Ruminations

Taking stock of progress

Help Somebody

I am aware that conversations about ‘The Future Of Work’ take place from a position of privilege. We are talking about the opportunities available to a minority of the workforce, generally college-educated, middle-class, skilled knowledge workers. Decrapify Work is addressing what might be called ‘first-world problems’.

Many do not have the option to work flexibly. They do not have the leverage to insist on having autonomy over their work. A lot of ‘remote’ jobs are heavily controlled and surveilled e.g. call centre roles. A lot of jobs are location dependant. A lot of jobs require physical presence - typically, the ‘key workers’ that we relied on so much during the pandemic, lionised for a while and have now forgotten.

I sometimes wonder if I am making a case for a better workplace for all the ‘Bullshit Jobs’ that David Graeber talked about. The flunkies, goons, duct tapers, box tickers and taskmasters that populate much of a modern bureaucracy.

But actually, they still deserve a decent workplace. Perhaps more so, given Graeber’s thesis that they suffer ‘psychological violence’ because the meaningless of their work undermines their self-worth and eats away at their soul.

However, we have to start where we are. We can improve work for a significant number of people and we should do so. After all, if we can’t make life better for the privileged, what chance have we of improving it for anyone else?

It doesn’t stop there, though. We are defining some core principle of ‘good work’ that we should be able to extend to other areas of work. We are seeing the mass adoption of digital technologies as the foundation of organising work and those technologies are developing all the time.

There’s an advert for EE in the UK where a barber remotely shaves a person (who is sitting in a chair on a mountain top because, er, advertising. And Kevin Bacon, obviously) by operating a robot over 5G. It’s rather fanciful but it illustrates that even for manual tasks, co-location may not be necessary. Obviously, you’re not going to have people sitting at home operating their shoe-shine robot at the railway station but there are possibilities that we have yet to imagine. You may well have an operation done by surgeons who are located elsewhere (in fact, telesurgery is already here).

Even the work we think can’t possibly be changed could be reimagined at some point in the future.

What’s more, Decrapify Work is about how people are treated, it’s about restoring respect, fairness, freedom and compassion, and any workplace can benefit from that.

Hard Day’s Night

I think people want some pretty basic things from work.

They want

• to be treated with respect

• to be trusted

• to be dealt with fairly

• to do a good day’s work and get rewarded fairly for their efforts

• to be valued and appreciated

• to be cared for (loved, even)

• to be supported and encouraged to grow

• to belong, be part of a community

• connection

• work to be a part of their life, not the biggest part

• a reasonable degree of autonomy

I’m sure I’ve missed a few, let me know any that you’d add. What I am missing is any good reasons why employers can’t deliver this. It’s not particularly exacting and the rewards are considerable.

I guess they just don’t want to.

Get Back

Return to the Office is really happening this time, apparently. Much postponed plans are now being set in stone, as countries remove COVID mitigation measures (or, in the case of the UK, pretend it’s all over and ignore it).

Goldman Sachs appears to be an outlier, as it insists on returning to it’s pre-COVID status quo of 5-days in the office. Others go for a ‘hybrid’ model, mandating some days. This varies from the TWATS (Tues, Weds and Thurs) to those who ask everyone to come in one day a week (or even less frequently) but allow flexibility for the other days.

Some are fully embracing flexible/agile/omni-working and allowing employees and teams to decide on what best suits them.

If my list above is right, then which of these strategies do you think is the best match for what people want from work?

I’ll give you a clue - it’s not Goldman Sachs. They are probably an outlier anyway because they attract people who are very money-oriented but they are having to stuff more money in peoples’ pockets to compensate for being office-centric - and that’s a trend that I expect to continue. Even they will reach a point where the cost becomes punitive.

It not the TWATS either. I expect them to relax the ‘in office’ mandates over time, otherwise they will struggle to attract and retain the talent they need.

So, the fully flexible will win? Well, that also depends as some of them (i.e. Google) want to adjust salaries dependant on where people live. If you move to a cheaper part of the country, well, they are going to cut your salary (they may ‘grandfather’ it, which is effectively a freeze). The justification for this seems to be that your cost of living has changed and your salary should be adjusted to the ‘local market’ but this it is not consistent with what went before. They never factored in where you lived into your pay before so why should they now? (It also raises the question about whether they will give you a pay rise if you move to a more expensive location - but I think we probably know the answer to that one).

Obviously, I’m just speculating and could be completely wrong but the market will decide in the end and I suggest it will drive in the direction I have outlined. Which all these capitalist companies should welcome, right? Although they seem strangely reluctant to accept the outcome of  the ‘invisible hand’ in this instance. I wonder why?

Love For Sale

I’m thinking of making a book (free ebook/pay to print?) out of my LinkedIN posts over the past couple of years (some people have asked to have them all in one place). If that’s something that you’d be interested in, let me know (Contact details below).

I’m also developing a ‘Decrapify YOUR Work’ offering, for dealing with your own work or your work situation. It’s coaching, Jim, but not as we know it. If you feel like you’re spinning around in a ball of confusion, or drowning in crap and coming up for the third time, maybe I can help. Keep an eye on LinkedIn for announcements, or get in touch and we’ll have a chat.

You will need to be open-minded and willing to be challenged, discomforted, confronted and disoriented but you kinda knew that already, right?

It felt hard to write this with what’s going on in Ukraine at the moment, everything seems rather trivial by contrast. I can’t imagine what the Ukrainian people are going through right now and I’m fearful about what the future holds for us all. I send them love and wish peace and freedom for them.