The working from home experiment has taken on a hard note. The message: The holiday is over for the laptop class.
The corporate world, in general, wants staff where they can be seen, being productive and interacting with each other.
However, the forbidden fruit, once sampled, cannot be untasted. The office has been revealed as not the magic place where all work takes place. The home is equally, and perhaps more so, suitable.
Staff want to keep working from home, at least part of the time. They like what they were forced to do by the restrictions of the pandemic. It’s all about autonomy, the freedom to make choices without the cutting micromanaging lash.
This clash of viewpoints is looking like a classic negotiation fail with each side digging deep trenches, with an impassable void, a no-man’s land, between them.
The rise of working from home has been the fastest major change in the labour market in modern times, including the rise of women in the workforce.
First it was a necessity. Now it is a time to work out a way of keeping everyone happy, creative and being productive.
Up to 40% of Australian workers were forced to experiment with working from home when the pandemic arrived, according to a study by the Productivity Commission.
Compare this to census day data from 2016, suggesting that just 5% worked from home instead of commuting. And in 2019, HILDA, which collects longitudinal data on the lives of Australians, showed 8% worked a median of one day per week from home.
The working from home issue is a burning one, seen by workers as more a right, earned in the dark days of the pandemic, rather than a benefit.
The Commonwealth Bank sparked a staff revolt when it told its nearly 50,000 staff they must be in the office at least half the time each month.
Management argued that “certain types of work” are done more effectively in person, there are greater opportunities for mentoring and that new staff are more successful when they’re spending time in the office.
The Productivity Commission, after analysing a long list of surveys, says that most workers want to work from home, at least some of the time.
The primary benefit is the avoided commute. In 2019, full-time workers in Australian major cities spent an average of around 67 minutes per day commuting, which in terms of forgone earnings amounted to $49, not including car costs. For those taking public transport, the average time value and transport cost totalled $57 per day.
However, few prefer fully remote work, with most wanting to spend some time in the office.
In the advertising industry, the message from management: We are a creative lot and we work best when we are physically together.
The current debate is a classic mismatch in viewpoints, a negotiation that has failed to recognise the needs of each party. We’re right, you’re wrong. Get over it.
To make a generalisation, on one side we have workers (not management) and the other side we have senior executives (management).
The workers, sent home in a hurry during the start of the pandemic, found much to like.
They were close to those they love and look after, pets and children (not forgetting that main carers are still women, who make about 60% of the advertising industry).
The time and costs of commuting were saved. They could spend more time enjoying life or at least carving out some personal time.
In a negotiation, ignore personal needs at your peril. These are the real, and usually nicely hidden, motivators.
Any deal may have little to do with what’s on the table. The main worry, and motivator, for a key player could be making those quarterly sales figures or being seen as tough to land that next promotion.
And in this working from home game of chicken, some senior executives are seeing the world as it has meaning for them, their own interests, and not from the viewpoint, or wants and needs, of their staff.
Senior managers tend to be paid better, live in more upmarket suburbs not far from the office and have parking laid on by the company.
For them the commute isn’t a chore and we could get good odds on a bet that it’s been a long while since they’ve cleaned a bathroom or worked through a pile of ironing.
And their days are different to their staff. These people are, or should be, influencers in their workplace, talking, doing internal deals and boosting productivity wherever they go. They work well dealing with people, or treading the boards, as the theatrical saying goes.
Workers, like their factory cousins, tend to produce things, whether that is artwork, a campaign media plan or a sales contact spreadsheet. Their face-to-face contact with people isn’t critical, as they discovered since the pandemic.
Is agency culture collapsing because of working from home? Advertising, management argues, works better when people interact in person, sharing knowledge, building networks, chucking ideas around and workshopping campaigns
“It’s time for them to come back because we’re a creative service company, and we work better when we’re together,” Omnicom’s global CEO, John Wren recently told a briefing of market analysts.
In the 1950s when the madmen (according to the television series of the same name) of New York’s Madison Avenue held gushing fire hoses of money, mainlined dry martinis and wore smart clothing, brainstorming emerged as THE way of sparking group ideas.
