WFH: A Remote Reality?

Successive Irish governments are embracing the idea of WFH. So why are some companies so keen to get everyone back in the office ASAPP (as soon as pandemic permits)?

Companies like control. They don’t want the government (or you) dictating too many conditions. Grounds for not wanting people working outside the well-defined perimeters of a corporate office include insurance, health and safety etc.

But there are more fundamental concerns too.

WFH and Data Protection

Companies will argue that the pandemic was an exception. Under ordinary conditions, the risk of a data breach through human error (or human spite) is far too high.

Firstly, many global corporations have always had people working from home with access to sensitive customer and company details. Secondly, while the pandemic saw a massive increase in attempted data breaches – this was a concentrated effort during a time of vulnerability.

Every hacker and scammer on Earth knew our corporate force fields were suddenly running on low power. (Ironically, even the hackers were at home. Like the rest of the IT sector, productivity was at an all-time high.)

Recall that during the pandemic the Irish state suffered an attack that practically disabled our health system – right when our vaccine programme was getting into gear.

How did it happen? It was a simple phishing attack. Someone clicked a link and exposed a chink in the software that keeps our personal medical records intact. It could as easily have occurred in an office.

Interestingly – precisely as part of its work from home preparations – the HSE had a public webpage advising staff on how to choose strong passwords. The page included a list of email addresses to contact in case of any problems. It also included a helpful example of a password: mUc&yBo0t5!

Now it’s not impossible to imagine that out of the tens of thousands of workers in the HSE with access to the relevant systems, at least some of them will have used a variation on the suggested password. A simple check on a social media platform gets you the names of HSE workers.

This is not how the story did in fact unfold, but it’s easy to see how it could have. And this is precisely the kind of scenario companies are keen to avoid going forward.

The onus is on companies to get their IT security issues resolved. What’s leftover is a matter of trust. How do you gain trust if not through experience?

There is not a company worth its silicon that has not already asked every employee to sign an NDA. Backing up these agreements is another set of documents, known collectively as the law.

Is it reasonable to assume that employees at home intend to break the law? When your company tells you that you can’t work from home for GDPR, data protection reasons etc. is it really telling you that it does not trust you?

That’s not a great basis for a working relationship.

Culture & Creativity

The idea of company culture is aspirational at best. Casual Friday may be deeply embedded in the culture – but it’s not a great argument for coming to the office Monday to Thursday.

Very few of the things people do at work are particularly creative or unique – and they are unlikely to be part of a definable culture. They are either circumstantial or they are strictures.

Unless you are in a very privileged position or work for an extremely eclectic company, you are probably just sitting at a computer for eight hours a day – now happily working away on your own from home, or (if you are in the office) isolated from your colleagues by a set of headphones and a desk divider with some plexiglass on top.

There is very little culture going on.

If you personally need to be in an office to get your work done at your best (or at least a level that satisfies you and the company), you don’t need to be ordered back in. You want to be there.

What about meetings and presentations? Pure corporate plumbing. We know we can have very effective meetings from home – especially major one-sided ones. (We’ve been getting short blasts of information since the 1950s just by television alone. We call it ‘news’.)

Ok, how about chats around the water cooler and chance encounters in the corridors? If you find you are getting lots of work done through chance encounters or standing at the water cooler, it might be an idea to try more effective meetings.

WFH and Productivity

We know that during the pandemic productivity in certain sectors was up, so let’s approach this one from a different angle. Let’s ignore the rumours that the pandemic provided a golden opportunity to squeeze as much productivity out of workers as is humanly possible without cracking a whip (or having masses of workers cracking up).

Evidence is powerful that the transition to work from home hit parents with small children particularly hard. Studies show that mothers in particular were subject to extraordinary levels of stress. Working mothers suddenly became stay-at-home managers, stay-at-home accountants and so on.

The ‘argument from overwork’ is not a good one for getting anyone back into the office. Parents were hit hard precisely because every outlet for assistance was out of bounds. That’s not the norm.

Society will soon be functioning properly again. Shops are open. Creches are open. Schools are opening. In fact, the opening of society could be yet another boon. (Soon parents can work from home and plonk the kids with granny.)

The real lesson here is to be found in one of the cornerstones of the work from home initiatives currently winding through our political system. It’s not just about the right to request to work from home – it is the right to disconnect from work. That Bill was passed on 12 November 2020. See: https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/bills/bill/2020/55/?tab=bill-text

It might not seem like it based on our pandemic experience – but disconnecting is a lot easier to do at home than it ever was in the office.

Author Bio

Among other things, Gavan Stockdale has a background in teaching and writing. He lives in County Cork but spent many years in Italy and Switzerland. His interests include the impact of technology on human well-being and the potential to improve our quality of life by embracing a more balanced combination of the old and the new.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/gavanstockdale/

Prepared by Suzanna Hayek