Today’s press is full of exhortations for people to ‘return to work’. This is seriously misleading, as it implies that anyone not commuting to an office in a city centre is not actually working. Hundreds of organisations and thousands of employees will dispute that conclusion. They have discovered, through the giant Working from Home (WfH) experiment that is the coronavirus pandemic, that actually it is quite possible to get work done without leaving home at all.
The Transport Secretary, Grant Shapps was interviewed today telling everyone “it’s safe to return to work” and argued that “people will want to return to workplaces to see their colleagues”. He also insisted that public transport services will be increased if trains and buses get too busy when more workers resume their commutes. But his comments were seriously undermined by the fact he was conducting these interviews from his home, not his place of work! Definitely a case of ‘do as I say, not what I do’!
Other ministers have apparently warned that continuing to work from home could make staff ‘vulnerable’ to being sacked. I’m not an employment law expert, but I do wonder on what grounds someone would be sacked if they were continuing to do their job efficiently, but from home, as they had previously been asked/told to do.
The Daily Telegraph suggests that ministers have sent out the message that bosses at struggling firms will find it easier to hand out P45s to people they never see than to colleagues who have been at their desks during the pandemic.
So, it seems that the ‘presenteeism culture’ that so many organisations have strived to overcome in recent years is now being promoted by government. The idea that the person you see in the office is somehow a ‘better’ employee than someone who gets the job done without you standing over them, is abhorrent. It’s also an insult to all those thousands of people who in March, with no warning, no training and little support, took to their kitchen tables, bedroom corners and garden sheds to keep working and keep their organisations afloat. And continued to do so, whilst also coping with home schooling, depressed teenagers, and worries about their older relatives. Is this the reward they deserve – to be threatened with dire consequences if they don’t return to ‘normal’?
I understand why the Prime Minister is said to be worried by the empty offices and quiet city centres. But threatening all those loyal employees WfH is not the answer to organisations like Pret a Manger laying off workers. Before Covid, working from home was an increasing trend. Covid has turned it from evolution to revolution. What we need now is leadership and vision. Come on Boris, stop trying to force everyone back to a normal that no longer exists and use your enthusiasm to paint a different picture of our future. This is an opportunity to develop our economy in different ways, ways that might truly level up communities across the country.
For more about WfH and the revolution it’s become, see my chapter in Good Work Good Business. But what do you think? Have you been working from home; has it been successful? What are your views about trying to go back to ‘normal’
