Mick Clifford: The price of peace and pyjamas — is remote work a cultural ticking time bomb?

Remote work has transformed lives, but the loss of in-person interaction may carry unseen long-term costs, especially for Gen Z

Denis O'Brien didn’t get where he is in terms of his wealth through a 40-hour week with appropriate breaks, shift allowance and paternity leave, all of which are important to plenty of people.

I have great social skills, says I to myself in the mirror this morning. Yes I do. No you don’t, says anybody I subsequently asked. You’re a disaster.

Why this momentary lapse into introspection? It’s because I am among the legions who now work remotely. This week, we were told that “social skills have fallen off a cliff since the start of remote working”. This came from Neil McDonnell, chief executive of the small business group, ISME. He was reacting to, in 90% agreement with according to himself, an outburst by Denis O’Brien about the concept of remote working.

O’Brien told a gathering in Dublin’s Mansion House last Friday that working from home was “a load of nonsense”. He suggested that the cultural change that has swept through the workplace since covid has impacted on the national work ethic.

“We have always had a great reputation in Ireland for hard work,” the former chairman of Digicel said. “Unfortunately, there is now a pervasive, what I call ‘entitlement culture’, where graduates and young people are dictating their work practices to their employers.

“This lark of people saying, ‘I’ll come into the office on Tuesday and Wednesday; otherwise I’m going to be working at home’, is a load of nonsense. I don’t employ those kinds of people, and to be honest with you, I never will.”

According to The Currency website, the comments were met with “enthusiastic applause” from the audience at the Mazar’s investor awards event. Others like the Social Democrats said Mr O’Brien had a “brass neck”.

Their spokesperson Sinead Gibney said what was a “nonsense” was that the right to work from home in this country is so weak.

“Instead of taking advice from tax-exile billionaires, the Government should look at the facts,” she said. “Regrettably, when I asked the Taoiseach today if this government intended to further bolster the right to work from home, he dodged the question.”

Remote working is just another of a growing list of topics these days on which opinion is polarised. One is either for or against it. To somebody like Denis O’Brien, the concept is anathema but then he is a massively driven businessman for whom work is a lot more than just, well, work.

He would not claim to be a paragon, or possibly even understand, the notion of a work-life balance. He didn’t get where he is in terms of his wealth through a 40-hour week with appropriate breaks, shift allowance and paternity leave, all of which are important to plenty of people.

And good luck to him. The world needs O’Briens in order to fuel economies, but it doesn’t need too many of his ilk

Remote working is just another of a growing list of topics these days on which opinion is polarised.

Some people have difficulty in finding a place to live and remote, or more typically, blended working can facilitate living many miles from the office.

Remote working has, for many, been the silver lining of the pandemic. It has transformed working lives. The jury is actually out in a global sense as to whether or not it has impacted on productivity.

Has the change in culture led to some people taking the proverbial? Most likely, yes. But some people have always taken the proverbial, whether or not chained to a station in a designated place of work.

A recruitment consultant who confided in me this week said that an issue that arises these days among prospective employees is the requirement to work from home in order to walk their dog. Suffice to say the dog needs walking but maybe priorities in such a scenario should be revisited.

As for an “entitlement culture”, surely that is a product of a tight labour market. The balance of power between employer and prospective employee is a direct product of economic times.

Productivity and creativity

There are arguments that productivity for some has increased. In the days before the pandemic, it is safe to say that most people who were in attendance at the designated place of work were not productive for the full 40 hours. That’s not suggesting laziness or bad management but just the nature of things. So even if the 40 are not put down at a work station at home, it doesn’t follow that productivity has been reduced. Working from home has allowed people to compress, not compromise, productivity.

To dismiss the cultural shift as “a load of nonsense” is definitely nonsense, but there are aspects to remote working that have to be having an impact. In his address, O’Brien suggested that what has occurred has led to, among other things, a loss of energy, creativity, and ideas.

Another source who gave me the benefit of their wisdom in this area described it as “lateral information flow”. Or, if you will, the informal and often casual interaction, knocking together of heads, accidental brainstorming that can and does occur in a place of work.

It is impossible to measure, but over the longer term its absence becomes obvious in results. In the first instance the loss accumulated falls on the employer but the loss of creative thought affects all in one form or another. 

This is the cost of the trade offs inherent in remote working and whether it’s a bargain all round, too expensive, or simply a fair trade, is a long way off determining

More importantly, and equally opaque in the short term, is the cultural impact of the loss of socialisation at work. This could have a serious impact on some among Gen Z who are either entering the workforce or are in the early straits of a career.

This generation is the first to grow up largely through their phones in a world created by their parents. That has impacted on a basic level in their collective capacity for socialisation. How many teenagers do you know who even communicate with any regularity to another voice at the end of the line? Everything is via a screen.

Then along came the pandemic at a vital period during their development, whether it was in school, third level education, or the early stages of a working life. The fall-out from that is only now being fully recognised and questioned.

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Entering the workforce after that kind of arrest in development can be no easy thing. Having available the choice of working from home is a no brainer for many, just one more reason why it’s not necessary to leave the home and interact in person.

Remote working is, on the whole, a hugely positive advance. But recognising the downside, particularly for newish entrants to the workforce, is necessary.