The Old Brand New Workplace

The workplace has changed. Or has it? In this episode of Cup of V, Victoria Katheryn looks at the return to office mandate, what's really driving it, who it serves, and what it's ignoring. From the pandemic reset to the portfolio career generation, the invisible labour that never went anywhere, and the irony of the very tools being used to justify bringing everyone back. The rodeo is back in town. But nobody asked if you wanted a ticket. 

Transcript

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The workplace looks a little bit like sitting in the audience at a rodeo, the crowd chanting and cheering, or covering their eyes, whilst in the ring there are mainly men holding up red flags. Not as a warning, but to drive people. Because in the rodeo, the flag isn't there to protect the bull, it's there to make sure it runs. Productivity, creativity, water haul moments, everyone back in the ring. And right now, a lot of people are seeing red and feeling quite trapped. The old brand new workplace is back, and not much has changed apart from everything. Welcome to Cup of E. I'm Victoria Catherine. Pour yourself something good. This is for you. So before the pandemic, a lot of us were like little worker bees, hurriedly zooming around, being very busy with capital letters. Employers and managers riding us like bulls. Every day was a rinse and repeat of the day before. Work happened between 9 to 5 if you were lucky, and 8 to 11 pm if you were rather unlucky. Employers called the shots. Work was the top priority. Our lives were second, and third was our health. Until one very sudden day. The pandemic stopped everyone in its tracks. Suddenly health became number one. Our lives became number two. And work, well, work became number three. And this crazy thing happened. Enter working from home. Cue the gentle stirring of the work-life balance. Work from home was no longer frowned upon. It became the status quo. And what did we see? Employers and organisations shifted and re-engineered themselves. People thrived, not everybody, but the majority found a new balance. They focused on exercise, got reacquainted with their lives and their choices, developed a new bond with their children, had permission for the first time to stop. And over time, people started questioning everything. What is work? What do I need from the workplace? What does work-life balance actually look like for me? People started making great use of social media tools to build careers that had never been invented before. A new world of work started taking shape. People started visioning how they would operate in work, life, and everything in between. It was all seeming like we were on the brink of something new. But it was just on pause. Fast forward, and suddenly the marching orders were being broadcast very loudly. Return to work, return to work. The productivity chant got louder. Millions of workplaces that had survived and thrived, 100% remote, were suddenly being told that things weren't running well. People were being encouraged or forced back into the ring. The radio was back in town. But a separate group were watching on, the Portfolio Career Generation. Whilst organisations were re-engineering and then doing a U-turn on all their hard work, this group had already found the walking escalator. And they were thriving. Creating their own rules, making work work for them, deciding their own priority order. So we're in a funny place now, a foot in two very different doors. The older generation that runs the organisation has doubled down on the productivity message, whilst also walking quickly alongside the walking escalator, ropes in hand, trying to catch people and drag them back to the way things should be done. Code 4, we want to move backwards. Those in the productivity camp will say that it's better being back in the offices. They'll say it's more productive, it's more creative. But let's be clear about what it actually is. Control. Micromanaging. And the very tech tools that enabled people to work away from the office, well, they're now being used to make people work more, to measure, to quantify. Every inch of time watched. So does that mean that people are more productive? Does being in the office mean the output's greater? Well, the evidence doesn't actually show that at all. And in fact, studies on four-day weeks versus five have shown that being in or out of the workplace isn't the defining feature of productivity. And there's another angle to all of this. Overlooked, of course, but important. Work from home didn't just benefit women, it accidentally made something visible that had always been there. The invisible labour, the juggling, the school run, the caring, the emotional to-do list that doesn't show up on any org chart, but is absolutely someone's entire Tuesday. For the first time it wasn't hidden. Men saw it, employers saw it, the world saw it. And for about five minutes, needing flexibility wasn't a special consideration. It was just reality. Everyone's reality. And then the return to office mandate essentially said, those realities don't exist anymore. Except they do, they just stopped being everyone's problem and went back