire age, Rees-Mogg has been appointed ‘Minister for Brexit Opportunities and Government Efficiency’, in which role he has been creeping around government offices leaving the following note:
I won’t dwell on the passive-aggressive nature of the note, or the efficiency of a Minister personally checking up, or the borderline psychopathic nature of this (or ‘psychopathetic’ as someone coined it).
We’ll also gloss over the fact that his statement that all Civil Servants must stop working at home and return to offices is contrary to the policy of past 10 years of flexible working so office space can be reduced, and also unachievable as half of them would now have to stand up.
Let’s instead look at his justification for forcing Civil Servants back to the office - it is to get ‘efficient use of the government’s estate’. Speaking about the Cabinet Office he said, 'It looked as if the office hadn't been used in two years. Thousands of pounds of taxpayers' money is being spent, and either they need to be there or not. If not, we should put somebody in this property.’
This is exactly the thinking that lies at the heart of this debate. ‘We’ve spent money on these offices, we must use them’, completely ignoring the costs of actually using them (more on that later).
The government have since added some stuff about efficiency because people can’t have quick, informal chats, even though evidence shows civil service productivity was maintained during work-from-home. No doubt they’ll also start talking about water-coolers and chats in the corridor soon.
One explanation is that this is ‘sunk cost’ fallacy but I think that’s letting them off the hook. This is really just a reactionary response to change.
Let’s be honest, it’s really a bunch of rich, older white guys with lots of power and privilege refusing to accept that the world has changed. In some ways, Rees-Mogg is the perfect representative for them, with his faux-fogey ways, pretend posh-ness, ersatz intellectualism and Dickensian attitudes. He’s a reactionary to every kind of progress, as evidenced by the paper note he’s pinned up in the office. It’s remarkable it’s not written with a quill.
I can’t wait for the day when the tides of change have washed them all away and I don’t have to comment on this nonsense anymore.
Money’s Too Tight To Mention
The truth is that there are real costs of making people return to the office, to the individual, the organisation and to society. Let’s start with the individual.
A BBC article talked to people who were shocked by the costs of going to the office, costs which have been subject to considerable inflation. Transport operators have raised fares to recover losses during COVID, whilst petrol prices have gone up for drivers. Food and drink prices have been hit by inflation, whilst closures due to COVID means less competition for outlets.
One person in London said it was costing her 25% of what she earned to go to the office, whilst another in South Africa said if she had to return to 5-days a week she would be unable to afford it and would have to find another job.
There are other costs on clothes and personal care, plus the expense of having to live in more expensive areas near the office.
Then we come to the non-financial costs. The time for commuting, the stress, the physical effort, the missed opportunities to do things at home or in your community.
All of these costs were discounted before. You had no choice, you had to go to the office. Now that have been exposed and employees are very much aware of them. The cost-benefit equation has changed, which is why people are willing to sacrifice salary for flexibility.
If you force people back to office, you are forcing them into unnecessary expenditure. You are worsening the cost-benefit equation they face, for no obvious benefit to them (or the organisation). Don’t be surprised if they decide to look elsewhere for a better deal.
It’s not just financial, though. You are also degrading their quality of life and that’s a cost that they simply won’t bear. Nor should you ask them to.
Happier employees are better employees. What make them miserable again?
Right Here, Right Now
It’s not just the personal costs of going to the office that have been exposed, it’s the costs to the organisation.
Getting people together in time and space is expensive. We were sort of aware of this, we would sometimes talk about the cost of all the people’s time that a meeting took, and it would be even more apparent for an off-site where travel and venue costs were incurred. Now, though, we are aware that it’s expensive even when it takes place in an office we’ve already got because maybe we don’t need that office anymore.
It used to be the only way we could do things, of course. That’s not been the case for a while but it’s been the default. It was costed in to how we did business. So we got everyone together every day in an office and thought nothing of it because we’d already spent the money.
But now? Now we know it’s a premium activity, getting everyone together all the time looks positively reckless, doesn’t it? All that expense, both to the person and the organisation, for people to sit next to each other working at screens - it seems needlessly extravagant.
So now we know that we can do a lot of that stuff on Zoom and Slack and all rest, perhaps we can rid of some office and save money. But we’re still getting everyone together in time because we are still working synchronously. That has a cost too, in people’s time and also in the space it takes up in their schedules. We all have different productive times of the day but synchronous working will trample all over the best time for deep work for some people.
Ah, but it’s more convenient for me to get an answer to a question when we’re just sitting together in an office, you say. Well, it is for you but what about the person you are asking? It’s an expensive interruption for them, it will take them at least 20 minutes to get back to where they were if they are in deep work.
Whilst organisations stay with ways of working based on people being together in time, in space, or both, they will fail realise the opportunities that the future of work can bring. Asynchronous, flexible working-from-anywhere releases the potential of people by allowing them to work when they are at their best, allows for different working styles, encourages a more diverse workforce and removes obstacles of geography and time-zones.
These translate into advantages in terms of costs, creativity, flexibility, adaptability, resilience and talent. Organisations that grasp these opportunities will outperform those that stay stuck in the co-located, synchronous world. Then the market will do what it does.
Still want everyone back in the office?
Shoulder to Shoulder
The issues of sexism and misogyny in the workplace have raised their heads rather startlingly again, with the scarcely believable news that a Minister in the UK government was seen watching porn on his phone in the actual House of Commons during an actual debate, coming alongside the news that 56 Members are being investigated for inappropriate behaviour (you can make your own jokes, I just set ‘em up).
This is another topic that is depressingly repetitive as we go around in circles having the same discussions without really moving the conversation forward or, more importantly, addressing the suffering caused.
The workplace has, for a long time, been an adult play group for emotionally-underdeveloped and over-confident men and the British Houses of Parliament has been the apex of that particular gruesome pyramid. But for pity’s sake, this is 2022.
After #metoo showed us just how common-place this behaviour was and just what women had to endure on a daily basis, we were shocked and wrung our hands but did we do anything effective? It seems not.
It’s easy to say the problem is men but it really is true. Not just the ones who behave in this way but the ones who condone it, who excuse, who ignore it. It’s also those of us men who turn a blind eye, who keep quiet when we see it happening or quietly withdraw.
It’s time for us to ‘man up’. We have to call this behaviour out when we see it, we have to identify and punish the perpetrators. It’s not enough to say ‘But I don’t behave like that’, if you allow others too in your presence, you are complicit.
And yes, it’s confronting and risky. But it’s time to ‘grow a pair’. If you truly want to be a modern man, speak out when you see it and distance yourself from those who do it.