Humour column: WFH was fun, but now it’s time for BTO

I continue to work from home as I have been doing for the last many years, long before Covid was an apple in the eye of scientists. And when other professionals joined me there (in their respective homes, not in mine), it was as if a major turnaround in our working habits had occurred. You could work from home! It was more efficient! You didn’t have to sit in one place! You could look after the baby occasionally!

The exclamation marks kept increasing with every discovery (I have kept it single here because after all, this is a family magazine!!) As the pandemic receded, however, the workforce advanced. This despite the research showing that we tended to be six percent (or was it 16?) more efficient when we worked from home.

Now new research (or maybe it is old research suitably tweaked) is showing – yes, you guessed it – that working from the office is more efficient than working from home. Convenience, thy name is research, as I often say. WFH (Work From Home) is getting ready to give way to GBTTOOLYJ (Get Back to the Office or Lose Your Job).

Now researchers in places like Harvard and MIT tell us that working from office increases efficiency by five percent, or eleven percent or something. And companies which allowed staff to come to office just twice or thrice a week are now beginning to say, please respect all working days by coming to work rather than working from home. I suspect that these companies might have sponsored some of the research which now sings the praises of office work, rather like cigarette companies which sponsored research into smoking that showed no connection with cancer or foul breath.

The research hasn’t shown this, but I suspect that efficiency comes from gossiping around the water cooler or manipulating your way into the corner office.

WFH has been compared (well, if it hasn’t, here it is) to being educated at home. No one recommends that home schooling is a better deal than not going to school (NGS) because it is important to meet and interact with other students. I am not sure that is an exact analogy, although the years I worked from office were more fun and led to more friendships than WFH. I mean, I am already friends with my family, and the occasional courier or person who rings my doorbell by accident isn’t looking for a lifelong friendship.

Zoom was fun, but somehow it forced good behaviour out of you. You can’t talk in close-up without someone noticing you are balding or haven’t brushed your teeth or need a haircut. BTO (Back to Office) is a movement whose time has come.