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| {{a|devil| | | {{freeessay|design|bring your own premises|{{image|Home office|jpg|The [[JC]]’s [[home office]] yesterday}}}} |
| {{image|Home office|jpg|The [[JC]]’s [[home office]] yesterday}} | |
| }}The ''reductio ad absurdum'' — sorry, my mistake: I mean ''logical conclusion'' — of [[middle management]]’s generational headlong stampede towards [[outsourcing]] all those messy externalities that are a by-product of needing [[meatware]] to carry out your business objectives.
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| For all the — well, ''chat'' — [[chatbot]]s haven’t yet managed to supplant those cretinous lumps who are needed push whatever buttons must be pushed to propel the great steampunk corporation forward.
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| But since said cretinous lumps became capable of glibly infecting each other with fatal illness, and the corporate world was obliged to locate a safe remove at which these oafs could operate without accidentally murdering each other, it has dawned on the management layer that since all buttons were now digital, with this new-fangled internet thing they could push buttons to their hearts’ content — well, to their overlords’ hearts’ content, at any rate — from the comfort of their own homes.
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| This was regarded at first as a regrettable evil, but surprised all by working very well, over a prolonged period. This in turn prompted diametrically opposite instincts in the management layer — frequently within the same individuals.
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| For on one hand, outsourcing the very space one’s employees occupy to those very same employees, who were prepared to provide it free of charge represented an enormous windfall opportunity.
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| On the other hand, it prompted the question of whether these employees, and the digital buttons they had been doggedly pushing all this time, were really necessary at all.
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| === The good old days ===
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| Now there was a time where employment in the professions afforded status in society, and one had the accoutrements to match: an office with a mahogany desk, an elephant’s foot umbrella-stand in the corner, a minute secretary, an executive model ''Dictaphone'', and so on.
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| As management [[dogma]] has systematically eroded these privileges in the name of cost reduction, the poor professional has been denuded of her status. Increasingly, she has been expected to supply her ''own'' accoutrements: do-it-yourself typing; [[bring your own device]] — and the same time that once commodious office became communal, then lost its door, then its walls, diminished to a dedicated space along a row, and most recently has become a conditional promise of a sanitised space at a [[telescreen]] somewhere in the building, assuming enough people are out sick or on holiday.
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| While these progressions undoubtedly looked magnificent on that [[PowerPoint]] deck the [[COO]] presents to the [[steerco]], from the [[meatware]]’s eye view, living them out in person has been less edifying.
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| Something important might have been lost among the winking green [[RAG status]] signals on the workstream update [[dashboard]]. But — the [[pragmatist’s prayer]],<ref>[[Pragmatist’s prayer|Andrew Dice Clay]] version.</ref> and all that.
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| But then, from ''nowhere'', [[Coronavirus]] bounced us all into a step further: now employees don’t get an office ''at all'', but have to ''supply their own''.
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| As as aside, pity the poor, perma-prepared cub scouts from the [[business continuity management]] team — who have been waiting for literally decades for just such a catastrophe to spring into action and finally reveal their worth, but whom [[coronavirus]] has largely ''snookered''. Just when you need it, their magisterium — aka some grimy, sprawling warehouse near Luton Airport — was no more suitable for disaster recovery than the premises in EC4!
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| Instead, employees were sent ''home''. By and large, and to their great surprise, they found this rather agreeable. Suddenly the privacy, the space, the peace & quiet, the Elephant’s foot and the mahogany desk were back from nowhere.
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| The question now: is there any going back?
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| {{sa}}
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| *[[How to have almost all of an exotic holiday home totally free!]]
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| *[[The new normal]]
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| {{ref}}
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