Jilly, over at jillysheep, has touched today on the cultures which is part of current working life; cultures which mostly shouldn’t be there! What follows is verbatim my comment to her post, reflectng my experience of this in a large IT company over the last 10-15 years.
I agree with your comments on working life. Flexibility should be a “no brainer” for most employers. It is 1991 since I worked in the same office as my immediate line manager; well over 10 years since I had my own desk; and 5 years since I went in the office out of routine. On average over my last year working I think I went into an office (not even my base office) just once a month. I could do everything from home with a laptop, broadband, instant messaging, phone, and audio-conferencing phone number (we didn’t even need video-conferencing!). In the rare instance I was sent hardcopy mail it was simply redirected to my home address; but 99.999% of everything (even payslips) was done electronically. And I was managing $5M projects with a team spread across the world – some of whom I never met face to face!
When you put the cost of the technology required against the cost of office space, employee morale (from increased flexibility), efficiencies, savings on travel (cost and time), etc. the payback is probably about 1 year, maybe less. Flexible and mobile/home working actually means you get more work done because people will do a bit extra here and there as long as they are trusted not to abuse the flexibility.
The killer is the long hours culture. And not just long hours in the office, but also people feeling that they have to work long hours at home too — evenings and weekends because it is always there. I used to regularly work a 50 hour week; easily done by starting a bit early, taking little time for lunch and working a little late. I was fairly disciplined about the hours I would and did work – and was still reckoned to be one of the most efficient and achieving project managers in the team! Anyone who needs to work 70 or 80 hours a week (and many of my colleagues did) is either very inefficient (=ineffective) or is being abused by their management with way too much work.
OK, there are of course jobs you can’t do remotely. Anything where objects, food, drink have to be handled (and that’s everything from factories and farms to hospitals and pubs) you need warm bodies on site. But that still doesn’t preclude flexible hours providing you can get the people scheduling right. But anything office based should be easily done from anywhere with current technology.
The challenge is the huge cultural change; let’s not underestimate that. Management have to learn to trust their people to do the hours to get the job done. The company has to be prepared to invest up-front in the technology (and some support staff); that’s an investment usually over several years but with significant paybacks in efficiency (not necessarily overall fewer jobs, just different ones). The people have to learn to do without the office; you have to find ways of allowing people to continue to have a virtual coffee together and gossip. People also have to learn to be trusted, which means not being closely supervised all the time and being a “self-starter”.
Of course, as with anything else, there are people who cannot hack the cultural change; who need the office because (typically) home is too distracting. And this is no respecter of age, gender, role or seniority. I know secretaries who happily work from home and senior directors who have to work in the office; and vice versa.
How the working word has changed even in the time I’ve been working! And what was the prime cause of all this? Ultimately I suspect the PC.
Part of the problem with office work is many people feel uncomfortable if they don't have 'their' desk, 'their' phone and 'their'computer. I spent 5 years hot desking and found it completely liberating as I found out how little paper I actually needed in order to function.The long hours culture will only change when everyone realises that extra hours do not necessarily equal extra productivity or production
Yes, indeed. Getting people away from the foetal need for their own desk, chair, etc. is all part of the enormity of the cultural change; and it isn't easy or wrought overnight. Like you I hot-desked for many years (10?) and successively cut down the amount of paper I had. For the last 5 years (maybe more) I didn't even have a cupboard in the office, so nowhere to store anything. I ended up carrying just my laptop, spiral-bound A4 workbook and usually printed copies of just the 3 or 4 documents I was working on. How having retired I am left with 10 years of workbooks at home plus a few documents from old projects which can be binned; that's all I was left with to clear up!
I think it took me about 5 minutes to clear out my desk at work – even though I'd been in that office for nearly 4 years. My colleagues who had mainly been there 20 or 30 years were astounded at how quickly it was done!