The former M&S boss, who says home working isn't 'proper work', is so out of touch
Every day, when my alarm starts chirping, I’m relieved that I don’t have to commute.
I’m nearly five years into working from home and that sensation hasn’t faded. I can’t be the only one who feels like this.
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Hide AdAlthough lockdown may be a distant memory, and despite the recent efforts of big employers like Amazon, Boots and JP Morgan to drag people in full time, in the UK there are still 41 per cent of employees who work remotely at least one day per week.
Thankfully there has been no indication from my employer that I’ll have to start going into the office full time again, but I do get the colliewobbles every time an old-school absolutist pipes up. This week it was Lord Rose - the former co-chief of ASDA and M&S chief executive who appeared on the BBC One Panorama episode, Should We Still Be Working From Home?
Rose said there’s a generation of people ‘not doing proper work’, and that we’ve regressed in terms of working practices. Sigh. This isn’t the first time this line has been trotted out, sans any actual evidence of a direct link between WFH and productivity. It seems to be a trust issue, more than anything else.
He’s no ordinary dinosaur, he’s a M&S dinosaur.
At least I’m glad that Rose didn’t use the hackneyed line that going into the office is better for our mental health, as if the emotional wellbeing of us drones is a one-size-fits-all affair. I suppose that, sometimes, it seems as if these bigwigs use WFH culture as a convenient excuse, if their company’s turnover isn’t as expected.
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Of course, I understand that there are those who have to physically be at work, whether that’s because they’re in hospitality, or manning the tills so we can stock up on Percy Pigs.
There are others in traditional office roles who don’t have space at home, to set up a desk, or crave the bonhomie of being around colleagues. It must be especially difficult when you’re young and just starting in a company, and want to get to know the team.
Occasionally, I’d like to be sitting near someone biddable who could fix my IT problems. I guess I’ll never work out how to make my monitor display a full screen.
Indeed, there are plenty of reasons for going in. Almost as many as there are not to.
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Hide AdAnd, yes, I occasionally miss my fellow pen-pushers. Mind you, apart from a few of my faves, I don’t think my colleagues will be pining for me.
I was always invisible when I was in the building. I worked outside one senior editor’s office for seven years, and he came out one day, and asked my boss, who sat at a desk two slots further along, “Is Gaby Soutar freelance?”.
So, it’s no great loss for others to not see my sonsie face.
Also, contrary to Rose’s statement, there are others, like moi, whose workload doubled during lockdown, and have managed that simply because of being al-desko in their living room.
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Hide AdIt’s been ideal. For one thing, I have discovered my prime writing time. The sweet spot is 8-11am.
Back when I had to travel to The Scotsman’s HQ, those were the hours that I spent commuting, opening my post, chatting and traipsing the half mile to the water cooler and back again. I shudder to think of the midwinter days, when I’d saddle up my bike and slide to the office over black ice, with my fingers turning blue. Despite the cold, I’d still arrive all sweaty but without the time to shower. (Sorry, workmates)
Now that I’ve excised that wasted time, I’ve learnt that if I can break the back of a feature first thing, the rest of the day is smooth sailing.
Otherwise, I wilt, as the afternoon rolls on. I’m a lark, rather than an owl, and I didn’t know that until five years ago.
Everyone is different, you see, Lord Rose.
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Hide AdThere are so many other reasons why WFH is beneficial and more civilised. I understand why, in a 2021 study by economist Paul Mizen, he found that being allowed to do so for two days a week was valued by employees as much as a six per cent pay rise. (Sadly, in another survey, the British Sociological Association spoke to 937 managers and found that they were less likely to give a pay rise to those who worked from home, so it’s swings and roundabouts).
I mostly appreciate the quiet. I love my colleagues, but an open plan newsroom is a noisy place. At one point, we had a couple of tellies on, with rolling news and sport playing. You do learn to zone it out, but not entirely.
There’s also the money I used to spend, on getting the bus both ways when it was too cold to cycle, or the pair of take-away coffees I needed to rouse me from the air-conditioning-induced coma that would set in every day at 2pm. Our office used to be near a Waitrose, and I’d drop cash on fancy yogurts and granola. I went through a phase of spending about a tenner a day.
Now, it’s almost nada. I eat what’s leftover in the fridge, and we invested in a techy machine for our caffeine perks.
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Hide AdWe can microwave leftover fish pie, should we choose, without becoming a workplace leper. There was someone who did that regularly, in the old office and made sure to also leave the communal microwave splattered with mashed potato. We never discovered their true identity.
Anyway, we need not worry about these foibles, while we’re working from home.
And we can be very proud of our increased productivity.
We are workplace heroes, even if it might not be entirely obvious to those at the very top.
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