The "work from home" debate

is raging again. The Downunder PM thinks WFH is a good idea, especially for all those "public servants" in the nation's capital. The Opposition leader thinks those same people should be back in the office.

WFH started with the Covid lock downs of course. Some people have been (ab)using it ever since.

Yes, some people can work well and effectively from home but others cannot and should not. There are very few people who are so well disciplined that they can do the same amount of work from home and do it just as effectively as they would if they were "in the office".  I know just two people I believe are working from home just as effectively as they would in the office. 

I also know several people who should not be working from home at all.  One is a former neighbour who takes his children to school and picks them up in the afternoon. On the way back from taking the children to school he picks up a coffee in the local shopping centre. He walks the dog during work time and is not averse to a chat with his neighbours if they let him. Thankfully they are alert to the issue and now refuse to engage him in conversation during work time.

There is another who simply uses WFH as a means to pass work over to colleagues. She is known as "Ms FIITO" - or "the file is in the office". How much longer she will get away with it I do not know but she was having a leisurely coffee with a friend in the shopping centre last week - and even admitted she should have been working.

All the arguments that working from home means that people are more efficient and get more done are arguments I do not believe at all. The idea that everyone uses the time they might have used to travel to and from the office to actually do some work is something I do not believe at all. Yes, there are rare individuals who might - and I know of one - but most will not. The idea that they are more efficient is something I have long since ceased to believe. There have been far too many occasions when I have been told "the file is in the office and I cannot access it from here". 

All too often work is being delayed and decisions are not being made because someone is not there and information is not available. There is also the lack of casual interaction which can lead to information sharing, idea sharing and more. It may seem a waste of time when it actually occurs but that remark at the coffee machine in the office can lead to other things.

I would never have been a "drinks after work" person and I never socialised after hours with the other staff when I was teaching. I don't think any of them did except on the most rare of occasions but we had social interactions during the day. I travelled on public transport and I knew some of the other regular commuters in that casual sort of way that people do. We didn't talk all the time but there was always help there when I needed it - and people were not looking at the screens on their phones. 

Now people do not know one another even in the same casual way. There has been a rise in people with mental health issues, people who feel anxious and people who feel lonely.  The "Covid lock downs" are blamed but we do not seem to have come to grips with the idea that it was the isolation which was the major part of the problem. WFH is isolating too. It is not all that it seems to be. It might seem like a good thing but it might be better to go back to the office.