The future of office work: Difference between revisions

To be sure, there is a tension between this societal drift back to what we are used to, and the opportunities presented by being forced to look sideways and see what could be different — the “[[adjacent possible]]”. Now we know that the business can operate indefinitely without anyone showing up at the office, there is no sense trying to pretend otherwise. Clearly, some things are better. Not having to take the tube is better. But our zoom avatar is a not-always-on, two-dimensional approximation of what we really are. It satisfies the ''formal'' model of what it is to work, but largely fails the ''informal'' one.

There are two ways of viewing a firm: vertically — via its [[org chart]], which depicts the firm as a kind of root system whose ley-lines radiate out from the top centre, and laterally, by starting from any node on the network, and tracking where, when and how often that node interacts with the others. The first is the firm’s ''formal'' structure — how it might looks if in a portrait, framed, and at rest — the second its ''informal'' structure — how it looks ''when in action''. The first is static; the second dynamic.

The formal structure is the view from the executive suite. Sedate; cool; analytical, but essentially inert. But the workplace looks very different up close, from the worker’s perspective. There, we see, and react to, what is in front of us: we help out, we keep eyes peeled, we go beyond our remit, we ignore or truncate obviously inappropriate procedures, and take a view on marginally relevant policies. These are informal actions: well meant, fundamentally benign, constructive to the organisation but they are totally invisible to central management. We deal with them ''because'' we can see them, and the CEO can’t. Where we contravene established rules we do so with the best of intentions — it is inevitable that some rules are out of date, misconceived, badly framed or ineffective. This is why employees are better than machines. They can take a view.  

These interventions are necessarily ''[[ad hoc]].'' They depend on us being there, in the right place, able to act — seeing what’s going on. This informal, buzzy, analogue communication channel needs to be wide open. It is the same channel of the mythical watercooler moments, where sudden flashes of inspiration, or fast thinking that averts disaster — a disaster averted is one the CEO will never know about — or accidentally discovers penicillin, Velcro, post-it notes, Teflon, vulcanising rubber or potato crisps.<ref>[https://bestlifeonline.com/accidental-inventions/ All true].</ref>

Now it is not to say that these serendipities ''can’t'' happen in a remote environment, but they are necessarily harder.  

But a firm working purely according to its formal communication lines, strictly according to its documented policies and procedures is, literally, in a “[[work-to-rule]]” — once a popular form of industrial action, shy of an outright strike. To work-to-rule was to refrain from doing anything or exercising any judgment, effort, energy, time or discretion beyond what is officially required — to obey ''only'' the formal lines of the org chart — as a means of choking productivity and pressuring management into better working conditions.

==== Bullshit jobs ====

Counterpointing this is the implicit fact that most businesses suspect that much of what their employees do from day to day is essentially meaningless. This is a buried, subconscious instinct — no one (other than the late [[David Graeber]]) says it out loud or even thinks it (it carries the recursive risk that it may be true of one’s own job, so is best left unsaid and, ideally, unthought) — but it propels much of the modernist dogma of contemporary management: offshore in comma outsourcing, downskilling all must be predicated on the theory that what employees do isn't quite as hard as they like to make it out to be).

At the moment, the connection is only with facetime and presenteeism: “attendo, ergo sum” — all beset around with cuddly but dubious ideas such as “the importance of watercooler moments” and “the spark of spontaneous creativity that only arises through unexpected physical interactions in the office”. But you will spend a long time embedded in the legal department of an multinational bank before witnessing serendipitous sparks of ingenuity. The risk is that this winsome commitment to physical serendipity commutes to cynical suspicion that what these people do, in or out of the office, doesn't add up to a great deal.

So we see impassioned please from Bank administrators for their employees to return to the office at least three days a week. And it is fascinating to see how formalized they are about this. Rather than assessing value added, increased productivity, or rate of generation of serendipitous spontaneous creative sparks, we here Citibank proposing to deny bonuses to staff who do not turn up at least three days a week.<ref>“[https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/f6070c1e-4994-11ee-9ab6-ca60439104a6 Bank staff who fail to swipe in for three days a week could lose bonuses]” —''The Sunday Times'', 2 September 2023.</ref>