The future of office work: Difference between revisions

The future of office work (view source)

Revision as of 18:11, 4 November 2023

1,645 bytes added , 4 November 2023

no edit summary

Amwelladmin

Bureaucrats, Interface administrators, Administrators

82,891

edits

@@ Line 191: / Line 191: @@
 But now that the workforce has decided it quite likes staying at home, [[administrator]]s are beginning to hear their inner voices, louder and louder, saying “our people are swinging the lead”.
-Still there is that tension between the accountants — who see the opportunity to shrink the downtown footprint — and the HR folk who basically do not trust staff any further than they can throw them, and they can’t throw them as far as their box rooms and kitchen tables. We expect this tension to resolve in favour of HR, for the simple reason that something that really can be done remotely is probably so formalistic that it ought not need to be done ''at all''.
+Still there is that tension between the accountants — who see the opportunity to shrink the downtown footprint — and the HR folk who basically do not trust staff any further than they can throw them, and certainly can’t throw them as far as their own box-rooms and kitchen tables. We expect this tension to resolve in favour of HR, for the simple reason that something that really can be done remotely is probably so formalistic that it ought not need to be done ''at all''.
-Management are no cleverer about this than they are 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.
+====Songs of innocence and experience====
-===Form and substance===
+It is tempting to blame the siren call of the office on “the usual grumblings of old age”, or “pea-brains” who “can’t envision a future different than the present”.
-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 hear banks 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>
-About that serendipitous opportunity
+But over the long term, by which cultural shifts measured, Generation X won’t have much of a say, and the Boomers none: they’re at retirement age now. Any [[system effect]] that draws people back into physical offices will be prompted by the people ''entering'' the system, not those leaving it. If won’t be grumpy boomers driving this, but from ''people wanting jobs''.
-Working from home — the logical final step in the modernist programme of systematically digitising  human capital, reducing the prestigious, professional, ineffable to the quotidian, standardised and algorithmic —
+{{quote|
+Oh what a multitude they seem’d, these flowers of London town! <br>
+Seated in companies they sit with radiance all their own.<br>
+The hum of multitudes was there, but multitudes of lambs,<br>
+Thousands of little boys and girls raising their innocent hands.<br>
+:— William Blake, “Holy Thursday”, from ''Songs of Innocence'' (1789)}}
+We are not fixed in time and space. We are each on our own private life journey. At the start, we sing only songs of innocence: we have little to offer but energy, effort and time. But then we learn. We practice. We get better. We grow. We ''experience''. ''We get old''.
+By degrees, our relative value shifts from ''energy and time'' to ''wisdom and judgment''.
+{{quote|
+I wander thro’ each charter’d street,<br>
+Near where the charter’d Thames does flow,<br>
+And mark in every face I meet,<br>
+Marks of weakness, marks of woe.<br>
+:— William Blake, “London”, from ''Songs of Experience'' (1794)}}
+By the end, we sing only songs of experience. We who, short years ago, were scrappy, stroppy, hungry upstarts — are now worldly-wise, world-weary and valued not for our energy but our ''experience''. We have little to prove: what advancement we stood to gain happened, or didn’t, but either way the ship sailed. We have little further need for elbows: those who had them, used them and by now are long since out of sight. If someone will pay us a decent wage to work from home, happy days.
+This is not the cohort trying to force anyone back to the office. Why ''would'' we? That would mean ''we'' had to come back. too. Who amongst Generation X wants ''that''? Lockdown ''rocked''.
+But there ''is'' a group who wants that.
+Remember the dynamic at the ''front end'' of the labour curve, where new generations enter it: a graduate’s main point of differentiation from her peers is ''energy'': expertise and skill comes later. Organisations need to find people with energy. Graduates seeking jobs, and those with jobs seeking advancement, want to show it.
+And, culturally, how do we symbolise energy and effort?
+''We turn up''.
+So as the seasons turn, and existing graduates grow into subject matter experts, existing subject matter experts move on and yet new generations, with boundless energy, enter the workforce, it is not hard to see the [[system effect]] at work. We of the COVID generation will eventually collect our belongings. Those with the personal circumstances, experience and relationship capital to justify it, will continue to work remotely, as they always did. And the rest will tend back to the office —
+Until the next pandemic.
 {{sa}}