Amazon wants all of its employees to be working at the company's premises for five days a week from the start of 2025. They are not alone. It would seem that many small minded managers who believe that they have lost control of their workforces because some aren't within their sight lines for every working hour are moving in this direction, undermining the gains for so many that Covid made clear were possible.
These demands will, almost certainly, come from managers who share some very particular personality characteristics:
- Many of them will be male.
- The majority will be extrovert.
- Most will be neurotypical.
As a result many of them will not understand the demands that having a family creates for many people who must reconcile childcare with working. One presumes that they have either never faced this problem, or they have always outsourced it to a spouse, or to professional care, which despite its cost they might be able to afford when not everyone can.
My second and third points are, however, in many ways much more important. I have been aware throughout much of my adult life that I am an introvert who finds the continual company of others a significant drain on my energy, which drain then saps my creativity. I have always found many of the demands made by extroverted managers decidedly difficult.
That sentiment has been exacerbated by the assumption made by all extrovert managers that all people must function as they do. In fact, the possibility that some people might function differently to them is something that never seems to occur to an extrovert. As a result they have not the slightest interest in the possibility that introversion exists, and therefore are never willing to accommodate it. They instead demand that the introvert learn to live in an extrovert world, which they have to do.
If only these extrovert managers had the slightest inkling of how introverts think most corporate away-days would be very different.
So too would meetings operate in entirely different ways with much more space for people to contribute in different ways being made available.
This is also true of the workspace, where the modern extrovert manager's desire to crowd people on top of each other is fine for those of similar inclination, and totally destructive for the introverts who are treated as if they are the same.
The failure of the extroverts to realise any of this results in an enormous loss of productivity. The ‘self-starter' so many companies claim that they want to employ is almost by definition not a ‘team-player', which those companies also desire.
And whilst creativity for some might come from group work, for the introvert it is just as, if not more so, likely to come from simply going for a walk by themselves. Pushing people back into corporate offices closes all these possibilities for people for whom space and time alone is essential, and the companies doing this will suffer considerably as a result.
I now realise that this problem might be even greater when we come to the difference between neurotypical and neurodivergent people.
Neurotypical people do not have ADHD. Neuro divergent people do, and to indicate just how unreasonable even this language characterisation is, it is now thought increasingly significant numbers of all people under the age of 24 might have ADHD. In other words, they might be the up-and-coming neurotypicals, and not the neurodivergents.
This matters. Neuro divergent people with ADHD find it difficult to sit still for long periods of time, not least because of the excess of creative ideas that they so often have.
Very often they also have difficulty in expressing those ideas, at least in the first instance, and in ways that neurotypical people readily understand. In fact, one of the characteristics of these people is that they seem to have massive, supercharged, engines functioning within their brains, but these are then attached to 1970's Ford Fiesta style four speed gearboxes that have some considerable difficulty in communicating all the energy that they can create in constructive ways.
Like introverts, neurodivergent people need space, time and opportunity to deliver their best, which is very often incredibly creative output that does not, however, fit into conventional moulds, but is precisely what is required for innovation to happen.
Those who try to force neurodivergent people (and like introverts, there are a lot of them) to fit into neurotypical ways of working do as a consequence deny their organisations the benefits of employing such people, whilst also losing the actual productivity gains that they might have benefited from as a result of doing so, and all because their simplistic short-term productivity measures do not reflect the value that non-neurotypical and introvert people can generate.
Like so many corporate activities that are now recognised to be harming well-being, the failure to recognise that human beings do not come in one type, but do instead present in a wide variety of forms, is high up there on the list of the charge sheet that can be laid against them.
Amazon might want their employees back in the office, as do many small minded employers now, but it is likely that they will pay a considerable price for this feebleminded attempt to control people who know that they can work better away from the constraints that such environments impose.
When will we learn to trust people? If only we did, this world would be a better place.
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Are most managers ‘Neurotypical?’
