Model Essay 3: Working from Home

Working from home has moved in a few years from an unusual arrangement to an ordinary one. On balance I think its advantages are the greater, although this depends heavily on the kind of work involved and on how experienced the worker is.

The clearest advantage is the recovery of time. A daily commute of an hour each way consumes roughly ten hours a week, and that time is not merely lost but actively unpleasant, which is why people who stop commuting report improvements in wellbeing out of proportion to the hours saved. The second advantage is control over when demanding work is done. Offices impose a common rhythm on everybody, and it suits some people badly; at home, a person who thinks clearly early in the morning can use that time instead of spending it on a train.

The main disadvantage is the loss of unplanned contact. A great deal of useful information moves through workplaces informally - an overheard remark, a question asked in passing, the correction of a small misunderstanding before it becomes a large one. None of this survives a calendar. The cost falls most heavily on people who are new to a job or early in a career, who learn largely by watching others and by asking questions too small to justify arranging a meeting.

That disadvantage is real, but it seems to me more tractable than the alternative. Organisations can bring people together deliberately - a fixed day each week, longer periods together for new staff - and recover much of what is lost. Nothing comparable can be done about a commute.

For most established workers in most office-based roles, therefore, the advantages clearly outweigh the disadvantages, provided that employers take the isolation of newer colleagues seriously.