The Idiocies of the Return to Work People

From The Times

Civil servants have been ordered to return to the office at least two days a week as John Swinney’s government aims to increase productivity in the workforce.

Staff have been told that from October they will be required in the office 40 per cent of the working week.

First of all, this is a stupid way of addressing the problem. If you need people in the office because they require interaction with colleagues and managers then you need to synchronise them. You need them in on the same days as other people. If people are just going to come in and it’s an empty office then they might as well be at home.

There’s no other reason to have people in some of the time.

Stephen Kerr, Scottish Tory MSP for Central Scotland, said the pushback against office working was “frankly laughable” and an “insult” to those who have never had the option to work from home.

This is like saying that people should be able to work at the beach and chat up pretty girls in bikinis, because that’s what ice cream sellers get to do. Or that people on oil rigs should be able to have a cigarette after work because so do other workers.

“This is the real world calling,” Kerr said. “This sense of entitlement from some in the civil service is completely out of touch.

“Government jobs are not a lifestyle perk — they are a well-paid public duty. Taxpayers fund these jobs and they deserve a government workforce that turns up, works hard, and delivers.

They’re not a perk, but does it matter if they “turn up” or not? Do we insist on the suppliers of paperclips to government being in the a government building? No, we don’t. They can be half way across the country. As long as the van with the paperclips turns up, that’s all we need.

We’ve become so used to large offices, factories or high streets being the norm that many people have forgotten that they were the best invention based on the technology available. At one time, watches were made by craftsmen who subcontracted work to specialists who made springs, hands, dials from their workshops in their homes. No-one stood over them. They asked them to make a certain number of springs and then paid them for doing it. If you can’t measure worker productivity without being in the same office, then you probably shouldn’t be in management.

You couldn’t do this with an office of paper records, filing cabinets and phones. It didn’t work. It’s only when laptops fell to a certain price point and broadband fell in price and various tools appeared that it could.

And people look at this as a “perk” but it’s not a “perk”. Perks are things like happening to be on a nice office in the country, or better coffee. Travelling to work (in terms of both time and money) is a cost. Often a big one. If someone lives in Reading and has to come into the office in London every day, that’s going to be £6000 in travel costs, before we get into the value of their time etc etc. So, you have to pay someone £6000+ for them to come and work in an office in London rather than from home in Reading. The advantage to an organisation is that they can pay less for people by not having to pay that money to them.

The other benefit to an organisation is that they can expand their reach of people. By coincidence, I’ve worked for part of the Scottish Government. Which is roughly 370 miles from where I live. For me to come into the office 2 days a week, I’d have to fly up, and stay in a hotel for 2 nights. I’d want, bare minimum, another £10,000 per year for that. Which the Scottish Government either has to pay, because my skills are so rare, they think that’s the best option. Or, they have to pick from a worse choice.