to being yours. Because here's what we have to acknowledge: the invisible labour didn't disappear, the school run doesn't disappear, the caring responsibilities didn't disappear, the office just stopped accommodating them. They were left back in the home. And women fought, really fought, for the legal right to ask for flexibility. The people who campaigned hardest for it were largely the people carrying the invisible labour. And we all know who that is. And this was to ask, not have, ask. Well, here in the UK at least, since April 2024, every employee has the right to request flexible working from day one. Request it. An employer can still say no on eight different grounds. After everything, the right to fill in a form. If you listen to the pinboard episode that I did recently, you'll already know who built this office, and you already know who benefits from everyone being back in it. And work from home didn't just help women, it helped everybody the office was never actually designed for. Because here's what no one talks about. Simply walking into an office has a cost that doesn't show up in any productivity conversations. It's not on any reports. The performance, the costume of it all, fitting yourself into a mould that was never made for your brain, and doing that day in and day out, every single day is exhausting in ways that are invisible until suddenly they aren't. A lot of people discovered something when they stopped commuting. Not just time, not just flexibility, peace. A particular kind of quiet between the noise that the open plan office, the fluorescent lighting, the rigid 9 to 5 has been stealing, sometimes for years without anyone naming it. The big return to the office doesn't just ignore women, it ignores everybody whose brain works differently. And despite the ever-growing literature we've got on neurodivergent productivity, the office hasn't changed. The mass just got mandatory again. It comes as no surprise then that the portfolio generation, many of them neurodivergent, were the first to leave the ring. And is it any wonder they're the biggest adopters of AI? When the system was never built for your brain, you build your own system. So does it matter if things return to the way they once used to be? Well, a new player has dramatically entered the ring. AI. Once something that sounded vaguely odd and sci-fi suddenly has everyone's attention. AI is starting to take over the tasks that required people shackled to their desks. And those tools can be used 100% remote. The very tasks that justified the long commute, the 9-to-5 five days a week. And of course, there's the what if AI takes over worry? But that's kind of another episode for another time, because it's clear that AI isn't going anywhere. And what does the Portfolio Career Generation make of AI? They love it. They're using it for all the things that used to eat their time, so they can focus on what actually matters. Dare I say it, productivity at its peak. The irony isn't lost. The very tool being used to justify the return to office is the same tool, making the office increasingly optional. And here's another irony that nobody's saying out loud. The return to office mandate doesn't apply to the people who issued it. It never did. Their schedule is fluid. It expands and contracts around their life without question. In early Monday because it suits them, a two-hour lunch on Tuesday because they can. Working from home Wednesday because nobody's tracking them. Travelling between meetings that counts as working. The time is assumed to be productive wherever they are. Yours has to be proven. And yes, some are reading emails at midnight, but that's because they choose to, because their schedule bends. Meanwhile, there are people reading the same emails at the same time on a fixed 9 to 5 that nobody acknowledges goes way past 5 o'clock. Same behaviour, completely different story. And the gatekeeping? It isn't calculated, it isn't a plan. Their life works. It suits them for yours not to. They don't need flexibility because they already have it. And they don't care that you do. They'll call your childcare an issue, something you need to sort, whilst their own children are covered, organised, invisible to their working day. And that's not a coincidence. That's just never having had to think about it. And having no intention of starting now. So they nip out here, there, and everywhere. They decide the hours that work for them, the diary that bends, the office door opens and closes on their terms, and somewhere someone is being told that being back in the office is about productivity. Funny, what's actually being counted isn't productivity, it's attendance. And if everyone had a flag, who would be left in the ring? One thing I do know is that we have to ask ourselves our own questions whilst the world is in this space. So have a think about the following. What is really being protected when they tell you to return to work? Who benefits from you being back in the rodeo ring? And what would happen if the flags were put down? That's it for this week. Next week we're talking about the empowerment trap. It's going to be a good one. Until then, don't forget use the fancy cups.