New normal: Difference between revisions

For [[the new normal]] is ''precisely'' the thing for which our friends in [[human resources]] have been carelessly wishing for thirty years. It is the logical conclusion of management’s generational push, in the name of [[cost reduction]], to deprecate the office experience for the employee.

For the [[employment contract]] is a two-sided affair. The employee delivers a work product, but her consideration is a more subtle and nuanced thing than mere money. It is the status, facility, and eminence that a professional occupation bestows. It is a sense of ''progression''. There is a deal, that is to say, and institutions have been reneging on it for thirty years.  

Over that time employers have systematically dismantled most of the peripheral benefits of office life, treating them as regrettable externalities that should not avoidably accrue to their staff. So, things a junior clerk might have expected in 1990 — an office, status, privacy, a [[travel and entertainment]] budget, an assistant, an internal mail service, a typing pool, proofreaders — ''all'' of these fripperies have gone. Even the [[IT department|hardware]] brought in to replace them has been taken away again: now staff must [[bring your own device|bring their own]].  

These emoluments were withdrawn piecemeal in a long-term doctrinaire erosion of paltry joys. Like frogs in a warming pot, workers tolerated those thousand cuts as each one came and went. Over that period they were transformed from respected professionals into battery hens.  

Take, for example, office space. The young clerk had first to ''share'' her office, then give it up it for a cubicle, then an un-barricaded desk in a row. Nowadays she has a soft commitment that, as long as at least the projected number of coworkers are sick or on holiday, there ''should'' be a spare terminal she can log into, but she must wipe clean and sanitise it in compliance with the [[clear desk policy]], before leaving for the day. And she is one of the lucky ones: here role hasn’t — ''yet'' — been reassigned to a [[school-leaver from Bucharest]].

Yet in the meantime, she has steadfastly kept up ''her'' own end of the bargain, unalloyed. Expanded, even: she must now be available at any time, in any place, on her own device and at her own expense.  

Simply put, the “new normal” was well and truly here long before the bats went crazy in Wuhan. It is a done deal. Office working in 2020 is ''nothing'' like it was in 1990. If you want to talk sagely about the “going back to the ''old'' normal”, well sorry, chump: that ship has ''long since'' sailed. There will be no return.  

In many ways, “[[bring your own premises]]” is really just the logical next step. This is probably where the COO wanted to take things anyway. In any case, COVID has let the genie out of the bottle: just as we found [[BYOD]] an unexpected blessing<ref>''Some'' sort of subsidy for the cost we bore on the firm’s behalf might have been nice, of course.</ref> [[BYOP]] offers us so much more: we trade a sterilised rectangle of desk-space for our own office, as grandiose or grubby as we like. We can have photos of departed pets, printouts of those faxed Larson cartoons and whale music in the background if we want, and the [[chief operating officer]] need not care a row of buttons.  

 

And since we have seen that possibility — and not just ''seen'' it, but proven effortlessly, over a sustained period, that it makes us happier and more productive — I mean, who would have ''thought''? — is it any wonder the thought of slogging, on our own dollar, back into a drab central location to sit at a telescreen like one of the Tomorrow People, participating in ''exactly the same Skype calls that we could do from home'', only with a larger screen, better coffee and a guitar handy for those lengthy mutable spells — really doesn’t appeal?