What if the invisible hand guided remote work
Neil Gonsalves asks; If people can work remotely and be just as efficient, why do they have to reside locally?
Written by Neil Gonsalves for Seeking Veritas on Substack
Whether you love it or hate it, it’s probably here to stay but when did it get here? For many people the 2020 global COVID pandemic was their first introduction to the concept of remote work. But is it new? Does it work? And are we missing an important employer option that could turn this entire conversation on its head?
Lockdowns during the COVID pandemic began with uncertainty, people spent the first couple of weeks wondering where to get toilet paper, within a couple of months everyone became experts in global supply chain management offering their personal analysis about the pitfalls of just-in-time delivery. About the five month mark, people experienced collective amnesia about the downsides of big family gatherings thus was born family Zoom calls and virtual movie parties, much to the chagrin of those young folks who actually preferred the “and chill” part of “Netflix and chill”!
Meanwhile in corporate Zoom Boardrooms, organizations were trying to figure out business continuity strategies, budget forecasts and whether it was time to start off-loading their capital assets. It’s as if the world neatly divided itself into separate camps with no common playbook. In an abstract theoretical sense this has little consequence, academics and activists are free to critique capitalism and profit orientation. In reality there are interdependencies and sustainability considerations that must be considered in order to keep systems viable and operational.
We live in the age of information, we have access to more data in a few seconds than previous generations had in a life time, yet we seem to constantly under utilize this gift. For instance this remote work conversation is hardly new, like most things we just renamed it, pretended it was novel and acted as if we were trail blazers who reconfigured the future of work.
Remote or hybrid work, has always been with us in some capacity, in previous iterations remote work has gone by other names. In 1972 Jack Nilles told people he was engaged in “telecommuting” while explaining how he was working remotely on a complex NASA job and just like that the phrase was coined. A famous article from 1979 in the Washington Post titled “Working From Home Can Save Gasoline.” by Frank Schiff, an economist, is often credited with beginning to popularize the idea of working from home and led to the first conference about the subject, which took place in 1980.
In his article Schiff, was exploring ways to conserve gasoline consumption by suggesting a few workers could work from home one or two days a week. He cited advances in computerization and electronic chip-technology that he believed would change the nature of machinery. He forecasted that the new portable machines being used to record dictation, previously taken down in shorthand by secretaries in an office, would allow persons working at home to use the telephone to dictate directly into machines located in their offices. He even envisioned a “paperless office” given 20,000 pages could be reduced to very small proportions encoded on 4-by-6-inch microfiche film sheets. By 1994 there was even a dedicated day in September called “Employee Telecommuting Day”.
In the early 2000s the use of text based pagers and Blackberry smart phones made working on the go much easier. People argued that the new technology would reduce inefficiency, improve communication and reduce the need for centralized office space. All that excess time gained was meant to result in more leisure time, perhaps a four day work week and higher quality of social life. Well we all know how that turned out.
To play devil’s advocate, many arguments made in favour of telecommuting, remote, or hybrid scheduling, whatever you want to call it, have merit. There is a good case for environmental impact made by reduced travel. Project based work with clear outputs and limited collaboration are ideal for remote scheduling, assuming accountability is maintained. Some argue that eradicating all the unnecessary waste of time that occurs around the proverbial water cooler is a net gain for productivity; let’s go ahead and concede that point too, even though the counter argument will probably be that there are an equal or greater number of distractions at home, arguably ones you care about more but nonetheless in theory the point is coherent.
Advocates of remote work often argue that supervision is inherently demeaning and a hold over from previous patriarchal and classist systems. People should have greater autonomy over their work lives, they’d argue. Many posit that remote work has benefits for mental wellbeing and therefore can be positively correlated with reduced turnover, and lower rates of burnout. All of these proposed benefits are used to demonstrate that remote work increases productivity and therefore should stay even though the pandemic has ended.
For the sake of argument, let’s concede all the points above and stipulate that there are several other benefits produced by remote work that I did not cover earlier. By conceding this position I suppose I would have to support all those who state that people can be just as, or even more productive when working from home.
Employers could concede those points for many positions within their organizations. They may argue that some client facing positions require a limited presence on the job site but preventing non client facing employees from working remotely would seem unreasonable by the logic presented by advocates of remote work. Although, I suppose that leaves employers with an interesting dilemma.
If people can work remotely and be just as efficient, why do they have to be reside locally? Accepting that remote work increases productivity means employees can do the job from anywhere, assuming access to the required technology. If employers took a more global perspective , then standard wage considerations could be interpreted differently.
Wages rates have historically been tied to the market value for labour. Other factors for consideration when calculating a fair wage would include the price of housing within a commutable distance, the consumer price index that influences cost of living and the availability of skilled labour within a reasonable geographical distance. Labour costs generally make up a significant portion of operating expense, followed by capital assets (physical office spaces) and other operational overheads.
Employers could hire fully remote staff from places in the world where wage rates are more competitive. Since most lower wage earners live in the global south, the initiative to hire from these markets could also have a net benefit for global poverty and rates of employment. For significantly less money than the remote worker who lives down the street, organizations could hire more people while still realizing reductions in operating costs. One could argue that global equity demands that we stop privileging domestic remote labour while simultaneously devaluing the global workforce. In a global economy where labour can travel virtually anywhere and capital can pursue the best return on their investment, corporations could let the laws of demand and supply be the invisible hand.
If people don’t need to come to the office, they probably don’t need to live down the street. Is it time to globally democratize employment or should people return to work?
About the author: Neil Gonsalves is an Indian-born Canadian immigrant who grew up in Dubai, U.A.E. and moved to Canada in 1995. He is an Ontario college educator, a TEDx speaker, an author and columnist, a recreational dog trainer and an advocate for new immigrant integration and viewpoint diversity.
Notes:
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2000-dec-28-mn-5615-story.html
https://www.alliedtelecom.net/the-history-of-telecommuting/
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/cost-of-living.asp#:~:text=The%20cost%20of%20living%20is%20often%20used%20to%20compare%20how,to%20live%20in%20that%20city.
This is an interesting question to ask in a connected global world; I think for some industries it makes absolute sense e.g. telecommunications. How many have been connected to "somewhere else" when calling your telecom? They're already doing that because they can do it technologically and it maybe does help their bottom line. With other industries globalization of their workforce might not be as simple or even doable. Sometimes it may be because in your job you need to know the cultural, social, demographic nuance of what you're doing. Nevertheless, technology is driving such tremendous changes that unless we are able to ask, examine and understand the impact and implications of questions such as these we will all find ourselves lost in a shrinking world.