PAOLO KERNAHAN
'IF YOU want me back in the office you're going to have to fight me for it!'
With the pandemic hesitantly releasing its grip on our lives, we're faced with an intriguing question: what's the future of remote work after covid19?
Calls are mounting for workers to return to the office. It's a looming reality building in intensity - a reset of the great reset.
Time to give up the headset and the Zoom calls in shorts. No more Call of Duty when you're supposed to be on duty. Your company wants you back!
Lots of employees, though, want to continue working from home. Insight from the Pew Research Centre suggests that 60 per cent of workers with jobs that can be performed at home would like to continue if given the option.
Ironically, many of the businesses leading the work-from-here charge are IT giants. Google's parent company, Facebook's Meta, Apple and Microsoft are among those who want their people in place at least for a few days a week.
Tesla's Elon Musk famously sounded the warning that those against working in the office should pretend to work elsewhere. Musk's sabre-rattling doesn't account for the reality that those inclined to 'pretend to work' can do so in the office environment as stealthily as they can at home.
It's bizarre to see tech pioneers among those 'calling back the herd.' The industry is at the heart of advancements that made work-from-home policy possible. They are disruptors who went from challenging the status quo to championing it. Now, they've become 'ruptors.'
Some financial services behemoths are also joining the back-to-the-office clarion call. JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs Group have asked staff to return.
It's a hard sell for workers who spent two years acclimatising to business as usual from home. Employees are likely confused about being prodded to show up to perform tasks they've proven can be done efficiently and effectively remotely. It has to feel like trying to un-discover fire.
Most problematic about entreaties for a return to the office is generally flimsy justifications peddled by employers.
There is a tincture of passive-aggressive reinforcement of the employer-employee relationship dynamic. You work for me, so I dictate the terms of this arrangement. We encourage our employees to think, just not of themselves. That you do on your own time. Of course, this is mainly anecdotal.
JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon says, 'Working from home doesn't work for young people. It doesn't work for people who want to hustle. It doesn't work for spontaneous idea-generation. It doesn't work for culture.'
His theory of everything that doesn't work for young people assumes they all have the same backgrounds, motivations and personal circumstances. The priorities of some young folks differ from others who have started families or have elderly parents needing care. Some working stiffs, no matter their age, want more out of life beyond slavish devotion to corporate culture and income.
Either way, it isn't clear how the office environment stimulate
