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ARE you at work right now?
And if so, where?
The UK is now the work-from-home capital of Europe[/caption]
Staff at Man Utd have just been told by new co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe that working from home is no longer an option[/caption]
Are you in an office, on a factory floor, in a hospital or school, out and about in your van or off to a sales meeting maybe?
Or are you still in your pyjamas sitting at the kitchen table pretending to look alert in a Zoom meeting with colleagues on your laptop?
If this is you, then I have some helpful advice: don’t even THINK about applying for a job at Manchester United Football Club.
Why not?
Well, because the 1,100 staff at Man Utd have just been told by new co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe that working from home is no longer an option.
In a straight-talking message, they have been given one week to decide if they will return to the office — or they will have to seek “alternative employment”.
Sir Jim explained that everyone needs to be on the club premises to do their job because he believes that having everyone at their desks will boost productivity, communication and collaboration, and promote unity into the bargain.
And Sir Jim is, of course, 100 per cent right.
After all, there’s a strong possibility that someone who has built a multi-billion-pound company, INEOS, from scratch to become one of the richest men in the world might know a tad more about how to run a business than the rest of us.
I just hope more employers follow suit and we can finally put the WFH insanity behind us and get this country back in the workplace once and for all.
We keep being told that working from home — also known as flexible, hybrid or remote working — is the modern new way to do things.
Commuting is old hat and workers get so much more done when they don’t waste hours travelling or chatting with colleagues next to the photocopier.
That sounds convincing, doesn’t it?
Yes, but it’s a shame that the actual evidence doesn’t back up the claim.
Just one in eight people was working from home at least one day a week in 2019, but three years later, post-lockdown, that figure was up to four in ten.
The UK remains the work-from-home capital of Europe but we’ve yet to see our productivity streak ahead of that of our continental neighbours.
And in the public sector, where home working has become the default for civil servants in Whitehall and local councils, productivity has fallen to crisis levels.
How could that possibly be true if all these workers are now so much more efficient toiling away in their spare bedrooms or on dining tables?
Despite all the claims that home-working is the future, I’m afraid the experiment has failed
Julia Hartley-Brewer
Let’s not forget too that home-bound civil servants can even cost lives, as they did during the Kabul airlift in 2021, when many Foreign Office staff were working remotely and failed to process visa applications from desperate Afghan interpreters in time to get them on the last planes out.
Despite all the claims that home- working is the future, I’m afraid the experiment has failed.
And not just for the people sitting at home — it’s failed for everyone else too.
Our economy isn’t made up of individuals working in isolation.
It’s a complex web of interconnecting jobs that rely on each other to survive.
After all, when millions of workers stay in their homes all day, they don’t spend their money on buses and trains, on lunchtime sandwiches and coffees, or head to the shops or the pub after leaving the office, or get a late-night taxi home, then all of the people working in THOSE jobs lose out.
You only have to look at the empty streets of our capital city on a Friday to understand why so many shops, pubs, restaurants, theatres and nightclubs are closing every week.
And it’s all very well for the laptop classes to say that EVERYONE should work from home, but not everyone can.
Going back to the workplace isn’t just about boosting the economy. It’s about boosting our wellbeing too
Julia Hartley-Brewer
You can’t police the streets or drive a bus from home. You can’t wait tables or serve pints or clean an office from home.
You can’t be a plumber or an electrician or a bricklayer from home.
You can’t fight a war, perform open heart surgery or care for an elderly dementia patient from home.
And you definitely can’t teach a classroom of children from home.
We all saw what happened to our children’s learning when teachers did that during the lockdowns.
We started with flexible working for mums with young children, which was a great idea, but now that’s exploded into what many people see as a RIGHT for anyone to work from home — and even from a beach on a tropical island.
This is getting silly and it’s time we all went back to the real world.
Going back to the workplace isn’t just about boosting the economy. It’s about boosting our wellbeing too.
Work also isn’t just about being able to pay your bills, it’s also good for the soul — and for your physical health too
Julia Hartley-Brewer
If your commute is just pulling on a dressing gown and heading from the bedroom to the kitchen table, then life may well be passing you by.
Human beings are social animals.
We need to be around other people. Staring at a screen all day isn’t enough for us.
And it certainly isn’t enough for our young people, many of whom are being forced to sit at home all day working remotely, without another soul for company and unable to learn from more experienced colleagues.
Work also isn’t just about being able to pay your bills, it’s also good for the soul — and for your physical health too.
It’s not just banter with your workmates, it’s working as a team, sharing ideas and, yes, the trip to the pub at the end of the week too.
And where better to meet your friends and — for many people — their future husband or wife?
Sir Jim Ratcliffe knows a thing or two about running a successful business and he has rightly called time on working from home at Manchester United.
The plain truth is it just doesn’t work.
- Listen to Julia on Talk Radio from 10am-1pm every Monday to Thursday.
Our economy isn’t made up of individuals working in isolation[/caption]
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