Oh, Polly, Labour Never Saw A Policy Disaster They Didn’t Love…

WFH is now coming under accelerating attack. JP Morgan will now require employees to spend five days a week in the office and other big companies may soon follow suit. A perverse strain of rightwing thought opposes almost any social progress that improves other people’s lives. This Scrooge-like instinct yearns to make work as grindingly hard and low-paid as possible. Recall Jacob Rees-Mogg pacing civil service offices like the Child Catcher, leaving “sorry you were out when I visited” notes on employees’ desks in 2022. The same age-old sentiment prompted the CBI chair, Rupert Soames, to savage Labour’s flagship anti-gig economy employment rights bill on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme yesterday, warning that the new bill would force businesses to let people go.

Now, I'm in favour of WFH, but I'm aware it's within the gift of my employer. At the moment, it's considered a benefit to the workforce - one the greedy bastards in the Treasury haven't figured out how to tax yet - so it's likely to stay. And if it didn't, well, there are other firms... 

When Whatton in Nottinghamshire was severely flooded on Tuesday, villagers criticised the Environment Agency for removing its flood warning prematurely, leaving them unprepared. That may be so, but the Telegraph chose to convert an apparent failure into WFH warfare, claiming the agency’s flood resilience team in Nottingham “appears to have shifted to a working from home culture in recent years”. Evidence? “A job advert from last month said members of the team could ‘blend home working’ with time in the Nottingham Trentside office.” The agency bristled with indignation, and confirmed that the floods had nothing to do with anyone working from home.

Public sector workers are hopelessly incompetent whether in the office or at home.  

WFH battle lines seemed, until recently, clearly drawn. Last year, the business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, said it was “bizarre” that Rees-Mogg, one of his predecessors, had been “declaring war on people working from home” and praised the “real economic benefits” of Labour’s flexible working policies.

To whom? 

Much evidence suggests that WFH benefits employees and employers alike.

Glad to hear it, but I notice you don't offer any evidence.  

The government needs to get a grip on its mixed messages. Does it want to be nice to employees, or nasty?

Why does it decide to be either? 

It should ignore the Tories’ accusations that it is kowtowing to union paymasters, and emphasise how new employment rights will help civilise working life. Growth-boosting plans to get “economically inactive” people with disabilities or caring responsibilities into jobs will only succeed with maximum flexibility. And WFH, remember, is free, which makes it look like a very sensible policy in a year when large pay rises seem unlikely. It’s time to count effectiveness, not desk hours.

Spoken like someone who knows her own effectiveness will never be judged... 

How Are You Going To Keep Them On The Farm…?

...when they've seen the lights of gay Paree?

Staff have resigned at Starling Bank after its new chief executive demanded thousands of workers attend its offices more frequently, despite lacking enough space to host them. In his first major policy change since taking over from the UK digital bank’s founder, Anne Boden, in March, Raman Bhatia has ordered all hybrid staff – many of whom were in the office only one or two days a week, or on an ad-hoc basis – to travel to work for a minimum of 10 days each month. But the bank, which operates online only, admitted that some of its offices would not be equipped to handle the influx.

Ha ha ha ha ha! What a clown!  

“We are aware that in some office locations we may not be able to accommodate 10 office working days per month for everyone right now. We are considering ways in which we can create more space,” an email sent by Starling’s human resources team and seen by the Guardian said.

Perhaps they can all sit on each other's laps? I'm sure that won't freak out the HR teams!  

Starling has 3,231 staff, the vast majority of whom are in the UK with some also in Dublin. However, the Guardian understands that the bank has only about 900 desks, including 260 at its Cardiff site, 320 in its London headquarters and 155 in Southampton.

Making sre people come in to the office requires that there be room in the office, doesn't it?  

The announcement led to a flurry of complaints from staff on the company’s internal Slack messaging channels, with many highlighting the lack of desk and parking spaces, as well as disruption to their work-life balance. Some staff have already resigned over the “rushed” announcement, while others have threatened to do so. One staffer, who has handed in their notice, told the Guardian: “I’ve worked for Starling for years, and have done my job effectively while working almost entirely from home.

“Being asked without warning to take on the time, expense and life disruption of returning to the office for half of the working week is not something I can personally understand or accept, so I made the decision to resign.”

Well, there's one desk free at least!  

Bhatia said “the leadership team has been thinking for some time about how to operationalise this because we share a conviction that working in the office is important for creativity, collaboration, problem solving, performance and engagement”.

It really doesn't sound like the leadership team has been thinking at all.