The pandemic proved the benefits of remote work. So why are some businesses so keen on returning to the office? Billy MacInnes struggles to find the logic
Blogs
Image: George Milton via Pexels
Amid the relentless sound and fury surrounding AI and its potential impact on our world, it can be easy to lose sight of just how much technology has reframed what we do already. What I’m doing now has been dramatically altered by the presence of technology. I’m not writing this in long form (mercifully, as my handwriting is appalling) or bashing it out on a typewriter. It’s not being proofed on hard copy, laid out to be sent to the typesetter and then on to the printers. Now all I have to do is type it into my laptop, send it by e-mail to the editor and then wait for it to appear on this website.
I was reminded of the power of technology’s influence by the findings of a press release issued by Gallagher insurance brokers on the top five biggest risks to Irish businesses. In one of the findings, the link with technology was very clear. In the others, not so much.
So let’s start with the obvious. Companies were asked to rank their top three risks. Third highest was cybercrime on 15%. While the figure was low for small companies, it was up to a quarter for businesses with more than 150 staff. Just in case anyone was in any doubt about the link with technology, the press release made it very clear: “Among those who consider cybercrime a major threat, 75% attributed their concern to growing reliance on technology.”
This probably shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise to most of us. But it does make clear the duality for companies and people with the growing pervasiveness of technology leading to a much increased risk of cyberattack.
As Laura Vickers, managing director of commercial lines with Gallagher in Ireland noted: “Irish businesses cannot afford to be complacent about cybercrime. Cybercrime is no longer a niche or occasional risk – it’s a persistent, evolving threat that affects almost every organisation in some shape or form.”
All true, of course, but the mirror image of that sentence might well be: “Technology is no longer a niche or occasional element of modern life – it’s a persistent, evolving factor that affects every organisation and individual in some shape or form.”
As the old Frank Sinatra song goes: “You can’t have one without the other.”
Price of progress
That brings us to numbers one, two and five in the list, all of which have a link to technology, even if it isn’t always immediately apparent: employee retention, the cost-of-living crisis and skills shortages.
Almost a quarter of respondents placed employee retention at number one in their list and the biggest factor for them was the shift in employee attitudes towards work. The cost-of-living and housing crises were number two on the list. “The housing crisis has contributed to recruitment and retention difficulties for many employers,” Vickers said, “as staff often can’t afford to live nearby a place of work, particularly in the capital and other areas where property and rental prices are high”.
On the subject of skills shortages, almost 40% of those who ranked it highly cited shifting employee attitudes toward work.
The strong emphasis on the shift in employee attitudes toward work is interesting because it is directly linked to technology, even if the genesis of this shift occurred because of the global Covid pandemic. As Vickers observed: “Employee attitudes to work have changed immensely in recent years. It’s been just over five years since remote work was widely adopted during the pandemic and the working-from-home trend which emerged is the biggest change to hit the world of work in decades. It has completely transformed how people work as well as their attitudes towards working life.”
Technology made remote working possible. Now that people have seen the positive impact technology has had on their work/life balance, it’s no surprise so few are minded to go back to the pre-Covid ways of working. What is surprising is that so many employers are keen to impose a return to office working, even to the point of compulsory five-day office attendance.
Such policies fly in the face of the cost-of-living and housing crises, both of which are exacerbated by the requirement for employees to live in high cost neighbourhoods within range of their workplaces. Not to mention the attendant transport and childcare costs employees are being forced to bear to make office-based working great again.
In such circumstances, you have to wonder whether the very clear and demonstrable benefits of technology to the vast majority of people on the pattern of their working lives can ever be fully reversed. I suspect not. But employers trying to achieve that outcome may like to ask themselves if it’s worth the risk of adding another new entry to the list.