Reactionary management gets us back to yesteryear.

it seems, post-pandemic, the demons of 20th century management approaches remain prevalent across all developed economies.

In the UK, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Minister of State for Brexit Opportunities and Government Efficiency , has directed the civil service to consider returning to the offices which have lain empty or barely populated since early 2020.

Conversely, the EU has raised a rallying cry to EU citizens under the nine-point plan, “Playing My Part ” to find every opportunity to work from home where possible. Admittedly, this is driven by an environment where European countries are intrinsically reliant upon Russian gas and oil so the “Play My Part” effort is to mitigate the pouring of funds into the coffers of Vladimir Putin. As a reflection of a post-pandemic world, the strategy from the EU deals with a (hopefully) transient challenge to all energy users in Western Europe.

One might be forgiven for thinking that a post-Brexit Britain might knee-jerk into doing the opposite of whatever the EU is planning. This is obviously to impugn our august body of respected UK politicians and so will not be pursued further in this piece.

I have long held the opinion that the challenge of remote working is not one of a technical nature, it is a challenge to management practise which is often lacking or - being generous - biding its time until the full picture has been revealed. Neither of these positions speak well of our most generously remunerated class of employees. Are we not paid to juggle resources, ideas and create a direction for our businesses?

The 20th century model of management expectation of “presenteeism” has been broken. Information I see suggests that a lot of energy and expense is being wasted by trying to put the toothpaste back into the toothpaste tube. Times have changed.

If we can't think creatively about how to handle this new landscape of working, what are we actually being paid for?

The UK government is giving us a 20th century directive which sits at odds with the world as it stands in the 21st century.

I hear people talk about the shiny multi-storey office blocks in our city centres and how the investment in these buildings needs to be recouped. Admittedly, this is a greater challenge to businesses than inadvertently investing in a product which the market no longer requires. The cost to business to maintain the current rental of office space may be eye watering, but this will pass.

At the next renewal?

Simple.

We don't renew.

I fully appreciate that landlords of large portfolios of commercial properties will take a significant haircut. But - under Capitalism - why should they be any more protected than the coal industry in the 1980s? Why does an office block in Canary Wharf deserve any greater protection than the UK steel industry?

Working from home has been a salve to many challenges which were the fundamental elements of early 21st century malaise such as work/life balance, the daily commute (in terms of wasted time), the daily commute (in terms of cost for vehicle fuel, public transport and parking) and miscellaneous elements such as childcare and the support of wider familial relationships generally. The improvements to mental health which can only come by being able to disengage from our 24/7 modern world has been well documented elsewhere.

As mentioned previously, there is no technical challenge in providing a home working environment which is as capable as an office bound environment. Yes, we may need to think laterally about some elements, but - as managers - shouldn't we already be thinking pragmatically (if not laterally) about challenges to our teams?

Elsewhere, I have outlined a fairly rudimentary approach to creating an effective pseudo-hybrid model for working in the 21st century. It requires more research than I have time available to undertake, but it can create a situation where organisations can reap the benefits of removing the shackles of long-term tenancies and create a more flexible - yet still cohesive - workforce.

As a recap from my earlier pieces

·????????move from large offices in city centres

·????????equip all staff with the equipment they need to perform their job, i.e. computer equipment, desks, seating, telecommunications

·????????Rent a “shop front” presence for meeting customers and clients in a location which has good transport facilities (trains, planes and automobiles) and a healthy selection of social meeting places if the meeting needs to move on to a lunch or dinner

·????????rent a small facility out of town with the same types of transport links in order to on-board new staff and provide training to all staff where required.

This could also be a base for younger employees who may not have space in their family home for a working home-based office or for employees who are temporarily without suitable accommodation (house moves, divorce, whatever impacts prevent working from home on occasion).

·????????Provide managers with a budget to hold regular team meetings, leaving it to the discretion and “team knowledge” of the manager to decide how regular these meetings should be. The budget should cover accommodation for the meeting, potential for providing a meal (the word “company” can find its root in the Latin com “with, together” and panis “bread”). Treating team members like adults and breaking bread together can be a great way to enhance the cohesion of teams, if your managers are suitably skilled.

·????????create opportunities for mixed team events. Why not invite your engineering team to sit and have non-guided conversations with colleagues in the marketing team? Why “non-guided”? A conversation with a fellow employee from within a different discipline should be natural and organic. The only shared experience they may have is that they both work for the same company. Forcing dialogue between disparate groups of people such as this merely serves to highlight difference. They may never become “friends” but they may incorporate their fellow colleague into their network and become friendly.

·????????managers need to be visible. This may mean that they have to go and meet their team members on a one-to-one basis in a mutually convenient location (possibly the out-of-town training facility mentioned above) so that they maintain their role within the employee’s employed life. Relying on Zoom or Teams betrays a lack of effort and engagement where effort and engagement from management should be more extensive. We can't rely on the geography of four walls and inherent proximity to “presenteeism” team mates in a corporate multi-storey office as our only management capability if we're going to grasp the opportunities presented by the requirements of 21st century management.

Even with all of the above, businesses can save a lot of dead money from renting large buildings - and help to mitigate the ever-growing congestion on our roads and sardine-like public transport.

It must be said, that this will hopefully lead to the ignominious death of “micromanagement” in the workplace. There are a few greater de-motivational management ‘techniques’ than incompetent managers who have to metaphorically sit on the shoulders of their team members.

This incompetence from someone who is nominally a manager will hopefully be driven from the realm of employment as the perimeter of the business expands and/or subsequently disappears.

Several years ago, I asked a very experienced and professional HR manager if our company hired the best employees? Of course, she replied in the affirmative. Cheekily, I asked whether we hired the best employees, or we hired the best employees who knew how to use Microsoft Windows? she stumbled for an answer.

We later moved to an environment which would support Microsoft, Apple, Linux and I asked my question once more - do we hire the best employees? She smiled and said “Yes” whereupon I asked, do we hire the best employees or do we hire the best employees within commuting distance of our regional offices?

Again, she stumbled.

We then moved everything to Cloud (Azure, AWS) and made location of employee irrelevant.

We were able to hire the best talent with no concern over location or the geographical availability of a technical skill set. This paid dividends, figuratively and literally.

If we retain “four walls” within our organisations, it could be seen that we are protecting poor managers (at whatever level) and preventing our business from accessing talent which could have a substantive impact on our profitability.

Yes, the landlords with large commercial property portfolios will feel the pinch. That's Capitalism. red in tooth and claw.

Maybe I'm being unnecessarily oblique, but I have never sat in a meeting where any element of any business has been predicated on supporting the rental income of a corporate landlord. I have sat in meetings where directors have asked for a rent review or have committed to finding cheaper square footage, but no one has ever raised their hands in the air and wailed “But what about the landlord’s income?!”

Jacob Rees-Mogg, perhaps unsurprisingly, has a faulty solution from a previous century to challenges extant in the modern world.

The EU has a modern message, but from a faulty premise.

This whole subject requires more research and study than I can presently offer however, we must strive to use the utilities and facilities available to us today, rather than trying to use inappropriate, dated models to deal with problems for which they were not designed.

The world has moved on. Unfortunately, it seems that management practise and creativity has not.

For many reasons, this is untenable.

We can't shackle flexibility and creativity by tying them to the requirements of corporate landlords whose market has been profitable for 100 years with seemingly no challenge up until now.

We adapt.

We move forward.

This is the 21st century and it's time we started to recognise that fact by allowing old, no longer workable practises to gracefully fade away…

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