Working from home is a return to natural order

HOME working has had so much criticism lately. So, let me put another point of view. There’s nothing new about home working. My father worked from home – he was a clergyman. I now live in a country area where the main occupation is farming and horseracing.

Farmers work from home – they always have done. So, do racehorse trainers, and many of the people employed in farming and equestrian businesses live within walking distance of their work.

Shopkeepers used to live above their shops, and some still do. When I was at school, the local doctor had his surgery in the house where he lived, and his lounge served as his waiting room.

There’s nothing unnatural about working from home. Before the Industrial Revolution, when there was no form of mass transport, this would have been the norm. There were few factories and most people worked from home – often on land not far from their own front doors. Wool was spun and clothes were made at home. The local blacksmith would have had his forge close at hand. None of this prevented people from socialising or enjoying themselves.

You could not commute far in the days of horse and cart.

Factories and offices came with the Industrial Revolution. Feudal tenants were compensated when their land was enclosed, and many of them invested their money by forming partnerships and companies. This helped them invent and buy new machinery which could mass produce many of the products which had previously been made by ‘cottage industries’. Working people flocked to the cities and the new railways made it possible to commute. Commuting accelerated after the invention of the motor car and, in the Second World War, fear of the blitz drove the middle classes out of city centres.

So, far from working from home being a new idea, it can be seen as a return to a natural order of doing things.

There are many arguments against working from home. For example, there is a suggestion that home-working encourages laziness. However, it is not unknown for office workers or factory workers to be lazy, and there are bound to be many computer programmes which monitor a homeworker’s performance and check their output and productivity.

Conversely, there is the complaint that personal interaction is lost when working from home. There is not the lively buzz of the office, leading to the informal exchange between colleagues of experience and ideas.

On the other hand, office banter does not always lead to the constructive exchange of positive ideas and can sometimes look like malingering; and a noisy open plan office with telephones constantly ringing, may not always be the best place for writing carefully considered intelligent and informed reports, or making important commercial or administrative decisions.

We are social creatures, and we all prefer to meet in person rather than virtually, but virtual meetings do have advantages. You don’t have to book a room for a virtual meeting, nor do you have to pay any travel expenses. So, there is no limit to the meetings you can hold or to the number of people you can invite to take part. This was particularly useful for local authorities during Covid.

In fact, home-working has many positives.

Corporate bodies can operate from smaller premises; they don’t have to maintain huge office buildings. They can employ people from all over the world. I know of at least one international firm which will pay for the construction of offices for its home-workers in their own gardens.

Conferences can be arranged with guest speakers appearing from all over the world by video-link – something which works well for universities.

Workers don’t have to sit for hours in traffic jams on the way to and from work. They have more time to spend with their families and pets, more time to exercise themselves and walk the dog; more time to socialise after work and more money to spend in the local pub.

The environment benefits from the reduction in emissions. Perhaps the high street could benefit too. If rush-hour commuter traffic is cleared out of the towns, perhaps shoppers will come back into town again, instead of relying on out-of-town shopping malls.

There are some disadvantages, particularly for families living in small houses during school holidays or who have small children who they cannot afford to send to nursery.

There are occupations which are not susceptible to home-working, and others where ‘hot-desking’ and hybrid working is more appropriate.

We tend to be suspicious of change as change is not always for the best, but I see home-working as real progress with benefits which far outweigh its disadvantages.