Elon Musk made headlines in June this year by telling his employees to return to the office or “pretend to work somewhere else”. This came hot on the heels of Boris Johnson urging people in the UK to get back to the office lest they get too distracted by their home fridges and the cheese within them.
At the time, these two men were criticised for being out of touch with what the average worker was juggling, and dismissive of the ways in which working from home can lighten the load for those of us with caring responsibilities, health concerns or just generally busy lives.
And yet more of these powerful and privileged men seem to keep coming out of the woodwork with similar opinions delivered in a similar supercilious manner.
Closer to home, Investa Group Executive, Michael Cook, has recently shared some advice specifically for women: ‘every ambitious young woman who is concerned with closing the gender pay gap for themselves, should be dropping everything and racing into their CBD office.’
And a couple of weeks ago, Lord Alan Sugar, English billionaire and Celebrity Apprentice Australia CEO tweeted that ‘A large percentage of people who work from home are lazy gits’
Why do these men keep imposing their views on the rest of us?
Perhaps it’s simply because they can. But I’d venture a guess that most of them genuinely believe that working from home is unproductive, despite all the evidence pointing to the contrary. Rather than looking at the data, they are instead choosing to assume their own experiences and preferences apply to everyone else.
Elon Musk enjoys working 80 hour weeks in the office so assumes this is the only way to be successful. Boris Johnson has a hard time concentrating when he knows there’s cheese within arm’s reach, so assumes no one else could possibly stay focused under such conditions. Michael Cook got to where he is while working from an office, so assumes there is no other path to the top.
Vested interests play a role too of course. At the time Boris Johnson made his statement, he was economically motivated to get everyone back into Britain’s CBDs. Michael Cook leads a commercial real estate organisation – need I say more?! And Alan Sugar as the Celebrity Apprentice CEO has a vested interest in being publicly controversial and abrasive – it’s good for ratings.
What should we do with this unsolicited advice?
It’s difficult to take advice delivered in such a condescending manner seriously, especially when your own experience of working from home doesn’t align with what they are saying. So personally, I’m quite tempted to simply ignore it.
But would I then be guilty of dismissing their perspective just as quickly as they are dismissing the business benefits of enabling people to work from home? I suppose I would. So instead of ignoring it, I’m going to take a good hard look at myself and consider whether their perspectives have any applicability to my own work life.
The first question to ponder is whether I am, as Elon Musk suggests, ‘pretending to work’ on the days I work from home? I’m actually willing to admit that there is a bit of pretending to work going on. I sometimes hang out on online news sites when I could be calling a client, and I occasionally arrange kids’ swimming lessons when I could be writing a report. But I did these things when I worked full-time in an office too.
None of us can be productive for eight hours a day, our minds need a break every now and then. At home when my mind starts wandering, I have a lot more options for how to take a mini break than I do in an office. I can go for a walk in the local park, play with the dog, water my plants, or do some dinner prep. All choices that aren’t readily available in the office, and that are much better for my overall wellbeing and productivity. So I don’t think pretending to work is an issue I need to address.
But what about the cheese?! I, like Boris Johnson, do enjoy a tasty piece of cheese, and tend to keep a few varieties in my fridge. Does said cheese stop me from doing my work though? No more than the biscuit tins in many of the offices I have worked in. In fact, when I need a snack break, I usually have a much better range of healthy options at home than have ever been available to me in the office. Another win for my health and wellbeing.
And now for the final question, so eloquently posed by Lord Sugar. Do I consider myself a lazy git? The answer to this one is a definitive no. I am not a lazy git. Nobody I know who works from home is a lazy git either. Like most people, I care about doing the right thing by my colleagues and clients and delivering great work. That is not to say I don’t think there is anyone out there taking advantage of work from home policies. But I truly believe they are the exception rather than the rule, and that it makes very little sense to force everyone back to the office full-time based on the desire to supervise these few exceptions more closely. There has to be a better way to manage and inspire performance.
So, if you do some self-reflection, and conclude you are not a lazy git pretending to work from home while actually feasting on cheese all day, then I think you too can safely ignore the advice of these men. And just get on with being productive from wherever you are working today.