Home working issue is easily solved without a culture war

Look, I’m not suggesting the entire world of work should radically and permanently alter because I can’t be faffed chopping more carrot sticks, but can we keep it in mind?

Things I miss: my colleagues, their chat. The spontaneity of having someone to gab to because they’re right there, rather than sending an email and waiting for a reply. People to moan to, I miss that as well. My pot plants and the temporary cats I care for have absorbed a lot of frustration.

Working from home – the topic of the day. It’s a topic not going anywhere any time soon, not with so much at stake.

And, as with so many other issues, instead of a level-headed discussion about the pros and cons, we’re entering another us-and-them culture war between the office-goers and the stay-at-homes.

First, the political divide on where people work. Last summer, Boris Johnson was all for sending people straight back to the office, making a clear preference for wealth over health.

Nicola Sturgeon, consistently differing from the Prime Minister, told Scots that she would see no-one forced back to offices and made health a priority over wealth. English bullies favouring the economy vs caring Scots prioritising wellbeing.

Throughout the pandemic there has been talk of “building back better”, shifting the way we live and work to accommodate new and better practices developed with the urgency of necessity.

Working from home was one such. Staff enjoyed being at home. They didn’t miss the commute, they were just as productive as in the office, and they thrived with a better sense of work-life balance.

Of course, there were the trials of home schooling and battling for WiFi bandwidth, and trying to find quiet spaces in overwhelmed households. But the benefits still shone through and would shine even brighter under more “normal” circumstances when schools and nurseries started back up again.

But we should have known it would never last. Following Mr Johnson’s insistence that office life is better for productivity, we’ve had Rishi Sunak trying to get down with the kids and persuade them that in-office contact, and not his public school or Oxford education, gave him the connections needed to thrive.

Kevin Ellis, chairman of PwC in the UK, has said this week that businesses have a duty to get their staff back into offices. There have been suggestions that home workers won’t be promoted.

Where persuasion fails, threats to hit home workers in the pocket are being tried instead. A Whitehall insider told the Daily Mail that civil servants might be stripped of their London weighting if they didn’t come and work in London, though Downing Street later clarified that this would not be happening. In the US, Google has developed a wages calculator that tots up the commuting costs of an employee and reduces adjusts their salary accordingly.

The big banks are applying the thumbscrews, too. “If you want to get paid New York rates,” James Gorman, Morgan Stanley’s chief executive, is said to have told colleagues, “you work in New York.” The worry is that where the US leads, the UK will follow.

The snippy debate over who’s the most prized employee shows no sign of calming amid hardline takes from big business and politicians. Forget all the groundwork that has been laid about the emptiness of presenteeism and how working harder isn’t necessarily working smarter. Forget all the talk of wellbeing and mental health – we’re back to squabbling over who is best.

Is it the home worker, bra off and jogging bottoms on, lounging on the sofa watching daytime TV – there’s no way she’s pulling her weight? Or is it the in-office commuter, wrecking the environment with his five-day commute and pretend productivity?

But it’s not really about the money. Or, of course it’s about the money – but it really shouldn’t be.

You can argue back and forth about which is more cost effective for the employee: savings might be made on commuting costs but those are offset by sky-high utility bills and having to buy your loo roll. Employers are making savings on overheads where they downsize.

Businesses should be focusing on the value of their employees and paying them accordingly, not docking wages due to their location.

Politicians should be alive to the cares and concerns of workers, but a Tory government is more agitated by the concerns of landlords who stand to lose out on renting prime city centre real estate. They are concerned about the health of city centres and the economy that builds up around offices.

Yet the city centre pound is being spent in local high streets. Home workers aren’t going without their flat whites, they’re just buying them in local coffee shops rather than big chains.

Anyway, it’s not the responsibility of office workers to shore up city centres, it’s the responsibility of local authorities and government to come up with new ways for our cities to thrive.

That, really, is the issue here. In yet another polarised debate, the answer is simple and boring. There’s a lot of good in working at home and there’s a lot of good from being in an office, so combine the two. In survey after survey it’s what staff say they want: the best of both worlds.

This is the chance to overhaul the system but, instead, politicians with business cronies in their ear are more focused on quick-fix slips back to how things were before.

When it looked like a power balance might shift, when it seemed as though employees might be trusted and valued to be more self-directed, the back-pedalling started.

Mr Johnson, Mr Sunak and their peers are wrong on this one: hybrid working is here to stay. To protect choice, flexibility and wellbeing, let’s not turn this into another culture war and accept the boring middle ground. If you want to get paid, you work. The end.