Britain is getting lazy

Working from home hase become a ‘right’ according to many (Image: Getty) Do you remember a campaign back in 1967 called ‘I’m Backing Britain’? It was started by five typists in Surbiton who’d decided, off their own bat, to work an extra half hour for free every day to help their bosses and the country’s struggling economy. The campaign caught on like wildfire. Everyone had badges, Bruce Forsyth even made a hit single. Can you begin to imagine anything like that happening now?  People working for free to help the economy and their country?  Hell, the Government can’t even persuade civil servants to come back into the office for a couple of days a week after two years of Covid where many were paid full-whack wages for doing not very much.  We see the results of that now in Government departments which after Covid just don’t work anymore. Try to get a passport, a driving licence, a truck licence or a visa and you’ll be waiting three times as long as you did before Covid. And why because employees refuse to come back into the office to properly do their jobs. Working from home is actually hurting society. It’s hurting productivity. It’s turning us into a lazy nation. The prevailing attitude now is that since Covid people think they’re entitled to sit and work from their sofas even though it might be adversely affecting the company they work for and their employers want them back in the office. But they don’t care about that. They just want to be paid full wages to stay at home. And that’s why the numbers of people in offices are now 35 percent below pre-pandemic levels. To put that in perspective, in Australia just seven percent, in Italy it’s 19 percent. I’m talking about this because of a new international survey which says that Brits spend less time in the office than almost every other nationality. Out of a survey of 34 countries only Canada scores higher for remote-working hours. And even though Brits spend more time ‘WFH’ than any other nationality – 1½ days a week – it’s apparently not enough. They want to work 2-3 days a week from home. In fact, they probably want to work five days at home, do half the work and get a full salary. Well, they need to be told – No you can’t! I get that people want a work/life balance but that can’t mean people being paid for doing less work and putting in less effort. Work is work. It isn’t supposed to be 150% fun. It’s work for God’s sake. And while we all imagine we’d like to be at home all day (on a full, fat salary obviously) that’s not what living in the real world is about. But don’t expect to be paid by an employer who desperately wants you to be in the office. And, make no mistake, Britain is paying the price for this laziness. Our productivity is on the floor, along with our economy. James Dyson has called working from home a ‘productivity disaster’  and he’s right. And people can bang on all they want about how working from home is actually more productive.. but it isn’t. They say they get more done because it suits them to say it and because they don’t want to get up at 7am every day, get showered dressed and get on a train to the office. Who does?! But that’s the price you pay for a salary. Working from home is not an entitlement. Can people honestly, hand on heart, say they work harder from their sofas than they did at the office when they were being monitored by the boss and when they had set, structured, working hours? And what about a recent survey that said a third of people would quit work if they’re made to come into the office? Why? They did it before Covid. Why not now? They got lazy – that’s why. I blame furlough – Rishi’s grand scheme that went on way too long and paid people almost their full salary to sit at home watching daytime TV. That mindset still exists today among some. Like it or not employers should be the ones deciding if WFH is a viable option for their business NOT the employees. It’s an employer’s right – as they’re the ones doling out the money – to say how its particular business model will best work.  It’s not the employees who just want to make sure they’re home for Countdown every day. And it’s no surprise that British workers have the greatest enthusiasm for remote working during the summer months when it’s hot and sunny. But now growing numbers of executives are fed up with this WFH lark including those in so-called progressive companies like Amazon and Salesforce which are now sceptical about WFH and have told staff they want them back in the office – as is their right.  And anyway, why would anyone want to work full time from home. It’s isolating. It’s lonely. Someone described it as like ‘working in a psychological silo.’ You can’t be mentally creative if you’re in your dressing gown until lunchtime and working from your laptop on the bed. A recent survey from Samsung talked to Gen Z people – those born from 1997 to2012. Of those spoken to 34 percent said they worked from their sofa and 32 percent said they worked from the bed. Interestingly, most said that while it was exciting at first, they’re bored with it now and felt physically disconnected. And that gives me hope. But for people insisting they WFH it’s important to remember that if their jobs can be done from home they can just as easily be done from Bangladesh – much, much more cheaply!!!