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Working from 9 to 5,
What a way to make a living
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Picture from Facebook
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Do you remember this movie with the little song by Dolly Parton? Click on the picture above to listen to it again while you are reading.
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The September 12 issue of the Economist featured the best article on remote working that I have read in a long time. Here is my version of it.
People particularly fond of their pyjamas have for decades been arguing that a lot of work done in large, shared offices could better be done at home. With covid-19 their ideas were put to the test in a huge if not randomised trial. And yes, a lot of work can be done at home; and what is more, many people seem to prefer doing it there. This does not, in itself, mean the end of the non-home office. It does mean that there is a live debate to be had.
On August 28th Pinterest, a social-media firm, paid $90m to end a new lease obligation on office space near its headquarters in San Francisco to create a “more distributed workforce”. Others seem to be against it. Also, that month, Facebook signed a new lease on a big office in Manhattan. Bloomberg is reportedly offering a stipend of up to £55 ($75) a day to get its workers back to its building in London. Governments, on which some of the burden will fall if the pandemic persists, are taking a similar tack, encouraging people “back to work”—by which they mean “back to the office”.
They face a difficult task. For working from home seems to have suited many white-collar employees. As lockdowns started to ease during the summer, people have gone out into the world once more but many continue to shun the office, even as schools reopen and thus make it a more feasible option for working parents. The latest data suggest that only 50% of people in five big European countries spend every workday in the office (see chart 1).
Look at the cultural differences too.
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Working from home can make people happier. A paper published in 2017 in the American Economic Review found that workers were willing to accept an 8% pay cut to work from home, suggesting it gives them non-monetary benefits. Average meeting lengths appear to decline (see chart 2).
And people commute less, or not at all. That is great for wellbeing. Britain’s Office for National Statistics has found that “commuters have lower life satisfaction…lower levels of happiness and higher anxiety on average than non-commuters’’. The working-from-home happiness boost could, in turn, make workers more productive. In most countries the average worker reports that, under lockdown, she got more done than she would have in the office.
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Continue reading
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On the Nomadic IBP calendar
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Due to the success of our previous Masterclasses, we are offering now one on "Zoom for facilitators", on Tuesday 3 November from 14.00 to 16.00 CET.
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Sign up now!
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Train the Online Trainer
A new group starts the Train the Online Trainer programme late in November (Monday evenings). Sign up here.
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Open Lab Sessions
Free for Nomadic alumni, November's session is on the 13th at 16.00 CET.
Sign up here!
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Online Facilitation Mastery
The second group of the ‘Online Facilitation Mastery’, a new programme for experienced online facilitators, starts on January 13.
More info here.
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See our calendar here!
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Participants in Nomadic IBP’s open programmes now receive a digital badge instead of a certificate, once they have completed all requirements. A digital badge connects with your online profiles on various platforms, such as LinkedIn, and shows detailed information about the programme you have attended and what you have done to earn the badge. This increases your exposure to potential clients, employers, networks etc.
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Click on the above video to know more about digital badges
(the video will open in your browser)
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