Isnt it said that many are Psychopaths to some degree,
There is also the broader point that most workers are more efficient when they organise themselves, both individually and in teams. It is perhaps understandable that managers do not wish to acknowledge this because it renders their role not just useless but actively harmful.
I agree with the points you raise. At my last employer, a local authority, the approach was to be very flexible about working from home. It was thought that going into the office for one day a month was fine, but if anyone wanted to go in more frequently that was ok. I found it a very good arrangement – saving time on travel, and being able to communicate on teams when necessary. It was in fact better in terms of online meetings when work had to be discussed in detail. Email obviously played an important part in communications. Some people for various reasons – lack of space, a desire to be with people – were able to work in the office more often which is fine.
Policy for all employers should be more flexible for a number of reasons. Its better for wellbeing and productivity.
We agree
I agree with the points made, but there are other reasons why modern offices affect productivity.
Firstly,many modern open plan offices are now totally hot desked, meaning that it is often a bun fight to get a desk and often you are not seated with the people you work with. There is nothing more distracting than being sat with a team who all work together and have come into the office to catch up with each other.
Secondly, as someone with hearing loss and really struggles with background noise, trying to do a telephone call or join a Teams/Zoom call in a noisy office is almost impossible, whilst i sm unable to follow general chat.
Thirdly, this rigid approach to work is particularly difficult for those with caring responsibilities,the majority of whom will be women with children. I know many mums who have been able to work extra hours thanks to not having to travel to the office and if their children are slightly older carry on working with them in the house even though they would be too young to leave unattended.
I worked wholly at home during 2020 with a remote team and thanks to Teams built up some very good friendships with people I never met face to face. I was working behind the scenes for the NHS and would not have been nearly as productive had I been in an office. I am an extrovert, but don’t enjoy commuting or noisy open plan offices (I have hearing loss so can’t join in with group conversations but am distracted by the noise). I also feel working from home offers the flexibility for really good teamwork, enabling each person to work in the way that works best fir them. You can’t control the best out of people. This feels a retrograde step and I’ve seen many local employers go totally hybrid, who would never allow working from home before.
Thanks
Does the phrase “upwards spread of masking” sound familiar? That’s what I have and I share your hearing symptoms. Crowded public places of all kinds are no go areas for me if I want to be able to converse with folk without having them yell right in my ear. This whole culture’s pretty useless to me, partly because of that, and partly because of other factors.
The term means nothing to me, but I have diagnosed high frequently hearing loss which drops to 70+dBl in the higher frequencies and hearing aids. Open plan offices are horrible as I can’t hear the general conversation, so gain nothing and as I’m prone to ear infections am not supposed to wear headphones.
Trying to filter out the general noise enough to hear what I need to hear is almost impossible. Teams and Zoom have enabled me to join in and actually hear meetings in a way I never could before when I was trying to filter out all the background noise.
Hmmmm……………..I’m not sure about this.
Aurelien has an interesting essay today about things being more complex than standardised/orthodox thinking allows for and this issue is one of them. Here we are conversant with orthodoxy in political economy and economics.
Working from home – let’s unpick that as I find it now from observation and personal experience:
1. Working from home is using YOUR domestic energy supply to power your employer’s work requirements. It is not cost free. It is transference of cost to the worker.
2. Working from home means more emails, sometimes more confusion, less face to face contact and less management support.
3. Working from home means more MS Teams meetings – good luck if you have a bad connection.
4. Working from home can extend your working day without you really knowing it.
5. Working from home will make public transport less viable or result in it changing in ways which might make it worse.
6. Working from home cuts managers and staff off from customers and work situations and gives them an incomplete view of what the hell is going on.
7. You will find that a WHF culture results in a number of people’s workloads increasing. These people are the people who actually turn up at work who find that because they are on the spot, they end up with more to do irrespective of their own tasks.
