The great work from home debate isn’t great… or a debate

I have been so good about not wading into this fight for so long.

I have been so good about not wading into this fight for so long

I was so proud of myself. For staying out of the histrionics. The articles claiming everyone working from home is napping all day. The articles claiming everyone going into an office is miserable and everyone making them go back is a supervillain.

I was so good.

So disciplined.

It wasn’t a conversation, I reasoned with myself. It’s a shouting match and I don’t want in. I don’t need to be a part of this.

And look at me now, totally ignoring my own advice and losing ‘The Game’ by accepting it’s being played.

So here I am. Entering the fray.

I am not going to shout anything, though. Not at either side. Not for them, either.

Instead, I want to share with you two little stories. And just a suggestion, maybe, if you would be open to it.

Here goes.

Story 1: There was a time in my career when I was travelling A LOT and didn’t have an EA.

The last part is key because your EA knows everything about you – where you are, whether you had lunch, whether you had a good night’s sleep and so on. A good EA knows even more than they are told because they have access and intuition and fill in any blanks. The story I am about to tell you would not have taken place if I had an EA… or, to be honest, in the era of ubiquitous connectivity.

Back then I had a Blackberry and a company laptop that needed a toggle to get online and, even then, most of what you had to do couldn’t be accessed via that set-up anyway.

So, I have a Blackberry, a laptop weighing more than a small house, a toggle (that was bright red as well) and no EA.

And I am travelling to… somewhere fairly far but not too far… and back… by train that day.

I am meant to be in meetings all day, at the somewhere place. Back-to-back.

Not unusual, that.

And my train is cancelled… so I find myself at the train station… unable to travel to the thing… and the thing can’t move… so they are going ahead without me and will send me some notes… I called them on the Blackberry, you see.

So here I am… stranded and stuck and I should be frustrated, but here I am… on a beautiful summer’s day… sun shining… and I realise with an absolute jolt of joy that nobody is expecting me anywhere.

The people who were expecting me knew I couldn’t make it.

Everyone else who may want a piece of me knew I would be out of pocket today.

All the things I needed to do weren’t going to get done today anyway. Nothing was urgent.

Normal service, for someone like me, would have been to go to the office immediately, do not pass go and catch up on things. There is always work that needs doing.

Make the most of a bad situation.

Only… it wasn’t a bad situation, was it?

It was a gloriously sunny day and for the first (and last) time in my life nobody was expecting me anywhere. I was sort of accounted for, so there were no meetings I was missing, no deadlines I was rushing towards. No messages pinging. There was work to do, of course there was. But I had fallen outside the matrix for a day.

So, I sat in the sun and had an ice cream.

And then walked back to the office.

The long way.

And when I walked in, my boss was like wait… were you not meant to be at the thing?

I said yeah, but the train was cancelled, so I had an ice cream in the sun and now I am here to do some work.

“What kind of ice cream?” was his first question.

“And can you come into these seven meetings with me now you are here?” was his second.

And back into the vortex I went.

That morning of taking time is one of my warmest memories. How easy it was to actually do. How OK everyone was with me doing it. How, stupidly, I don’t seem to have ever done it again since that glorious sunny day.

Story 2: The second story is less fun and has no ice creams in it.

I was chatting to someone about how people who go into their offices these days sit in those little diabolical phone booths all day on Zoom calls. Or sit at their desk on Zoom calls. And isn’t that awful.

Why yes.

It is awful.

But it is not new.

I worked in offices way before Zoom. And life was back-to-back meetings then too.

First the meetings were in person, in the room. (And the important people didn’t have to move buildings. That’s how you knew who the top dog in each meeting was… the more important you were, the closer to your office the meeting took place… a bit like the unspoken rule of who gets to ride in the front seat when you are a kid. There is a hierarchy, of course there is.)

Then the meetings became conference calls.

You had your own bridge – and what a thing it was, to get your own bridge to be able to set up conference calls. Like a grown up.

And although the idea was that the conference calls were a substitute for meetings when meetings were not possible… they became a way of saving time… first the time you would spend travelling… to another city, to another office.

“I’m stacked, do you mind if we do a call instead? It saves me the time travelling between offices.”

And then they became a way of saving having to pay too close attention… because so many of these meetings weren’t really needed (come on now, if we’re honest).

Or you were not needed in them.

Or nobody had done the work so they went over the same stuff and taking those meetings from your desk meant you could keep an eye on emails… or get on with some real work… and before you know it this became so accepted that people would send emails to people they were on calls with during those calls with no shame.

And then Zoom and Slack and lockdown came and of course meetings became Zoom calls and it meant that, while the meeting is happening… you will be doing your other work… while Slacking in three different groups about four different things, only two of which are happening in the actual meeting.

I don’t see how anyone can nap through that if you’re at home, frankly.

And I don’t see how anyone can thrive through that if you’re in the office.

So.

Here comes the suggestion. Are you ready?

Just don’t work like that.

I don’t care where you work. Just stop working like that.

#LedaWrites

Leda Glyptis is FinTech Futures’ resident thought provocateur – she leads, writes on, lives and breathes transformation and digital disruption.

She is a recovering banker, lapsed academic and long-term resident of the banking ecosystem. 

Leda is also a published author – her first book, Bankers Like Us: Dispatches from an Industry in Transition, is available to order here.

All opinions are her own. You can’t have them – but you are welcome to debate and comment!

Follow Leda on X @LedaGlyptis and LinkedIn.