The great debate on working from home

Anyone who has applied for a job recently will have noticed certain words and acronyms that were not necessarily common before the coronavirus lockdowns.

In the past, employment was listed as full time, part time, maternity cover, fixed term and so on. But since the days of lockdown there has been a rise in the use of a whole set of different references: for example, WFH, hybrid, or office based for three days. And anyone who runs a team will be familiar with conversations about colleagues who want to work from home.

It’s not a new concept: when Marissa Meyer took over as chief executive of Yahoo! in 2012, one of her challenges was to reverse the floundering tech giant’s plunging audience numbers. Within her first 12 months a memo was sent out instructing all staff that working from home was no longer an option, with only some very specific exceptions.

The argument was that teams working in creative roles were more productive when they were sitting in the same space as other people in similar roles, and could bounce ideas off each other. The counter argument was that the option to work from home made simply having a job more feasible, especially for women previously unable to work because of childcare responsibilities: WFH gave them the flexibility they needed to be able to work at all.

Mayer eventually resigned as audience numbers continued to fall. It’s unlikely that any office, empty or full, would have solved that.

Meanwhile anyone with children will be all too familiar with often crippling childcare costs that hold them to ransom. Working from home meant that for a lot of families this not insignificant bill was seriously reduced.

However, if you are career driven and ambitious, it pays to be seen in the office — especially if you’re male. Men who work from home are 15 percent less likely to be promoted and 10 percent less likely to receive a pay rise. According to a report in HR Review, women have a 7 percent lower likelihood of promotion and an 8 percent lower chance of a pay rise if they work entirely from home.

The disparity continues in high pressured work environments for men and women. In fact, it is worse: managers were about 30 percent less likely to promote and 19 percent less likely to award pay rises to men who worked from home compared to their office-based colleagues.

The question is, just how much of a work-life balance do you want, and do you want your home to become your workplace?

Peter Harrison

Women in similar environments had a 15 percent lower chance of promotion and a 19 percent lower chance of a pay rise.

The research found that family-friendly companies were less inclined to discriminate in the same way. The problem for a job seeker, of course, is finding such companies.

The debate about remote working is that it is not clear cut, despite a lot of research on the subject, especially since COVID. One of the biggest areas up for discussion is how remote work influences productivity. Many people claim that during lockdown they and their colleagues were more productive: indeed many companies praised their teams for upping their game during the pandemic. But since the COVID restrictions were lifted there has been a debate about whether this has continued, and it is anything but straightforward.

According to a report published last year by Fortune there is a 10-20 percent reduction in productivity among those who work fully remotely. However, another study of 16,000 employees of a travel agency call center, reported by the Stanford business school, found that working from home increased productivity by 13 percent, mosly because of fewer work breaks and sick days.

Whatever the truth, many city centers have become ghost towns: San Francisco’s once vibrant business district, for example, is dead.

The pandemic changed how we lead our lives, not just at work but also we shop. The internet became a global mall for many, a habit that appears to have continued.

The question is, just how much of a work-life balance do you want, and do you want your home to become your workplace? Do you want the morning briefing with your boss to be face-to-face or over a computer into home? And do you want that bad day in the office to extend into your home — for example, if the boss gives you grief while you’re sitting with the cat in your living room?

Whatever the outcome, there are many jobs and industries eagerly following the discussion — not least property companies and delivery drivers.

• Peter Harrison is a senior editor at Arab News in the Dubai office. He has covered the Middle East for more than a decade. X: @PhotoPJHarrison