Let’s Be Flexible About Flexible Working

In January 2007, Steve Jobs launched the first ever iPhone at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco. His presentation was mesmerizing and technically slick, whilst at the same time being incredibly relaxed and minimalist; but there was one part of the presentation that stuck in my mind that I found a bit unnerving, and in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic, has taken on a whole new significance.

In Jobs’ presentation he showed how the phone used Google maps to flag up and navigate to local amenities, and he did so by searching for nearby coffee shops. He clicked on one that was nearby and to the audience's amusement, he gave them what was effectively a prank call. Now, whilst calling an unsuspecting barista and putting them on speaker-phone in front of hundreds of journalists at an international press junket may seem a little cruel, what really stuck out to me at the time was how helpless the person answering the phone was and what a power difference there was between Jobs - the consumer who could visit any coffee shop he likes, and the shopkeepers running cafes waiting for him and/or other customers to show up and place an order.

The relationship between Jobs and the barista isn’t the same as a regular vendor/customer relationship, because this particular transaction can’t possibly happen online. The vendors are tied to their geographically-fixed premises with workers who can do little more than serve customers who come their way. If there’s no footfall, there’s little the vendors can do barring some marketing wizardry. It’s not a blue-collar/white-collar distinction or even a class or skills distinction, it’s simply down to who is more mobile or whose relationship with their customer or their work requires physical human contact.

During the COVID-19 pandemic we’ve learnt just how easily a lot of bricks & mortar businesses can transition online. But we’ve also learned that many can’t. Hairdressers, restaurateurs, hoteliers, dry cleaners and many more who get their business from customers who are present onsite have all suffered, and have relied on the government’s furlough scheme to stay afloat. Likewise many manufacturing or 'blue-collar' jobs require workers to be present onsite.

According to the ONS, 47% of us worked from home during the lockdown in the UK, and in the US the figure went up to 62%, and it’s not surprising that an economy that relies so heavily on the service sector can function this way versus countries with economies more reliant on agriculture or manufacturing. As we went into lockdown, many companies that were sluggishly implementing flexible working schemes found out overnight that home-working was no longer just a 'nice to have' option but a necessity.

Working from home (WFH) hasn’t been easy for many though - for those of us with kids I’m not sure if it was easier when they were being home-schooled or when they’re on holiday! For some living with poor internet connectivity or in a confined living space it’s been next to impossible, and there are unfortunately those for whom the office is a welcome relief from a toxic home life environment.

But let me cast your mind back to when global pandemics and lockdowns were still the realm of science fiction, to when the UK government set up The Flexible Working Taskforce in January 2019. The guidance from government, the trade unions and the CIPD was to encourage flexible working as a way of helping employees’ work-life balance and mental well-being. The Flexible Working Regulations 2014 were implemented to ensure employers consider requests by staff to work remotely. Working from home was a good thing. It meant parents or carers could juggle work and care commitments more easily, could avoid the stresses (and costs) of commuting and weren’t tied to the restrictions of 9-5 office life.

Kelly Tolhurst MP, business minister at the time, said: “Working flexibly helps people to balance their work and home lives and is vital in creating an inclusive economy and diverse workforce. It also gives employers access to a wider pool of talent and enables better matching of applicants and jobs.”

So there were benefits to employers as well. Candidates could be considered from a broader geographical range, and generally be from a more diverse background; the size and location of the office (and the office car park) could be reconsidered and yes, they could get rid of the office water cooler and the dodgy coffee machine.

I should just pause and point out that WFH/remote/hybrid working is only one part of an overall flexible working policy. Flexible working relates not just to where you work, but also the hours you work and even in some cases the roles and responsibilities you take on as part of your work. There are jobs that allow flexible working hours, but are based in a fixed geographical location like an office, factory or shop - my current job requires me working with clients across various time zones. But generally WFH and flexible working go hand-in-hand and employers accept that if they're going to cut the costs inherent in running an office, they can swallow the fact that their employees may need time out for caring responsibilities, the school run or perhaps the odd trip to the vet.

But now that the prevalence of the coronavirus is dropping and restrictions are easing, the government is persuading us to go back to working in the office. But why? According to one survey, nearly three quarters of us are more than happy working from home. It turns out that for many of us, the original government guidance extolling the virtues of home-working was right! No wonder then that in a Gallup pole the US, 59% of the workforce that worked at home during the lockdown want to continue to do so afterwards.

Like many others I’m sure, when the lockdown was announced, I bought myself a coffee machine, got myself a decent headset for my laptop and finally got round to installing the Deliveroo app on my phone. And so I've got used to spending more time working from home.

To be fair, I work in the service sector and my job involves a lot of remote/home working anyway. Yes, I’m a big fan of face to face meetings with clients – especially in large groups or if they’re fairly new, but routine project meetings (especially internal ones) were/are always done remotely.

But as the government are now finding out, now that I’ve bought my coffee machine and have fibre optic broadband, I don’t need to shlep into town each day on the train (which is expensive, overcrowded and often unreliable) and spend exorbitant city prices on lunch either. Even my local gym is cheaper than the one in town.

And that, apparently, is a problem.

It’s a problem for all of those city-based geographically-fixed workers that we mentioned earlier. They’re all stuck working where they are, waiting for customers to come along. And if they’re based in the City and there are no longer any workers/customers in the City, that’s a problem… for them. As the Daily Mail put it (as only they could): “one man’s WFH is another man’s P45.”

It's also fair to say that not all employers have embraced WFH. Marc Benioff from Salesforce asked: "Are we not building tribal knowledge with new employees without an office culture?" and Microsoft found that 85% of its managers didn't believe their employees were being productive when working from home. Elon Musk famously called working from home "morally wrong" in that it created a disparity between the white collar workers who could versus the blue collar workers who couldn't.

So the government (and the CBI) is going to patronize us all by telling us we shouldn’t work from home any more, but we must get back to the office and spend more money - as if somehow all of the benefits of home-working it was telling us about back in 2019 are less important than doing our bit to support 'the economy'. At the same time, companies with city-centre offices, many of which have suffered financially during the pandemic and are now looking at ways to cut costs, are being told they need to spend money making sure their offices are as COVID-safe as possible. It doesn’t sound terribly appealing for them either. In fact, at the time of writing, the HSE guidelines still advise that you should: “identify everyone in your business who can work from home – if they can, they should;”

So whilst there are pros/cons of flexible working or WFH, and it does have a broader impact on the economy, I don't think there’s a single approach that suits everyone. There are times when people need to be around others to collaborate and gain insight, and there are times when they need to be left alone. Circumstances change all the time, and forcing all employees to choose one or other approach isn’t the answer. As with many fads, a one-size fits all approach is not for everyone. We need to be more judicious in adopting new ways of working and not go down the “Emperor’s New Clothes” approach of accepting something as true simply because we think everyone else says it is.

We need to be more flexible about flexible working.