The Day Work Changed Forever

Because we did too

Somebody That I Used To Know

Five years ago, on March 23rd, the UK government announced a national lock-down with immediate effect. That was the day work changed forever.

But we all know that, we were there. We know that everyone who could had to stay at home and work. We know that laptops were rapidly acquired and handed out, that our beds, dining room tables and ironing boards became our workspaces. We know we all discovered Zoom and Teams and the fatigue that their constant use brings.

We know that it became apparent that work had already changed, that so much had migrated onto digital platforms that we could still work even if we weren’t in the office. Previously, only a select few, the pioneers, had been able to work from anywhere. Now we knew we could all be ‘untethered’.

These aren’t the reasons that work changed forever, though. The COVID lockdown showed what was already possible but had simply not been countenanced by employers. It accelerated existing trends, it forced earlier adoption. But that wasn’t what really changed work.

Work changed forever because we changed.

We talk a lot about the superficial aspects of the pandemic with regard to work. The relative pros and cons about working from home and the office, the artificiality of interactions on Zoom and Teams, the tensions caused by operating office-centric processes over a virtual, digital and dispersed workplace.

But we don’t talk about how the pandemic affected us personally, how it altered our relationship with work, how it changed our priorities and ambitions. We mostly try to forget that part, we try to ignore the existential crisis we all went through. How we were faced with our own mortality, how we were touched by personal loss, of loved ones, friends and colleagues, and of opportunities, hopes and dreams. We gloss over how we were forced to confront the fleeting fragility of our existence.

This changed how we saw the world and how we saw ourselves.

Work can never be the same as it was before because we are not the same.

Wake Me Up

Before COVID, many of us were following a story that had been around for a long time, handed down to us by our parents and grandparents. If you worked hard, if you put your all into your work, then you would be able to build a good life for you and your loved ones. At some point in the future, and for a couple of weeks every year, you will get to enjoy the fruits of your labours. Go above and beyond in your job and it will be recognised and rewarded and you will ‘get on’. Hard work pays off.

Carried along by the narrative, we didn’t notice that we were working harder and harder for less and less. Hours expanded, demands increased, whilst wages and salaries stagnated and the money you did earn got you less and less. We had to move further out and commute longer because we couldn’t afford to live near work. Commutes got slower and more fraught, draining us of energy. When we did get home and try to relax, we were on our phones checking emails. Work had become a constant and over-bearing presence in our lives, consuming much of it, and of us.

We were struggling, but we thought if we just worked a bit harder, we could get back in control. We were on our knees but we thought we just had to toughen up, be a bit more resilient, and push on through.

We were so busy, we didn’t have time to lift our heads up and look around, or to step back and get a bit of perspective. We were too busy running to wonder where we were headed.

And then, suddenly, we did have that time.

Given the time and distance, and the urgency born from being confronted with our own mortality, we saw that this story was actually a myth. It may have been true once but it certainly wasn’t now.

We looked at all of our life, at our needs, wants and priorities. The things we loved and that filled us up came into sharp focus, with a new immediacy. The things that drained us and pushed us down also became clear and now seemed unbearable.

The spell we had been living under was broken. We looked back at how we had been working and living and wondered if we’d been mad. We were amazed that we had put up with it and could scarcely believe we had endured it.

We saw new possibilities, how we could have a better balance in our lives, where we should put boundaries in place to protect the things we loved and our own wellbeing.

And, in those times, we fundamentally changed our relationship with work. We changed what we were willing to tolerate, what we would demand for ourselves.

Work became less important in our lives. Forever.

Shallow

What we see today is a lot a noise at the superficial level, the ‘WfH vs RTO’ argument. It’s a proxy for the deeper fight, which is for attention and relevance.

Organisations say they want people back in the office because it’s important for ‘culture’ and that it encourages collaboration, co-ordination and innovation. They don’t offer any evidence that these are affected by the hybrid patterns that evolved post-COVID, they justify it on their ‘gut instinct’, on the ‘feels’. They don’t offer any evidence because what evidence there is shows there’s no, or even a positive, effect.

What they really don’t like is that work has become less important to employees and, consequently, employees are exercising more autonomy and independence of thought. They preferred it when we all bought into the old story that work was the most important thing. We were much more pliant, more willing to do extra (unpaid) work. They had more power over us.

That’s why they want things to go back to how they were pre-COVID. But that’s never going to happen because we are not the same people. We’ve changed what we’re prepared to accept on our side of the deal. We’re not prepared to give what we used to in terms of emotional labour and commitment. We don’t believe the old story anymore.

We not willing to give work such a dominant place in our lives again. We’ve seen it’s just not worth it.

New Rules

Of course, this could all change. A recession could give employers more power and they could force everyone back. But they wouldn’t be getting the same people back as they had before. The resentment will be high, we will be aware of the cost of what is being forced out of us and we will exact a price.