My view is that the people who should NOT be working from home are senior managers and directors. They should be at work – their remuneration and accountability status reflects this. Yet I too often find that they count as ‘the disappeared’. I can vouch that ‘management by walking about’ – the best way to understand your work for employee and manager alike – does not happen or happens less in a WFH culture. But it should be managers knowing what is going on in the business. So, instead of expecting everyone else to be at work reporting to you, maybe management should get off its fat arse and go to work and find out for itself?
On the employee side, I find that some now think it is a god-given right to WFH without thinking how that affects their work. Their concern is themselves and the utility that WFH gives them. But their highly paid managers think the same. So we have competition now for who works at home or not – another problem to add to worker/manager relations and it looks as though the latter will win. Great.
WFH also disrupts the pedagogical learning element of work quite badly.
Therefore I find WFH promotes ignorance in worker and manager a like.
Perhaps only this crappy country of ours makes such a mess of working from home? I don’t know?
But as Aurelien testifies, there is always more going on in these matters than what one thinks. And WFH is no different.
Using WFH is ultimately about context and suitability. But with an already really bad management culture embedded it seems in our work culture, added to a cult of individuality, I remain deeply sceptical about WFH because I have seen things literally fall to pieces as everyone grabs their right to WFH not thinking of who is left holding the work.
I was not really discussing the issues you raise
I was looking at personality types
I think offices are alien environments
Fair enough Richard. But I am only pointing out the complexity – not ultimately disagreeing with you.
Again, it is how you roll as an organisation.
I am thinking in terms of policy/strategy communities and the turning of words into action and I have seen how this works – which was hard enough.
But it was the proximity to each other of policy and operations departments that really make things work where they are in touch with each other and working sympathetically and productively.
The disaggregation of the workforce with WFH has created issues that disrupt that process, and everything is taking longer, and that includes the feedback loops which is a major factor affecting long term viability.
My response is also redolent with the suggestion that personality types do also come into play. There are those who do not trust staff and micro-manage in as much as there are those who will happily ‘go-missing’ – directors and managers included – crossing their fingers in the hope that someone is doing something about something they should be dealing with and are not.
My mantra is the old photographer’s one:- ‘Be there and at f8’ (F8 being a hyperfocal distance in photography that renders most things sharp within a reasonable distance when shooting from the hip).
Believe you me it works.
But what we have is poor management of WFH and it all starts with the most highly paid people in the organisation managing WHF poorly themselves and not leading by walking about – staying at home expecting people to tell them what is going on because that just helps to reinforce the stupid class system we seem to have in organisational hierarchies.
It is WHO is working from home that interests me.
And that is relevant, I agree
If one considers us to be genetically individually oriented towards functioning within small tribes of 100/150 people, the entire culture’s an alien environment
@Pilgrim Slight Return
It depends on the type of work and the type of person.
A Civil Engineering working on a design-build project with complicated Storm Water-Drainage calculations could easily work from home and may be more efficient doing so.
A Commercial Project Manager or Project Coordinator would find it very difficult to work from home unless the company was supplying a lot of remote IT.
IMAO, it all depends on the nature of the job and nature of the employee.
Yes and no BayTampaBay.
That person doing those calcs should still do GOYA – get off your arse – and go and look and discuss with others before they calculate anything.
I’ve lost count of how many drainage designs since Covid we’ve been told are not suitable by the water authority and caused delays because something has not been done right.
I assure you I speak from experience on these matters. We turned up at a new build site to purchase 10 units to find that none of them had been connected to the sewer. No sale, and 10 homes delayed in meeting huge need.
It’s a mess out here.
Thank you for this most insightful post, Richard. I found it of immense personal value and hope that many others do too.
Regardless of the personality ID of management, any change in the patterns of social behaviour that has an impact in reducing individual travel has to be a good thing, simply in terms of carbon emissions.
The notion that cities will continue to be planned, in conventional land use zoning terms, around the car and/or the daily commute, is well past its sell by date in environmental terms.
