For a little over 1000 days, the Australian software company Atlassian has been allowing its employees to work pretty much wherever they like. Last week, it reported what it had learnt.
Its employees were more productive. On average, they worked an extra 40 minutes. They saved 10 days a year by not commuting. They spent 13 per cent less time in meetings.
The work from home debate is set to be a major issue for Labor and the Coalition.Credit: Jim Pavlidis
To some, this won’t be a surprise. Pre-pandemic, one of the most famous studies of working from home found a 13 per cent increase in productivity. Some more recent studies, though, have found the opposite: that workers are significantly less productive at home (though one of the authors of the original study suggests this might be due to poor management, as companies too-rapidly adapted to pandemic conditions).
The tedious conclusion is that it’s too early in this grand experiment to know. Which should prompt the question: why are so many large businesses so desperate to get their workers back into the office? Atlassian executive Annie Dean said this: “What we found is that these decisions tend to be made on a gut basis or on feelings”.
We should be wary when feelings dominate, because they can be the product of unexamined assumptions.
A Forbes magazine article noted that business leaders have been taught that face-to-face time is a proxy for worker productivity; that we tend to be more influenced by what we first learn about a subject, meaning older leaders cling to this belief; and that once we form beliefs we become good at ignoring evidence to the contrary.
These assumptions go beyond individuals, though: they are part of a wider ideology, in the sense that literary critic James Wood explains it: “Ideology is always trying to mask itself, and pass itself off as natural or even invisible.”
The emphasis on “face time” does not exist in isolation: it is part of a set of seemingly “natural” ideas most of us have about work being good, more work being better, hard workers being admirable, and that it is impossible to be both an effective employee and someone with other priorities.
With homeownership out of reach, the workplace as we know it is dead
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21.01.2024
For a little over 1000 days, the Australian software company Atlassian has been allowing its employees to work pretty much wherever they like. Last week, it reported what it had learnt.
Its employees were more productive. On average, they worked an extra 40 minutes. They saved 10 days a year by not commuting. They spent 13 per cent less time in meetings.
The work from home debate is set to be a major issue for Labor and the Coalition.Credit: Jim Pavlidis
To some, this won’t be a surprise. Pre-pandemic, one of the most famous studies........
© The Sydney Morning Herald
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