Form of words:
IIn the 19th century, workers began to resent the grind of office life.
British essayist Charles Lamb said, “You don’t know how exhausting it is day after day to breathe the air of four cloaked walls without relief.” wrote Railings against his diligence at the East India Company’s office in Leadenhall Street, London, in a letter to the poet William Wordsworth in 1822.
However, for the past 17 months, Lamb’s modern heirs have mostly worked from home in what they call “official confinement”. Today’s white-collar workers are living through a radical change of professional life, one economist says is already beginning to accelerate economic productivity and accelerate innovation.
The pandemic has weakened the gravitational pull of city centres, with new forces now reshaping knowledge-based economies. Public transport travel is less in cities, such as coffee shop sales, while demand real estate In the leafy suburbs. Americans spent more time on leisure and household activities in 2020, replacing commuter life with real life.
While a more permanent change to working life will have painful consequences for many inner-city businesses, economists see a recalculation that could revitalize small towns and suburbs. New digital tools mean that retail and hospitality – as well as knowledge-intensive industries – are already undergoing far-reaching changes.
Will have to work from home about one day a week 4.8 percent increase in productivity As the post-Covid economy takes shape, according to a recent study of more than 30,000 US workers, co-authored by Jose María Barrero of the Instituto Tecnológico Autonomo de México and others. That one-time growth is projected to come from a shorter commute time, a factor not typically captured by economists.
The change will provide lasting benefits, according to Stephen J. Davis of the University of Chicago, who studies the evolving workplace and was one of the authors of the productivity study. “The positive results will last indefinitely,” Davis said.
In an August 17 remarks, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell pointed to a fundamental shift: “I think we know we’re not just going back to the economy we had before the pandemic, but that It will take time to see what exactly changes will happen.”
“It seems almost certain that there will be more remote work going forward. So it’s going to change the nature of work, and the way work is done,” Powell said.
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Can Work From Home Increase Productivity?
There were clues before the arrival of Covid-19. In 2013, a landmark study by Nicholas Bloom of Stanford University met That working from home increased productivity by 13%. Oxford University research paper in 2019 revealed Happy employees closed more sales.
Countries with stable productivity records will pay close attention to it. In 2019, the UK remained 15% below its pre-crisis trend for total factor productivity, According Bloomberg for Economics. it’s a recession without parallel Brexit, since the time of Charles Lamb, has been exacerbated by an aging population and pandemic. European peers have struggled, while America finds it difficult to stand out from the pack.
For all the optimism surrounding these tectonic changes, some economists caution. while recently Research The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco acknowledges that sweeping changes to the way people do business could boost efficiency, citing data distortions and cautioning against reading the recent gains in productivity numbers as more households due to work.
Even the Bank of England Accept That hybrid meetings “can be more challenging.” Most managers are concerned about the impact of homework on collaboration, company culture, and well-being. according to OECD, which also cited concerns from employers about their reduced ability to see employees at work.
A study led by Michael Gibbs of the University of Chicago found that workers worked longer hours at home to perform the same tasks as focused time was broken up by household distractions such as childcare and online meetings. The report also noted that people working from home may exaggerate their productivity in surveys to encourage adoption of this practice.
Giles Wilkes, a former adviser to the UK government, is more optimistic. “The ability to deliver products to different locations, make more efficient use of assets, and so forth, is driving innovation driving productivity,” said Wilkes, who recently published A report on the UK productivity crisis.
“Hybrid working represents a change in both demand and supply patterns in a way that drives the economy.”
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benefits of daily commute
Yuri Suzuki doesn’t miss his twice-daily 70-minute commute. partner in suzuki, international design company pentagram, used to travel on the “Toxic” Central Line, a subway route bisecting London.
Suzuki said on a Zoom call from their home in the seaside town of Margate, Kent, “After I got back home, I just felt exhausted – I couldn’t really think of anything or build anything, where that pandemic was happening.” Lasts since it started.
Freed from the burden of travel, Suzuki found that he was able to “invest” in creative thinking after formal work hours. This has boosted productivity, with his team taking on twice as many projects as before the pandemic. To socialize with his team, Suzuki plans to return to the office once a week.
At this point, with the delta version spreading fast Around the world, there are many corporate return-to-office plans. being put on hold. But evidence from the pandemic’s nearly 18 months is helping to inform C-suite decisions.
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The marriage of remote work and efficiency
Tons of companies, new and old, want to marry the benefits of remote working with the efficiency of one-on-one meetings. Alphabet Inc. of Google will let employees spend two days “wherever they work best”. 171-year-old financial advisory firm Lazard Ltd., following for some employees. Asset Manager State Street Corp. would stop its two Manhattan offices, it said Aug. 16. Even banking titans will allow some flexibility: Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman sees Office-work at “not 100% but zero percent” of total hours.
“Both employees and managers say that two to three days a week of work from home is ideal,” said Chiara Crisculo, who researches productivity for the OECD. She says that after that communication and professional relations can get worse.
While hybrid work is taking root among educated, well-paid workers, less than half of the workforce he has that optionAccording to the McKinsey Global Institute. in the UK only 36% of people Did some work from home even during the lockdown during 2020.
Yet, as more work takes place from traditional offices, workers will more equitably distribute economic benefits to a wider range of communities with their wealth and business knowledge, according to Abigail Adams-Prusal, an economist at the University of Oxford.
This will have some painful consequences. Bloom, Davis and Barrero calculated that a shift to partially working from home would affect annual spending in major US city centers relative to pre-pandemic levels. He estimated that Manhattan alone would see a drop of 13%.
Wilkes admits that “a lot of people” will be hurt by the process of change. Still, he says that “the changes we’ve been forced into are going to be beneficial overall.”
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Hybrid work model means more diverse workforce
Davis believes hybrid working has the potential to encourage a more diverse range of people into the workforce, reducing long-standing productivity issues “by harnessing the skills of people who might not otherwise be working.” were working or not doing much work.” This includes mothers and people living outside major cities.
The US arm of consultancy PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP began building out some aspects of hybrid work — including training on where and when to work and remote-work techniques — back in 2017, says Chief People Officer Michael Fenlon. University of Southern California in 2018 met That the teams worked better and retention improved. The focus has intensified since the Covid-19 hit.
“Pre-pandemic we learned that a culture of trust was essential for well-being and resilience. The teams that adopted it were reporting stronger relationships, stronger collaboration, better teamwork, and stronger relationships with customers,” Fenlon said. “We’ve used the pandemic to become even more deliberate and candid. “
Employers around the world are now grappling with that change as they strive to balance productivity growth with keeping employees creative and happy.
It’s a puzzle that comes 199 years late to Charles Lamb. “My principle is to enjoy life, but my practice is against it,” he wrote to Wordsworth in 1822, lamenting his years spent in smoke-filled offices.
Lamb’s desk-bound successor – and his manager – will soon find out if they can put their principles into practice.—bloomberg
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