Getting flexible with work

“Rather than seeing the turbulence of the post-Covid working world as something to sulk about, we should see it is as an opportunity to innovate and build professional lives that suit us all.” [Review of ‘Working Assumptions’]

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It’s now two years since the pandemic and workplaces are getting creative in trying to lure staff back into the office with extra leave, free lunch and more. That’s in the United States. In the UK meanwhile, bosses are spending millions to lure back generation WFH – but persuading staff back to the office on Fridays is a ‘lost cause’, according to the chairman of Lloyd’s of London.

Unless you live and work in Sidmouth, that is, which has become ‘a hotspot for entrepreneurship’ largely because of working from home – but also because Sidmouth is buzzing as a great place to work, rest and play.

Author Julia Hobsbawn has just written a piece on the death of the office: After Covid, the job fits the employee’s life, not the other way round – how can we handle that shift? And she’s just brought out the book ‘Working Assumptions: What We Thought We Knew About Work Before Covid and Generative AI — And What We Know Now’ – as reviewed by Leah Quinn in the FT:

Julia Hobsbawm has long been a standout voice on work, from the future of the office, to intergenerational dynamics to disruptive technologies. In her Bloomberg column “Working Assumptions”, she ruminates on office complexities. Now, in a book of the same name, she untangles how the Covid-19 pandemic and generative AI will affect our working lives. The pandemic disrupted established norms, from everyday commuting and the five-day week to “job for life” stability expected by older workers. The data on the widening schisms between the “hybrid-haves and hybrid have-nots”, on burnout and workplace stress and our cultural fascination with television about toxic managers amplify Hobsbawm’s claim that “work doesn’t work”. What Working Assumptions teaches us is, rather than seeing the turbulence of the post-Covid working world as something to sulk about, we should see it is as an opportunity to innovate and build professional lives that suit us all. 

Maybe we need some sort of balance – with a report out today saying that hybrid workers are healthier and more productive than those working from home:

Research conducted by Vitality, the next-generation health and life insurer, as part of its Britain’s Healthiest Workplace study, has found that individuals who work hybrid, striking a balance between working from home and the office, tend to experience fewer lost days due to reduced productivity as a result of ill health or sick leave. 

Finally, this is perhaps why so many in the press are against WFH: Evening Standard scraps daily print paper blaming work from home for demise

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