Working from home How to get your office mojo back
As many prepare to return to the office, Harriet Minter asks if we really need to say goodbye to WFH
Over the past year, the UK has moved from barely six per cent of its workforce regularly working from home to over 50 per cent – a shift that home-working advocates have been pushing for decades. But after being forced onto many of us, thanks to the pandemic, this is likely coming to an end; yesterday Howard Dawber, head of strategy at Canary Wharf Group, told Radio 4’s Today programme that “from March 29 onwards I think we will see people starting to return to the workplace”.
“There is a lot of fatigue out there,” the head of the financial complex said, adding that while he expected numbers of on-site workers to return to pre-pandemic levels, flexible working may continue, “which would be a good thing.”
But given the option, will we want to keep home working? And a year on, what have we learnt?
One friend’s boss has hated it so much that within half an hour of Boris Johnson announcing his roadmap last week, he had emailed the entire company saying that he expected to see them back in the office on March 8 (even though social distancing restrictions won’t have lifted).
For him and many others, home working is something we should leave in 2020, along with face masks and not being able to go to the pub. For people living alone it has been isolating and lonely; those working from bed in a cramped flatshare or having to juggle the day job with homeschooling have also seen the past 12 months as a serious struggle.
But working from home during a pandemic is not the same as working from home at any other time. Without a killer virus and a governmentmandated stay-at-home order, it could revolutionise work in a way we haven’t seen since the advent of the personal computer. And I should know, I’ve been doing it for nearly 15 years.
In 2007, I was working for a small start-up. We all worked out of one room and one colleague loved to chat – a pleasant distraction, mostly, but untenable in times of urgent focus. I
asked my boss if I could work from home, borrowed the company laptop (we had one between us) and the next day set up my “office” at the kitchen table. By lunchtime I had achieved the same amount I would usually have done in a day. Many managers fear productivity will fall but it’s amazing how much more you can get done, and how quickly you can do it, when you don’t constantly have people popping to the side of your desk. It’s shocking to me that we prize the daily commute and multitude of distractions over being able to work from home.
More bizarrely, we’ve tended to think of working from home as something done by women who want to spend extra time with their children and are prepared to sacrifice their careers for it. But all they really wanted was to be able to pick their offspring up from school, eat dinner with them – and then keep working. Those “unambitious” women were putting in the same hours, if not more, and being penalised simply because they chose to do it from somewhere other than the office.
This historic dismissal of working from home led to those who might have wanted to do it keeping quiet. There has long been a fear that it means out of sight, out of mind – and that if you’re not physically in the office you won’t be remembered come promotion and pay-rise time. But Covid should have shown managers that productivity rather than presenteeism is what counts – any business that still believes you can only collaborate when people are in the same room needs to work on creating a company culture worth more than the building they’re headquartered in.
Productivity actually increased over the past year, due to workers starting earlier and being more focused during the day. One study found that workers reported improved work-life balance as well. However, this doesn’t mean that we should all expect to be working from home full time going forward. A recent survey from Zurich Insurance found that nearly 60 per cent of people wanted to work from home for the majority of their working week – but this still leaves 40 per cent who are missing the office.
A more hybrid model is on the horizon: one where organisations will need to adapt to having teams in different places at different times, and where remote workers will have to proactively build networks and chase down opportunities. This third way will involve offices themselves: some companies have revealed that they plan to part with permanent floor space (and expensive fixed rental costs) in favour of co-working spaces where employees can pop in for meetings. The future may not be as binary as office and home, then, but a means of combining the two, where staff still have the option to come in and bounce ideas off one another.
In order for all of this to work, businesses need to let go of some myths they’ve been holding onto. Firstly, the most important person in your business isn’t the person who spends the most time in the office. Secondly, underperforming home workers are not doing so because they’re at home. Every business had underperforming employees in the office, too: it’s not about location, but motivation. And finally, management isn’t a side project, but a job that requires the correct skills and training. Companies who do this will be rewarded with happier, more productive employees.
No one knows what the offices of the future will look like but I’d predict that they will be more collaborative as people come into them specifically to spend time with their colleagues. The rows of open-plan desks will be replaced with spaces where people can actually work together, rather than just sit next to each other.
And we’ll finally let go of the belief that we have to come into work even when we’re ill. We all know how a virus spreads now, after all.
In last week’s Antiques Trade Gazette, a painting called Germination (2001), purporting to be by the Indian modernist S H Raza (1922-2016), was reported as having sold for £40,000 on Feb 17 at Surrey auctioneers John Nicholson’s.
Brilliantly coloured, the painting relates to Raza’s Mandala (cosmic diagram) series. His early work from the Seventies has fetched over $4 million at auction. A late Nineties Mandala painting of the same size and similar composition as the Nicholson’s example sold recently for $241,000 (£173,000).
