It looks like we have got to the point in the whole working remotely/in the office debate where the position you take is less about the hard facts around things like productivity and culture and more about your general world view. In the words of Financial Times columnist Jemima Kelly, this “culture of hyper-politicization” has led to us losing the “ability to see things at face value, to judge policies and ideas on the basis of how useful they are. Instead, our perception of reality becomes obscured by whichever partisan lens we happen to be looking through.”
More important perhaps, the constant sparring over where work is done — like other issues in the so-called culture wars — risks obscuring the bigger picture. In this case it is that it does not really matter where work is done. What is important is that technology is increasingly dictating how, when and by whom (or what) it is done. AI, of course, is at the center of this. But other technologies, such as block chains and virtual reality, are also playing a part.
Proponents suggest that this will bring about a wonderful new world in which currently disengaged workers will suddenly become free agents able to pick and choose for whom they work and how and where they do it. “The options available for workers have never been so expansive, threatening the stability and attractiveness of standard employment models,” declare the authors of a new book ominously entitled Employment Is Dead. Among the occupations that authors Deborah Perry Piscione and Josh Drean describe are “digital roles with the metaverse” and “freelancing as a bounty hunter” for decentralized autonomous organisations (bodies that are managed wholly or partly by computer programs, with voting and finance handled through blockchains).
This may be an old-fashioned view, but this does not seem to be the sort of thing that will set the blood racing for the average young recruit. Given all the challenges that nearly all workers — but particularly those just starting out — face as a result of such factors as soaring student debt, the high cost of shelter (whether rented or bought) and geopolitical uncertainties, it is probably a lot more likely that they crave a little stability in at least one aspect of their lives — work.
It is, of course, widely accepted that the old advice of obtaining a good education and working hard no longer really applies. But it seems a little ambitious to suggest that at a time when AI is seen as an existential threat to many jobs previously seen as at least starter positions in the professions, financial services and elsewhere people are going to welcome the “freedom” enabled by these “disruptive technologies.” Indeed, one of the reasons why so many workers are keen to hang on to the working habits that became widespread during the pandemic is surely that it is a way of fighting back against what they sense is coming. Whether or not people will really leave a position if they are forced back to the office full-time or are prepared to take a pay cut to appear there less often, but it is clear that the resistance is not just about using work flexibility to reduce such costs as travel and child care. It is also about trying to take back some sort of control.
Which leads us back to the world envisioned in Employment Is Dead. Of course, there will be some workers that will welcome the greater flexibility offered by these new ways of working, but there is no denying that the real advantage lies with the employer — if it is right to continue to use that term. Yes, the “gig economy” does allow Uber drivers and others to work hours other than the normal 9-to-5, but we have seen with the rise of such concepts as “zero hours contracts” that it is not always the worker doing the choosing of what hours to work. The result is not so much empowering as creating a situation in which too many people have precarious lives.
Executives may be tempted to roll out all these technologies at least in part out of fear that even if they do not their rivals will. And they will in all likelihood see some improvement in their financial positions, at least in the short term. But there is a danger that in the long run they may lose not just their workforce but their customer base. And history has plenty of lessons to teach about what happens when people feel they are stuck between a rock and a hard place. In the words of the late songwriter Kris Kristofferson, “freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose.”