In 2019, Iceland made headlines by becoming one of the first countries in the world to adopt the four-day working week, not through a general law, but through agreements allowing workers to negotiate shorter weeks or reduced hours. Five years on, the results are indisputable. The Icelandic experiment began in…
Meanwhile, US companies are ending their temporary COVID-prompted telework “experiments” and threatening to fire employees who won’t return to the office. Because results mean nothing - we do it the way we do it because that’s how we do it.
Authoritarian culture begets authoritarian policy, in both the public and private sectors. Results were never the ends. Compliance and control are.
Also the authority can take the form of a government, a corporation, or a group of people exerting peer pressure. The difference is the type of leverage they use - imprisonment, firing, or social rejection.
I hired you so you could worship at my feet, not to be productive at home, dammit.
My guess is that it’s the share holder class pushing them to not allow WFH, due to also being heavily invested in business real estate combined with middle management knowing they could function with less of or without them.
You’re giving the system way too much credit for being cohesive and organized. I’ve had the work-from-home conversation with multiple bullheaded managers who personally, individually outright disbelieve that it can work, no matter how much evidence is staring them in their face. They just know what they know because they know it, and in the context of their little kingdom they know they don’t actually have to be right, they just have to be in charge. They’ll reel off a standard list of talking points, which are opportunities for you to concede and back down, and if that doesn’t work they’ll just end the conversation with something like, “Well, I’m sorry we can’t agree on this.”