The Tube strike is cancelled. Your boss knows you know that.
London was supposed to have Tube strikes this week. Every day, pretty much every line. It was going to be seriously disruptive (the point of a strike). Last week we made plans: those who could cycle in or get the bus, would. If you had a ‘nice boss’, you were told to stay home. If you had a not-nice boss, you were told to come in regardless of the misery of what would end up being a three-hour commute.
Then, at the weekend, the Tube strikes were cancelled. Good news! Convenience! The ability to travel around the city with relative ease!
Except… the news was not received as ‘good’. Instead, people groaned and sighed. They pondered whether they could get away with pretending they hadn’t seen the news. In morning meetings, the hybrid TWATs (Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday in-office workers, FYI) held their breath as they waited for their managers to say something along the lines of ‘ah, fuck it, just work from home as planned’. Then the TWATs crumpled as their managers did not say this, and instead made it clear that they knew the Tube strikes had been cancelled, they knew that everyone knew this, and they expected everyone into work tomorrow as normal.
As funny as it was to see tweets pretending news of the strike being cancelled were simply invisible, and to plot London-wide alibis, this whole strike-unstrike situation raises quite an important question: why are so many of us so keen to have an excuse to avoid the office?
The answer, to me, seems obvious: bosses still haven’t succeeded in making the office a desirable place to be, even on a part-time basis. I quizzed some people about why they didn’t want to go into work this week, and the answers came quickly:
“the journey into work is hell”
“I get more done from home”
“I get to sleep in if I work from home”
“The office is so loud”
“I wouldn’t mind going in, but the office toilets/wifi/kettle/other amenity is broken and I just can’t be bothered”
“I just don’t get the point of being there”
There were, of course, people who viewed the notion of going into the office as ‘fine’ or even ‘good’. When I asked these people why, they said:
“I need to get out of the house”
“It’s nice to see everyone”
“I’m bored”
“I was always planning to go in; I cycle, so it’s not a change in plans”
“This way I don’t have to put the heating on”
The thing that I find interesting about this is that all the pros and cons have obvious solutions.
If workers don’t want to be in the office because it feels pointless or unproductive… bosses need to understand what the point of people being in actually *is*, and ensure the workplace is equipped for that.
If people hate their commute… don’t make them do it any more frequently than they genuinely need to.
If people hate their commute, but love coming into the office… let’s find a way to make their commute better. Cycling or walking instead of packed public transport. A routine of reading a really good book instead of catching up on Slack messages. A different start time to avoid the rush.
If journeying into the office means less sleep and more tiredness… why don’t we shorten people’s hours when they’re in the office? Or tailor their working schedules to their energy patterns (something I’m calling ‘chronoworking’, and that I predict will be a trend for 2024, by the way)?
If the office is a rubbish place to be… bosses need to sort that out, with the basics sorted and perks to lure people in. Get some proper desk chairs and load up the biscuit tin.
But what’s key alongside all this is that we need to reframe in-office working, so it’s no longer treated as a punitive measure. I often hear people complaining that someone else they work with ‘gets to’ work from home. I also often hear bosses ordering people to come into the office, pretending it’s an absolutely necessity despite all the evidence that working from home can function just as well (a reminder: flatly telling everyone that they need to be in the office to do their job won’t work anymore, as the pandemic showed us that this simply isn’t true. Sticking to this party line suggests you think workers are idiots. That doesn’t go down well). There are few things that make an idea seem less fun than making it something you ‘have’ to do, rather than an available option. Think of getting children to eat vegetables: if you berate them for refusing their broccoli, but your only convincing logic for them to give the greens a go is ‘because you have to’… that’s not an ideal way forward. If you give them the option of all the veg they fancy, describing it not as a chore but as something delicious, you might find that they love spinach and will eat it all the time. You get my drift.
That’s not to suggest treating workers like toddlers who won’t eat their tomatoes, but instead trusting that if you make in-office working a desirable option, work out when (or whether) it’s important to be in, and communicate this clearly, workers might choose to come in more often. And they’ll also choose to work from home, because for many of us, the ideal is balance. And that should be okay! If bosses are honest, the majority of workers probably don’t need to be in the office Monday to Friday, 9 to 5, and pretending that they do only builds distrust and disillusionment.
In short: we’re all adults here (yes, despite the toddlers and vegetable analogy I made earlier), and if bosses get real about the need (or lack thereof) to be in the office, workers will get real about the fact that yes, we do know that the Tube strikes have been cancelled, no point in bluffing.
Then, once we’re all being honest, let’s make the office an appealing prospect. Sticking on the heating and getting the loud typer a soft-touch keyboard can go a long way.