Virus can alter our lives for the better
THE irony of the spread of the coronavirus may be that it leads to a new, and thoroughly welcome, way of working. I have worked from home since 1982 and have long believed that if more businesses embraced home working, it would provide incalculable benefits for the economy and the environment. In the 1980s I ran the marketing operations of a company in the UK, U.S., Germany and Australia all from home. We were a multi-millionpound concern that won the Queen’s Award for Export (so it wasn’t a bedroom company). I then ran my own marketing companies, but in the past 20 years I ran auctions of historical documents. I semi-retired in 2015 and now concentrate on buying and selling these documents. The auctions, incidentally, started off in salerooms, but towards the end were entirely on the internet. The last one I did grossed over £100,000 and we ran it with just me, an auctioneer and a guy working an internet console from a small office in the middle of nowhere. So it can be easily done with a bit of imagination and the right attitude. Most office jobs can easily be operated via home working, with links via internet/Skype/FaceTime etc. With millions more doing so, the need for commuting would be radically reduced — so fewer cars on the road, fewer crowded trains and buses, and this will inevitably mean less pollution and less congestion. How many years in a working life are spent in the grind of just getting to and from work? Workers will be saved from this daily drudgery, meaning more time for more productive work as well as more leisure time. For decades, the problem with acceptance of home working has been one of trust. For some bizarre reason, in this country we seem to have a philosophy that work must contain elements of pain and suffering: struggling through the bad weather to get to work on time in the dark days of winter is somehow regarded as cleansing for the soul. Utter rubbish! Operating from home, whereby you can organise your own day and take the odd period out to go shopping or do the school run, is deemed tantamount to sacrilege — ‘swinging the lead’, is an accusation often made by managers. Yet the majority of people who work from home are diligent. They have families to feed and mortgages and rent to pay, and as any dalliance is quickly evidenced in results, those who cannot be trusted will be eradicated. How much time and effort is wasted in endless office ‘meetings’, held just to ensure everyone seems to be occupied in what they are doing — surely the biggest loss to the economy of all? So the Covid-19 illness may do our economy and environment a great favour. Once businesses realise that staff can operate efficiently from home, it may lead to a radical new way in which we operate. RICHARD WESTWOOD-BROOKES,
Bucknell, Shrops.