On the other hand, some organisations have recognised that everything has changed and are adapting to the new reality. They are embracing flexibility for the win-win it really is, they are giving employees more autonomy so that they can perform better and have a better balance in their lives. They are reinventing how they work to take advantage of the new developments in technology, and to address the issues of belonging and connection that happened by default (sometimes) before in the office-centric world. They are co-creating the future of work with their people.

In COVID lockdown, many organisations made extra efforts to connect with their employees. They had regular check-ins, they started conversations with employees about their mental heath and their personal needs. They sent out care packs, they organised moments of bonding, connection and support. There was a rise in the percentage of employees that felt that their organisations cared for them.

Since COVID, there has been a ‘back to normal’ attitude and many of these practices either fell away or were actually stopped. Not only did the percentage of employees that felt the organisation cared for them fall, it fell below the pre-pandemic level. It wasn’t because what was being done was less than before COVID, it was that the people realised the value of the COVID interventions and wanted more, they wanted that care to continue. They also saw the cynicism of the organisation and that the expression of care was not sincere.

We’re just not prepared to put up with what we got before. We want to put work back in it’s place, as an important part of our lives but not the overwhelming part of our lives.

We don’t miss the work contributions of those who died or can no longer work. We miss the people. Now we know the work doesn’t really matter, it’s the people and our relationships that do. The old adage that no-one on their deathbed regrets not spending more time at work has been made viscerally clear to us.

There’s more to life than work.

Feel It Still

It’s possible that those at the top of many organisations are oblivious to this sea-change in attitudes. They are largely isolated from the realities of everyday life and were less affected by the pandemic than the rest of us. For them, life has snapped back to what it was before, apart from these pesky employees refusing to come back to the office to be lorded over.

They just can’t see the how we’ve all changed. They don’t want to and they have no direct experience. They also can’t imagine why work would be less important to people because it consumes their lives, so they dismiss the noticeable effect of this change as ‘quiet quitting’ and laziness.

So we see them push to reimpose office attendance and return to presenteeism. But we won’t go back to how things were before because that was unsustainable, even when we thought it was acceptable. Now we’ve put work back in the box that it belongs in, it’s just not going to happen.

I was reading the latest Gallup report as background for this and this comment leapt out at me

“People often contrast Western Europe’s “work to live” culture with the United States’ “live to work” mindset.”

Business thinking and reporting is dominated by the US and this colours our perspective. Here in the UK, we are heavily influenced by the US business (and broader) culture, not least because a substantial part of the working population are employed by US-owned organisations. We’ve seen a drift towards the ‘live to work’ mindset but I believe the pandemic has been a reset, and a move back towards a ‘work to live’ mindset.

I can’t say because I don’t have any direct exposure but I sense a shift in the US too, although this may be at the fringes more than in the mainstream. Research supports this shift, as it shows that people are willing to sacrifice income for autonomy and flexibility, that they are declining managerial promotions to have a better life balance and some are dropping out of the workforce altogether to prioritise other things in their life (such as health, caring responsibilities and self development).

Will we ever allow work to dominate our lives as it did? Will we ever succumb to the wasted time, money and energy of commuting? Will we ever be willing again to put work above seeing our kids play for their school team, take part in a school concert or a play, or above reading them a bedtime story? Will we work compromise our health, crowd out our hobbies and interests and wreck our relationships? (I was guilty of all of these and I now question those choices).

Why did we allow it in the first place? Was it some kind of madness?

Of course, work is a necessary evil at times as we all have bills to pay, and the struggle to have a decent lifestyle is harder than ever (and I don’t underestimate the motivating factor to have a job when your health cover depends on it, as in the USA). However, how are they going to persuade us that work is that important when we also faced with the approaching upheaval and turmoil of AI? They are making us all Schrodinger’s employees, both critically important and doing vital work whilst also replaceable with an AI.

We haven’t come to terms with the effects of COVID on us individually or as societies. We are reluctant to even discuss it, such is the level of pain and upset that it brings back to us. However, whether we acknowledge or not, it has changed us irreversibly and the consequences will play out regardless.

NOTE: I have written this from a particular and privileged perspective. I in no way wish to ignore or trivialise the experiences of those who had a traumatic time during COVID, who struggled to cope with work and home-schooling children and caring for parents and other extra burdens and who never got the chance to pause and reflect. Nor do I intend to criticise those who do not have the luxury to disengage a bit from their work and whose priorities are driven by the need to survive, and for whom little seems to have changed. I hope the shift that I have described here leads to changes in the workplace that benefit everyone, especially them.

I was inspired to write about this topic by this powerful and thoughtful piece by the excellent Ian Dunt (although he should probably come with a ‘Parental Advisory’!)