Covid has driven some changes to our relationship with the office, but recession may drive more
Opinion: No more long weekends. In-boxes full of demanding emails. Congested roads to contend with. Summer holidays; a fast-fading memory. Sigh.
What if back-to-work-blues is a luxury? Remember the past few years, how many of us were just thrilled our jobs survived lockdowns.
And before that there were fears that the robots would get our jobs.
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* Working around Long Covid
Don’t Worry about the Robots: How to Survive and Thrive in the New World of Work was the grand title of my 2018 co-authored book.
The nature of work is changing, we argued. Repetitive tasks can be automated. Highly valued workers will need to have problem-solving and creative skills and be good communicators; skills that can’t easily be replicated by machines. We need to keep ourselves learning to stay relevant.
2018 – when Corona meant cheap beer.
Jump to 2023 – as Covid lingers, there are more jobs than workers, but recession looms.
Collectively we have taken a great leap forward in our personal use of tech (Zoom drinks, online shopping, and streaming services). Our use of AI tools such as ChatGPT is likely to grow exponentially (maybe it can write our Valentine's messages better than we can).
Though workers still want to be paid fairly, jobs that provide meaning, workplaces that are diverse and inclusive and focus on employee wellbeing are sought after
But I am not sure our personal tech up-take has translated into our workplaces. With fewer workers available, it seems as if we are cutting services and quality rather than innovating to increase productivity.
But there have been a few noticeable changes in our workplaces since Don't Worry about the Robots.
Our relationship with the office has changed. In 2018 portfolio careers were valued because they offered flexibility that we could not get in our 9-to-5ers. Working from home was largely unheard of then – it was a treat rather than common practice.
Covid lockdowns disrupted our relationship with offices and now many of us include working from home as part of our weekly routine. Physical offices are likely to always be there but are not the expected default place where all work needs to happen.
Inequalities present in workplaces in 2018 still exist today, such as gender and ethnic pay gaps, and work in 2023 offers new opportunities for discrimination.
Studies show bias towards the workers managers can see, with those taking WFH opportunities viewed as less loyal and productive. With women seeking those options, gender pay gaps could widen.
And WFH benefits are not equally distributed. Customer-facing, production line and service roles (often lower paid) need to be done in person. It’s computer-based ones that can be flexible. Not everyone has the spare room and access to good wi-fi to make this a feasible option.
City living, office-dwelling workers also face increasing cost-of-living hikes that their remote colleagues may not, raising the tricky issue of whether they should get paid more to compensate.
As managers consider how to address inequality in their workplaces, their employees will be watching closely. Surveys show that though workers still want to be paid fairly, jobs that provide meaning, workplaces that are diverse and inclusive and focus on employee wellbeing are sought after.
What these changes show is that our world of work is dynamic. A virus has driven some changes; recession might drive more.
We need to understand what is happening around us and keep learning and adapting so we won’t need to worry about anything – not robots, pandemics, or lay-offs.
I’ll drink to that (online of course).
