In January, I came across a curious article from the BBC “Working from home ‘not proper work' – ex-Asda boss” (Ref: Working from home ‘not proper work', says ex-Asda boss). The opening statements attributed to Lord Rose are ones that I disagree with:
- Working from home is creating a generation who are “not doing proper work”
- Home working was part of the UK economy's “general decline” and employees' productivity was suffering.
To quote the BBC article:
Lord Rose, who was chief executive of M&S and recently stepped down as the chairman of Asda, said: “We have regressed in this country in terms of working practices, productivity and in terms of the country's wellbeing, I think, by 20 years in the last four.”
I believe that these points are a gross generalisation, and whilst this may (or may not) be true for those industry sectors that Lord Rose was associated with as a former of Marks and Spencer and Asda, I think it is unsound to extrapolate that view across wider industries and all workers generally. My take on Lord Rose’s view is that this seems to be more a function of the people his former companies employed and the jobs assigned to them, rather than the model. Does one blame the tool or the person wielding it? Whilst it is true that there are still many things best done face-to-face; with the development of web-based communication tools and social media, these things are significantly lesser than they once were.
As a professional engineer still involved in engineering, I do mostly the same activities and tasks from WFH that I’d do (and have done) from a client office. One of the main differences post-Covid (to pre-Covid) is that meetings are now mostly web-hosted rather than face-to-face. Those of us familiar with office working will no doubt remember the scramble to find a suitable meeting room, and actually being able to book it! Pre-Covid, few office places I have worked in had efficient meeting room spaces; be it either mostly empty for a significant percentage of the working day, or over-subscribed when meeting rooms were needed during prime-time slots. It is worth noting that office space comes at a premium, so whilst meeting rooms are essential, they are also unproductive for much of their life relative to work stations (aka desks!!!). It would be hard to argue that with the development of web-based meeting tools, and a culture of using them, that this hasn’t been a game changer.
Whilst it would be hard to dispute or prove the reported view from Lord Rose that “home working was part of the UK economy's “general decline” and employees' productivity was suffering”; I would suggest the general decline of the UK economy was/is mostly due to both deindustrialisation and Socialist Trade Unions. From my perspective, like all tools, a Work-From-Home (WFH) model needs to be applied in the right way with the right people. I choose a WFH model because it mostly suits me and (importantly) it also mostly suits my clients. There are of course compromises and trade-offs. I would also suggest that forcing people back into workplace attendance will be mostly counterproductive now that the “WFH Genie” is well and truly out of the bottle.
Many of the people who have successfully transitioned to WFH, and do so efficiently and effectively, might not desire a return to high-attendance (as Lord Rose suggests) back in their former workplaces. I would expect that as a successful executive, that Lord Rose would be familiar with “Carrot (reward) versus Stick (consequence)” employee motivational techniques? I would expect that many of a company’s most motivated and productive employees would be no less motivated and productive in the former workplace, than they are when WFH. “Forcing” such people back to their former place of work risks fostering disgruntlement, and in many cases giving them all the incentive such people need to find employment elsewhere. Is the risk of potentially losing one’s best employees worth taking?
WFH isn’t for everyone, nor is it optimal for all roles and all places. Further reading of the same BBC article notes “Work from home expert” Prof. Nicholas Bloom further comments that
“.. while fully remote work can be “quite damaging” to some workers' productivity, spending three days out of five in the office was as productive as fully office-based work overall”.
Whilst not claiming any particular expertise (nor would I), and being a believer in the quote (Anon) “I’ve never met an expert who claims to be one.”; I would somewhat agree, and disagree with Prof. Nicholas Bloom comments based upon my actual experiences with work-placed working, the transition to WFH, and now working in a hybrid-environment. I very much like the option of working in the client office when it suits both parties, whilst also having the freedom to not feel pressured to work in an office or work-site doing the same things that I could (and do) do from my home office. I find that the advent of WFH and the development of web-based meeting tools has actually liberated my availability across more worksites, over more locations across Europe. The trade-off is that I need to be more disciplined to take breaks and not work extended hours. Perhaps this is what “quite damaging” to some workers productivity means? It is somewhat a double-edged sword given within a WFH environment I am more than happy to participate in an Eastern-European / Central European call at 6am or 7am my time (GMT) as I can roll out of bed 15-20 minutes before the meeting, say 6.45am and perform the following well-rehearsed routine:
- 6.40 am: Alarm bleeps… hit alarm and go back to sleep…
- 6.50 am: Second alarm goes off.. oops.. panic sets in as the fog of sleep fades and I realise I have a web-call in 10 min…
- 6.52 am: Run down stairs, trip over toys, step on Lego, curse, hobble to computer and turn on laptop (ensuring the web-camera has tape over it!!) and turn on kettle whilst computer is booting… then comfort break (in that order) while kettle is boiling. Multitask with Elec. Shaver whist all that’s going on. I usually ensure all my coffee is lined up the night before so all I need to do is pour water into the Cafetière and plunge with seconds to go!
