A growing number of employers have insisted that their employees must come back to their work- places. Elon Musk, has demanded that Tesla or Space Ex staff spend at least 40 hours in their offices and that those who do not want to do so “…. Should pretend to work somewhere else…” He also wrote “Tesla has and will create and actually manufacture the most exciting and meaningful products of any company on Earth, this will not happen by phoning it in.” Many other firms, feel the same disillusionment.
WFH is an option – not a compulsion. But an option modern technology has now made possible in ways that were not possible before. Homework was hardly unknown before. Writers, composers and artists as well as weavers and sewers, home bakers, worked from home long before the gig-workers who congregate at the internet café. You may you noticed how the coffee mavens all look up from their laptops to appraise the new arrivals? Seeking company no doubt that they could find at the water cooler.
Being able to measure accurately the relationship between how they reward their employees and how much they contribute to the output and profits of the firm is an essential responsibility of any business. It could not hope to survive without accurate calculations of the costs and benefits of alternative working arrangements. And the firms faced with WFH preferences have been learning by doing as they always do.
It can be assumed with great confidence that the great majority of employees will be paid no more or less than the value they will be expected to add for their employer – be it from the office or home. Furthermore, as clearly, nobody will be rewarded for the time they spend commuting. It is paid for in income or leisure sacrificed by the commuter. Recent evidence that the revealed willingness to go back to the office in the US is inversely related to the time spent commuting is no surprise. The lucky winners from the enforced lockdowns have been those who to live far from the office – that they chose to do for – their own good reasons – pre the lockdowns.
Employers are not the only party with the right to choose where best to work. Workers will make their own choices. The ratio of job openings to work seekers in the US has never been higher and the opportunity to work from home has not been greater this century.
The Tesla office worker who has remained in California, even though the Tesla office is now in Texas, may well tell Elon what to do with his job. They may even accept a lower salary to WFH – the cost of the commute is their bargaining chip. As is the saved rental and all other not at all insignificant costs of supplying an office desk that may improve their case to WFH. They may even be able to do two jobs from home- as many do- given the time freed up and the absence of supervision or whistle blowers. Elon and other collaboration mindful employers may have to offer a premium to get the preferred workers to the office- if they are more productive there.
The individual households who choose where and how they live will help determine how the world of work will look in ten years or more. The developers of offices and homes and retail space will respond rationally to the choices and ongoing experiments of all those who hire and supply labour of all kinds- billions of decisions will prove decisive. The world of work and production evolves continuously, usually in an imperceptible way, to the signals provided from the market for labour. There is no design – just efficient outcomes. Employers no longer requiring office workers to attend on Saturdays, or offering extended annual holidays, are not providing charity but are making a considered response to market forces- necessary to attract workers of the right kind and at the right price. They will continue to respond accordingly.
The responses to the opportunity to work from home that technology has made possible- and made the lockdowns possible – will evolve sensibly and rationally. Provided freedom to choose is respected as the essential ingredient for a successful, highly adaptive economy.