Forty thousand pounds, then, seemed a bit cheap. So, just as the BBC’S Fake or Fortune team would do, I contacted Anne Macklin, who represents the New Delhi-based Raza Foundation in the UK, to see if this really was a Raza. Macklin is compiling the catalogue raisonné for the foundation, so she should know.
Before the auction, Macklin wrote to Nicholson’s asking for more information on the picture, but never heard back. She has now written to the buyer, who contacted her after the sale, to tell them that, although the painting is signed and inscribed and came with an unrecognised certificate of authentication, the foundation would not be including Germination in the catalogue raisonné. They are not calling it a fake. Too many foundations and authentication bodies have become embroiled in expensive legal proceedings this way. They are telling the buyer that this is an opinion, “based on the current knowledge we have about the artist, and according to the elements that you have provided to us, in particular the provenance.”
“This opinion could vary,” they add, “according to factors brought to our attention after the date of examination of the work.” Although this allows for a change of opinion, the decision will immediately torpedo the buyer’s chances of reselling it as a Raza. In all likelihood, the buyer will take it back to Nicholson’s and ask
The decision will torpedo the chance of reselling it as a Raza
for a refund. That is because the auctioneers took responsibility by fully cataloguing the painting i.e., giving the artist’s full name (S.H Raza) in the catalogue description. (Had they just called the artist “Raza” or “follower of .... ”, the buyer would have no recourse). Nicholson’s has not responded to messages from The Telegraph requesting a statement, but the foundation hopes that, in future, auctioneers will contact them before they sell work they believe to be by the artist.
JOHN FITZPATRICK, who has died aged 74, was a versatile footballer for Manchester United; he eventually became a dependable full-back towards the end of the Matt Busby era and into the uncharted waters of life without the great manager at the helm.
He was born in Aberdeen on August 18 1946, and played for a local youth side, Thistle Lads’ Club. He was spotted by scouts from Manchester United in 1961, and signed as an apprentice the following year.
In April 1964 he won the FA Youth Cup alongside such future first-team luminaries as George Best, John Aston and David Sadler, then made his senior debut in February 1965, deputising at left-half for the injured Nobby Stiles in a 1–0 defeat at Sunderland.
In October that year he became Manchester United’s first substitute in a League match, coming on for his fellow Aberdonian Denis Law in a 5–1 reverse at Tottenham Hotspur. “Imagine replacing my hero!” he recalled. “I was almost embarrassed.”
He was employed sparingly at wing-half over the next couple of seasons, his appearances limited by the excellence of Stiles and Pat Crerand. Although he was not picked for the 1968 European Cup final against Benfica at Wembley, he played in several games on the way, including the quarter-final second leg against the Polish side Gornik in 1968, in freezing conditions in front of a seething crowd of more than 70,000. United lost 1-0, but went through on aggregate, and Busby described it as one of United’s finest nights.
Fitzpatrick began to be used in defence, and in February 1969, when he deputised at right-back for Shay Brennan, he found his true niche – though his progress stalled when he was sent off in the European Cup semi-final against Milan in the San Siro Stadium.
“Kurt Hamrin, who played for Sweden, spat at me and I should not have retaliated,” he recalled. “Spitting at a fellow professional was new at that time. I turned round and smacked him on the chin.” He had to be escorted by police to the dressing room for his own protection, and was banned for eight weeks.
By then, with Busby on his way out of Old Trafford, United entered a period of gradual decline. Though
Fitzpatrick established himself as first-choice right-back when Shay Brennan left, he entered a gradual decline of his own after a tackle from the Leeds United midfielder Johnny Giles (which Fitzpatrick insisted was a “50-50” challenge) damaged his knee ligaments.
He had been, he later admitted, no angel himself. Asked who was the greatest player he had faced, he replied: “Jimmy Greaves of Tottenham. He was a great guy. I marked him at White Hart Lane and humped him all over the park. After the game we shook hands and had a drink. He was fantastic.”
Fitzpatrick struggled on for a couple of seasons with his dodgy knee, enduring four operations, and managed to play most of the 1970-71 season. But eventually, he said, “I was told it was either give up or end up in a wheelchair.” He played his 147th and last match for United in September 1972, a 2-0 defeat at Wolves.
In retirement he returned to Aberdeen, where he was a wine merchant, and briefly managed the Highland League sides Buckie Thistle and Huntly.
John Fitzpatrick, who suffered from dementia in later years, married Barbara, another Aberdonian, who worked alongside him in the wine trade. She survives him with their daughter. In 2019 his grandson, Louis Gray, joined Dundee FC’S academy.
John Fitzpatrick, born August 18 1946, died December 21 2020
CHANNEL 5, 10PM
Matt Cottingham’s stimulating documentary
offers a brisk survey of the highest peak in the world crowning the Nepalese Himalayas, including: the various attempts to scale it; why Sherpas make perfect mountaineers; and how it continues to claim lives as the numbers of tourists hoping to summit its peak swells each year.