Why did we fall out of love with WFH?
This was clearly a false utopia from around May 2020, when became obvious that for every senior manager WFH from the Cotswolds (with a spare wife to look after the kids), there were 20 workers in crowded flatshares working from bedrooms.

Productivity increased, leading many companies to plan WFH on a permanent basis. This now seems premature. Once strategy is decided and innovation has taken place, there is a period of time when this is carried out. But at some point, you need to decide on the next strategy.

What became obvious (but not to journalist commentators who are able to work in silos) was that innovation and creativity happens face to face. You need non-verbal communication. You also need to mentor the younger workforce. People who work in teams need to meet in person.

Increasingly, workers have been expected to attend Zoom calls during their commute time, and not take breaks during the day. No allowance for parents, no understanding of the importance of mentally and physically bookending the day or compartmentalising work and home life.

Email was both a blessing and a curse. No queueing for the fax machine, or waiting for documents to arrive by post. It made us more efficient, but the downside has been that many people are never allowed to leave work.

Zoom runs the same risk. We have people describing Zoom headache from trying to discern meaning from multiple faces in 2D, whilst being constantly visible in return. Will people now be expected to attend Zoom meetings when on holiday, or outside working hours?

We are a working generation that is constantly ‘on’. WFH culture could have been an opportunity to use commute time to a achieve more flexible working structure, reducing discrimination, allowing breaks during the day to do the school run, exercise or meet a friend for coffee.

Instead we have people working more hours for the same money, whilst their privileged bosses earn bonuses from the increased output of their exhausted, stressed workforce.

Commute time was often the only time people could switch off. The walk to the station or a crowded tube made you put your phone away and change your position, benefitting both mind and body. If this effect is taken away, it needs to be put back somewhere else.

Having the infrastructure to work from home presents an opportunity for everyone to benefit from hybrid working and achieve a better work / life balance. It would be a shame if it failed for the simple reason that down time isn’t built into the execution.