- 6. 55 am: Log on and fire up e-mail software and web-call software (do this asap so as to have time to correct any glitches or “Microsoft Updates” that seem to want to install exactly at the time you don’t want them to!!).
- 6.55-6.57 am: Run back upstairs, step on more Lego, curse again, get dressed (hence the “tape on web cam” and microphone on mute!).
- 6.58 am: Log into call and ensure you are off-mute so as you can make tea/coffee in those 2 minutes before the scheduled call start, and say “hi” to anyone who joins early.
- 7.00 am. Peel tape off call and start work with tea/coffee at the ready.
The closest I have ever cut bed-to-meeting is 3 minutes and most of that was waiting for my computer to boot. I would expect that this level of efficiency in time and motion is unique to WFH.
I certainly couldn’t do that working from a client office or site! No one needs to see my “pre-6.57am”, pre-Coffee-self scurrying about in nothing but my boxers! :-O I really would recommend the use of electrical insulation tape over the web camera as an absolute safety given, I have seen it go horribly wrong when people have their web cam on when they really weren’t expecting it to be on, or to answer an unscheduled web-call. Some things jiggling about you really can’t unsee! Chris, you know who you are and EXACTLY what I am talking about!!! :-O. To this day I still can’t eat unpeeled kiwi fruit!!!
My WFH day allows me early morning productivity that I wouldn’t be able to do if not working from home, especially when considering the time that I used to spend in traffic driving to a place of work.
When I compare my personal experiences with that of working from a work-site or office, then I lose at least an hour commuting each way and I wouldn’t be inclined to stay late else I leave work only to be stuck in peak hour traffic. WFH means that literally within 20 minutes of waking up, I am able to commence productive work. Unless one sleeps in the office, I’d challenge that the vast majority of people working NOT from home couldn’t do that.
It would be curious to see the data, and the people that formed part of the data set that Prof. Nicholas Bloom used to form his opinions. Perhaps the workplaces that were part of his dataset and his personal working environments were very different to the ones I experienced and worked within over the circa 25+ years of working in industry pre-Covid? I tend to recall a vast number of people “rolling in” to work between the time I got there and sometime after 9am; many of whom went straight to make a coffee/tea and were distracted for a chat before their computer was even powered up. I am not sure the median “place of work” was as productive (compared to WFH) as people like Lord Rose believed it to be pre-Covid? Perhaps this depends upon what you consider “base productivity” and how one measures this? My experience is that WFH allows me significant opportunities for greater productivity and efficiency over what was the pre-Covid “office based” working. As it is my house, and my time, I have set it up so I can use it efficiently and optimise the day. I have no distractions and I can utilise those mini-5-minute brakes each hour when getting a herbal tea or coffee from the kitchen whilst the kettle is boiling to undertake a plethora of domestic activities that would otherwise need to be done outside of the former fairly rigid “office working hours”. Such things often include:
- Picking up the Lego scattered across the floor by my boys (Le mythe de Sisyphe!).
- Putting on washing and /or hanging it out to dry.
- Emptying the dishwasher and putting it away.
- Speed vacuuming (it’s amazing how much vacuuming you can do in 2-3 minutes with a little planning and preparation the night before).
Not only has WFH driven me to be more efficient in my house work, but I hit my computer sharp for the times in between, so in my view, this also drives efficiency in my paid work. No mention is made of how efficient either Lord Rose or Prof. Nicholas Bloom are or were in their place of work?
Apart from optimising and efficiently using your time, given that allows one to do more than just paid work between core hours, one of the keys to success is in having a decent and supporting line manager, or one being that decent and supporting line manager. Fortunately, I currently have such a line manager, as well as co-workers whom I want to deliver for. This same line manager is no shrinking violet and sets the bar high, but he is fair and so this WFH relationship is a successful working model.
In any case, one could reminisce that Roman Galley ships got great productivity from the rowers. I’d dare say it wasn’t a great place to work as one of the rowers, and few would have wanted to stay there given the choice. My advice to Lord Rose is that if you believe the stick to be better than the carrot, then perhaps your business employed the wrong people or used the wrong carrots? What is probably also true is that the best people wouldn’t want to work within such an organisation, nor would they stay for long if they did. My view is that failing to make a WFH model work says more about the management than the model.