The method was pioneered by adman Alex Osborn, who said: "It is easier to tone down a wild idea than to think up a new one."
The trouble with brainstorming is that academic studies ever since have failed to find in its favour. It doesn’t work any better, and perhaps is less effective, than individuals thinking up ideas by themselves.
One possible reason for this is something most will have observed over mindless hours spent in corporate meetings, that people are different.
We’ve all seen the babbler who won’t shut up and let anyone else have a go. Or the chest thumper who is always right and talks over any who think of disagreeing.
And then there are those who hide in plain sight, smiling -- probably knowing exactly where the debate has been derailed -- but too scared or too zoned out to say anything.
The roles are similar even when the meeting is virtual, by Zoom or Teams. And the quiet ones find it easier to hide.
How many days in the office is right? While there is no sweet spot, the general mandate is three days a week in the office. Managers would like more, staff think fewer is better.
The current call to the office has some scratching brains tested by the pandemic. In the early scary days of the global emergency, some also took a pay cut and worked twice as hard (at home) to ensure their agency survived.
They also pioneered, under pressure, working from home. They were told to get home and they did, working it out as they went.
And many liked what they found, just like the women during World War II who worked in factories where before only men picked up a wage packet.
The workforce would never be the same with the words: We can do this as well as any man.
The pandemic and the necessity to work at home also has created a social revolution. Many thousands discovered that work need not take place in a specific place called an office.
And the home environment can be a place of great productivity, free of loud open plan office neighbours, and at the same time banking commuting time, previously dead and unproductive.
This ignores, of course, those who just can’t stop working, with home and work a blur. But these tend to keep going no matter where they are.
And then there are those who haven’t known anything else. They finished university with remote learning and started base level jobs assuming that working from home for two to three days a week was standard.
The compulsion to be in a certain geographic spot appears driven by a belief that workers (in this viewpoint they are not called staff or professionals or people) need to be supervised to make sure they are doing what they are told.
I recall vividly visiting the editorial department of the Sydney Morning Herald in the late 1970s where the chief of staff would sit on a raised dais overlooking reporters sitting in rows. All the better, I assume, to spot those slackers.
In the current debate, the balance of power -- which had been firmly on the labour side as business boomed in media and advertising and no-one could find talent -- has swung again to management.
Digital media platforms have been ditching staff after they over-hired in those heady post lockdown days. Advertising agencies have followed, pulling back on hiring, squeezing out freelancers and keeping core staff levels under control
The geeks, long valuing their independent views and a casual approach to the office, are finding their faith tested.
Their free lunches, t-shirts and their jobs are at risk, as technology and digital media platforms ditch people to bring down overheads as revenue slows.
At Twitter, billionaire owner Elon Musk wants everyone to be present when they worship at the work altar. In the office they can be examined closely for signs of deteriorating faith.
And in advertising, management has a white knuckle focus, driving down the middle of the highway, eyes firmly fixed on the horizon, in its conviction that working from home needs to be limited.
Some have labelled this productivity paranoia, in that managers can’t believe, or don't have confidence, that their staff will be actually working when they are at home.
These should reacquaint themselves with principled negotiation, as formulated by Harvard University. Work out what everyone at the table really wants and then make sure they get that or something just as good.
Let’s go back to that command from Omnicom: Three days in the office.
The second largest global advertising holding group recognises, with varying working conditions across the regions, that it can’t make a global policy on working from home.
But the agency also knows that power has shifted. The competition for talent has eased.
“The great resignation is over,” says CEO John Wren. “You see it in the layoffs that the tech industry is doing.”
He acknowledges there will be individuals who won’t come back to the office but believes this won’t be a significant loss.
“Our managers also know that at first, when people come back, we’re going to invest a little money, making an event to come back,” says Wren.
And to meet that fear of losing commute time saved, Omnicom has created satellite offices, outside New York, for those who face two hours travelling time.
“People can have that as their permanent location and only on occasion in the course of a month will they have to come back to the city,” says Wren. “So we’re trying every sensible thing to look at for the benefit and the welfare of our employees.”
That’s digging down, uncovering the needs of individuals.
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