Sorry Boris, you’re wrong again – working from home is better for employees like me

Ah, the halcyon days of lockdown. You could log in to your laptop at 10.30am, check into a meeting, turn off your screen, watch Homes Under the Hammer and Bargain Hunt, hang up your Microsoft Teams call, then log out for the day.

Wait, that wasn’t what remote working looked like for you? No actually, me either. I was pretty much only offline whenever Teams decided to collapse (usually once every three days). If anything, everyone I know gets more work done in a remote environment, not less. So why, oh why, is there yet another report telling us what we all already know: that remote and hybrid working works?

Off the back of research taken across the government departments for education and health, as well as the home and foreign offices, government ministers Mims Davies and Gareth Davies have said that remote and hybrid working has had no impact whatsoever on overall productivity or output.

In case you missed it, last May Boris Johnson accused remote employees of “getting up, walking very slowly to the fridge, hacking off a small piece of cheese, then walking slowly back to your laptop and then forgetting what it was you’re doing.” Jacob Rees-Mogg, meanwhile, went around leaving snarky notes on the desks of staff who weren’t in. To me, that is more telling of the leadership than the employees, but who am I to judge?

Personally, I like the hybrid model of working, and a lot of my friends are the same. For example, it can help with workflow by giving you the opportunity to designate specific “office tasks” and ‘home tasks”. The change in scenery breaks the week up, and you can change focus based on where you are.

I’m not an extrovert by any means, but I do enjoy speaking to my colleagues and catching up with them. We can help each other out with various projects or tasks, and things that are stressing us out can be resolved really quickly because you aren’t sitting alone in your back bedroom contemplating throwing your laptop through the window.

Then on days you work from home, you can do some really focused work without interruption. You can put on music. Significantly, you can walk away from the laptop for a minute to decompress. The balance of the two environments works for a lot of people.

Context is key, however. Most teachers I know prefer in-person lessons because remote teaching creates its own challenges. It is better for the students as well. My friends in retail or visitor sites have no choice but to be on-site, and it feels a bit cruel sometimes to complain about my own situation when they have no choice in the matter.

On the other hand, my partner is fully remote, and sometimes it’s a nightmare. Their workdays are what I remember from lockdown. Remote work doesn’t constitute less work; it just looks different. It usually consists of longer hours and no clear end time because there’s always something you can check, or tidy up for the next day, or just one thing you forgot to do. It is pervasive in nature, and it creates its own challenges.

If anything, remote output is often higher because it’s an ongoing process. Those lengthy commutes? Sure, you can just log the extra time that you used to spend driving. Need to be out at 5pm because you need to make tea? No you don’t, you put it in the oven at 4.45pm. You can just keep working until it’s done, and it will make the rest of your evening easier. Yes, you might take five minutes to put a wash in the machine, but that time is made up three times over elsewhere.

The conversation can go round and round and round, but it always boils back down to the same thing: remote, in-person, and hybrid work set ups all have their own challenges, but employers need to trust that their employees are making the best decision for their own productivity. The hybrid model might have become so popular because companies are trying to reduce costs, but it’s a good compromise between the different types of workers, and a happier workforce increases productivity.

Johnson and Rees-Mogg really told on themselves whenever they had a go at civil servants, perhaps either because they knew how they would behave if they worked remotely, or because they’ve never had a conversation with a normal worker. This report did the right thing; it spoke to the people who would know best: the employees themselves.

Maybe, finally, this report will put the whole thing to bed, and we can just move on with our lives. I’m not hopeful, though. I also don’t have any more time to think about it, I have other work to do.

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