COVID-19 was a generational opportunity for change at work – and corporate blew it
- Reference: 1642587307
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2022/01/19/covid_working_culture_column/
- Source link:
The frequently changing circumstances of the last 24 months appear to have permanently altered the character of work – but scratching the surface reveals the same old patterns dressed up in new buzzwords.
Working from home asked firms to find a new flexibility in all of their operations. So how is it that nearly every firm has found exactly the same answer? We've gone from five days in the office to three – yet those work-from-home days always seem to be Mondays and Fridays. Everyone still has to be in the office from Tuesday to Thursday, so that "teams" can stay "aligned" with the "direction" and "goals" of the organisation.
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While we've clearly acquired a new respect for an embodied experience with our co-workers, and need to share some time together, why does meeting that need look the same for everyone, in every organisation? This one-size-fits-all approach does little more than replicate all of the managerial mistakes of the past – with a healthy dash of "you get to provision your home as a workspace" thrown into the mix.
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It feels more like cost-cutting than flexibility, and actually diminishes worker choice. Should something arise to keep an employee away during the three "core days" – when everyone is meant to be present and accounted for – the façade of flexibility quickly falls away, revealing the same old rigid and controlling organisation.
What do you really want?
Plenty of organisations heralded the arrival of the "hybrid" worker: ready and able to work from home, within the office, or pretty much anywhere else, at any time, on any project. That pipedream imploded when it hit the coalface of management practice, with its over-reliance on neatly specified roles, capacities and schedules.
Mouthing smart-sounding phrases like "outcomes over output", corporate leaders conveniently forgot to send the memo down the hierarchy. Nor did they give managers the kind of training and skills needed to negotiate with a highly dynamic workforce – capable of being adaptive, yet completely constrained by management processes unchanged for generations.
Organisations often claim they desire a deep transformation, until they get a glimpse of the price tag: a redistribution of power. A truly hybrid organisation doesn't command its employees – it co-designs its direction, goals and processes with them.
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But this leaves those in power feeling as though they've lost power. So it falls over at the first gate, because – far more than money – organisations have always been about power. Any organisational change that touches on anyone's power meets resistance. A change this big – touching nearly every aspect of how the organisation operates – hits a brick wall.
[6]Meta Platforms demands staffers provide proof of COVID-19 booster vaccine before returning to office
[7]Google splurging cash on UK offices to lure staffers back from the kitchen table
[8]Wipro, Infosys and TCS feel pain of staff attrition as the Great Resignation continues
[9]Google joins others in Big Tech: Get vaccinated – or you're fired
In the next few months, as we once again crawl out of our COVID-19 bunkers to greet the world, many organisations will [10]immediately withdraw any of their imagined "flexibility ". Employees will be back in the office for the same three days a week. Projects will go on as before. Power will radiate from the top down. All will be well in the world – until the next crisis.
The missed opportunity of fundamental change will visit every organisation that went rigid when it could have bent in the breeze. It's not about working from home – it's about [11]who gets to decide who's working where , on what, and to what end. Until we grasp this as the real meaning of "flexibility" organisations will remain trapped in an endless repetition of power politics that are no longer fit for purpose. ®
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[1] https://www.theregister.com/2021/12/06/google_omicron_lockdown/
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YefvVw-eTEt5KLLfKo8V8wAAAEE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YefvVw-eTEt5KLLfKo8V8wAAAEE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YefvVw-eTEt5KLLfKo8V8wAAAEE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YefvVw-eTEt5KLLfKo8V8wAAAEE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2022/01/11/meta_platforms_demands_staffers_provide/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2022/01/14/google_office/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2022/01/13/infosys_tata_wipro_results/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2021/12/15/google_vaccinations/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2021/10/12/amazon_ceo_tells_corporate_workforce/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2021/12/09/hybrid_working/
[12] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Same here.
And another real benefit is that our new IT hires no longer need to be from within commute distance of a local office. We can realistically hire anyone from anywhere, and we have done.
That said, we're neither London based, nor have a single head-office that the minions are expected to doff their caps to. There is no central seat of power, so to speak, so we don't have the kind of corporate culture described in the article.
Same. Actually looking at all the headhunter calls I've had 100% of the roles have either been work remotely or are hybrid working 1-2 days in the office, rest at home. I'd probably laugh if someone called me saying they've got a great role for me but you have to come into the office 5 days a week - sounds so foreign now in the post-apocalypse...
I tend to agree with the premise of the argument here.
I'm extremely conscious of my own experience from a couple of decades or so back.
Managing a team of highly skilled, independently working peripatetic professionals we had to have a pretty flexible and distributed system. I set standards, expectations and professional rules and reviewed staff's work,. They managed workloads, methods of working for themselves or together with me in our weekly meetings. And it worked brilliantly. Our results and reputation were excellent. Until we were amalgamated into a bigger team with a more senior, old school type manager. And was carpeted for not being managerial enough. My explanation of how we worked was twisted into it sounding like I don't believe in managing. That, of course was not what I'd said, which was, in effect, that I didn't believe in micro-managing
You can guess how things became after that.
Trust
The trust of the employers in their employees didn't match the pandemic. There are managers who are still of the belief that if they can't see you working then you must not be working. How could an employee possibly work if their manager isn't there to keep a beady eye on them?
I'm lucky in that the place I work that there are just as many managers who do trust their employees as there are those who don't. My manager trusts me to do the job, and so far going in 2/3 days a week has been great for me and for the production of the work I'm undertaking.
A friend isn't so lucky, having to meet quotas while at home that can't be met even if they work in the office. His business, up until Brexshit anyway, had a high staff turnover. It doesn't pay much and there was a steady stream of people to do the job. Except, now, people have left and they're struggling to get people in. Not so much that they're getting the wrong applicants, it's that they're not getting applicants at all. And instead of addressing work place conditions and pay, they've decided that the current staff need to step up to fill the gaps, which has resulted in more people leaving etc etc. My friend, incidentally, will be leaving as soon as his wife's maternity is up to become the full time parent at home, as it makes more financial sense for him to do that than to go to work. Which is insane.
We are, whether you like it or not, through the looking glass. Businesses will prosper as they start to genuinely treat their workforce with respect and help them properly. Not in the way that companies of old did, where they provided you a house etc as long as you worked for them. These businesses will provide them with a means to better their life, and a happy workforce is a productive workforce and a loyal one too. Businesses who start to fold, or bitch and moan about recruitment and blaming things like Brexshit, won't have learnt the lessons that played out during the pandemic.
I think this is too bleak - especially for Tech
I think the "must come in companies" are going to struggle to recruit over the next 2-3 years, they are going to have to massively inflate salaries to compensate for the lack of home working.
I think most of the Tech companies will fall into line - and plenty more will do it on the quiet when they realise its a massive barrier to recruitment. There will be hold outs in Banking and evil bastards like IBM. The impact on the Indian outsourcers will be interesting.
I'll be very surprised if the majority of techies ever go back to the office full time in the UK.
The more interesting space is the other Corporate functions like HR, Finance, Procurement where there is a history of much less trust than even techies get. I think their management are f*cked but dont yet realise it.
Not happened everywhere, I work for a company that embraced the option to choose flexible, which just means you get a desk if you come in 3 days or totally remote anywhere in your geographical region. So not every organisation has gone back.