It ought to be obvious that this simply cannot continue.
The aim has to be to apply technology, wherever possible, as a tool to reduce commuting, both in volume and distance.
Behavioural change is essential. WFH is often a very positive option.
Now Nu-Labour’s inchoate plans for 1.5m dwellings need to be evaluated in these terms, given the life cycles involved in urban planning.
Planning large new towns like Templesford, which are basically massive dormitory suburbs is the exact opposite of sustainable planning.
The application of post war housing and land use planning solutions (considerably contested by Jacobs et al) some 75 years later would be a triumph of stupidity.
I think that, surprisingly maybe, Richard may well have a fair bit in common with Karl Marx on this issue, as Marx first identified work alienation as an issue in the 1840s and described a oppressive and controlling managerial class as part of that analysis.
As for “healthy “pressures in the workplace…
We have 23% of working age people not seeking employment and a coincident mental health crisis. Correlation ? Possibly.
We have new dis-eases such as Generalised Anxiety Disorder emerging, often work related.
Work stresses vary, but toxic workplaces and management, are undoubtedly a factor.
A major piece of US research some decades ago identified 76% of workers saying that their workplace stress impacted their personal relationships, and 66% said that their stress has caused sleep deprivation. I doubt this has reduced.
Oppressive managers are most definitely part of that equation.
Oppressive managers are a problem for sure but just as bad are those managers who are just not there at all, who redefine laissez-faire having no domain knowledge, no idea what the work is and pile on more.
This is becoming a huge problem that is helping people to decide to retire early or because it has made them ill so that they retire early.
Make no mistake, a risk from WFH is the growth in ignorance of how the work works and ignorance is a very dangerous thing indeed in critical services.
I agree wholeheartedly, and as a now retired introvert may I plea for the same considerations to be made in all other areas of life both paid and unpaid? Now in my 70s I’m assured enough in my skin to say ‘no’ if I feel pressured to be squished into some uncomfortable mould preferred by others. I also need quiet, a bit of space, do not travel well, have a very acute sense of smell ( hating public transport when people eat smelly food nearby ) don’t mind being awake in the night if I can get a nap another time. Checks clock – am away for one now 🙂
I recognise some of that
This is broader than an issue of neurodiversity, it’s a political issue, since work is inherently political, and pretty much politics in action. Though Amazon exists, it is not a necessary organisation, and it certainly isn’t a good one, but then the position of employee is a toxic social relationship within a toxic hierarchical social structure, underpinned by the threat of violence in various forms, including destitution, homelessness, exclusion and so on. Technical discussions about who should or shouldn’t be able to work from home or about the kind of workplaces that are ok or not, presume that work itself and being an employee are both largely unproblematic, but may need a few tweaks here and there to be even better. It is possible to refute entirely the underlying premiss that being an employee is a reasonable condition and that this thing called work is basically fine. Neither is inherently or demonstrably the case, they’re simply taken as read since this state applies to so many. Employment is a subjugated state, as we can see with Amazon -they can order people to do something, which means that some people have power over others, and that is repulsive in my view, and I do wonder what it says about people who think its ok to dominate the lives of others, as is the case with employment.
Something not mentioned in this excellent discussion is the cost of office space – Amazon is paying for a lot of plant that is largely unoccupied because of WFH, and want to get a proper return on their outlay by having that space used.
A pretty dumb idea, I agree, when they should be looking much more holistically at the issue of cost/benefit, with both sides of the equation looked at holistically
I.e, not mere bottom line for costs, but consider the cost to employees of hostile work environments, and the same for benefits, some of which cannot be quantified, only recognised as in, e.g., a happier, more satisfied workforce.
I remember a management training video which featured an interview with a high ranking IBM Manager. In it he said (in a broad Southern American drawl) “I was working for 15 years before I found out that the purpose of a manager was to help me do my job. Before that I thought they were a curse from God” Sadly a lot of organisations feature the latter rather than the former at all levels.