Working from home suits me but it’s not easy for everyone, Leo
TÁNAISTE Leo Varadkar tweeted a photo yesterday morning of his desk in what presumably is one of the bedrooms in his house. On it were a printer and boxed computer hardware from Dell, a notebook, highlighter pen, microphone and, to the right, what appeared to be a pair of those bathroom slippers you get in posh hotels (or, for all I know, they come with the guest accommodation in Farmleigh).
The tweet read: ‘Setting up my new home working station. The Govt wants remote working to become part of the new normal. If done right, the benefits will be huge; reduced business costs, better work-life balance especially for parents, less traffic, lower emissions & time saved on the commute.’
And, of course, readers of this newspaper will be familiar with Mr Varadkar’s new zeal for home-working. He also holds the business and jobs portfolios in the new Cabinet and he has outlined a vision of a changed employment landscape, one in which a great many more of us will be spared the tribulations of that daily commute.
As one who has worked from home for 14 years, I can confirm there is a great deal of merit in his plan. My home is single-storey and there are precisely 17 paces between my bed and the swivel chair at my desk, a trip broken each morning only by hopping into the shower. Yes, I sometimes am obliged to cover events all over the country, and even beyond, but for the most part, my entire universe is very small indeed, and familiarity with the process of home working certainly made my personal lockdown easier.
Structure
There were, however, other important considerations. I have the space to dedicate an entire room as a work space, and as well as a desktop and laptop and table and phone, it has a television, a radio, a small fridge, and a kettle. In winter, it is self-contained, the only space I need to heat until I later move to the big room to make dinner and crash out in front of the really big TV.
Perhaps even more so, though, is that I live alone. I don’t have a partner around whose own working life I might have to orbit, nor adult children skulking about the place all battling for broadband, nor grandchildren who have to be minded while their parents are at work. Hundreds of thousands of others do have to worry about these things, and that is why home working might not be for everyone, even those whose jobs ostensibly lend themselves to it quite readily.
I have many friends who have spent the last four months trying to juggle childminding and home-schooling with their jobs. I know of young couples working from one-bedroom apartments, which means one of them spends all day in the bedroom and the other at the breakfast bar. Without proper desks and ergonomic chairs, working from home can’t be a great deal of fun.
I know of another situation, with four young professionals who share a house; they’re not coming to blows but they still fight for space and quiet as they all work different hours.
It is a couple of decades now since the tech sector led the way for home-working. All you needed was a computer and a good internet connection and you could be anywhere, but people soon tired of it and gravitated back to offices – Apple’s
Cupertino headquarters in California occupies a bigger footprint than the Pentagon, and 12,000 people work on site. They spent $5billion building it so they’re hardly likely to say, ‘OK, everyone go home and the last one leaving, turn out the lights’.
What the tech industry very likely found is that going to an office serves two functions, the work one and the social one, and they often act in creative tandem. An idea tossed forth and back in person slouched on a beanbag in the Googleplex can be teased out more casually, but perhaps more inventively too, than one proffered and discussed within the more formal structure of a Zoom video meeting. On screen, you’re much more likely to have to wait your turn, and perhaps less likely to advance a complex theory when every eye literally is upon you, and every word is being recorded and stored.
And, of course, there are many more people who never will be able to work from home, be they doctors and nurses, postal workers, refuse collectors, maintenance workers, and so on. For others, any increase in home work might leave their own jobs precarious to redundancy – estate agents who deal in office space that no longer is needed, café workers now deprived of the footfall that kept them busy, the concourse staff in train stations running at half their previous capacity. The coronavirus is going to change every certainty we thought we knew, and the repercussions will be immense. Most of them we probably haven’t even thought of, though there are early warning signs.
Benefits
Lots of services suppliers in city centres – taxi firms with company accounts, cleaners, caterers, restaurants dependent on generous expense accounts – will feel the pinch, yes, but more money will stay in local economies. There are huge potential benefits for the economies of dormitory towns that serve Dublin in particular, with more money staying within Louth, Meath, Kildare, Wicklow, Wexford, and beyond. With portability of employment, pressure on the housing market would evaporate overnight.
Above all, though, there is the issue of work-life balance. Freed from the shackles of the commute and the stress of city life, families could and would thrive – and if some need a balance and a break from the children, then three days at home and two in the office very likely will be the way forward.
One way or the other, employment for hundreds of thousands never again will be the way it once was. So have a root around your junk room, because there’s bound to be a pair of hotel slippers somewhere and you’re very likely going to need them.