Joe Garner
Chief Executive, Nationwide Building Society
Employers need a more holistic focus on the workplace, thinking beyond office spaces and considering the environmental impact that homeworking will have on all our futures.
“The boundary between work and home used to be rock solid, until email and the mobile phone made it increasingly porous, then along came COVID-19,” says Joe Garner, Chief Executive of the Nationwide Building Society, “which obliterated the boundary completely. That’s why the challenge today isn’t so much: ‘How do I balance work and life?’ It’s: ‘How do I integrate work and life?’”
A new report from the Nationwide, called The Future of Work, investigates how people might want to work post-pandemic. First — and perhaps not surprisingly — it reveals a strong preference among employees to work from home more often. Secondly, and more revealingly, it shows there are significant productivity gains among those who do. “But most surprisingly, we found that when people work from home, the humanity and compassion in their decision-making increases by 30%,” says Garner. “That’s a powerful point, because it shows how we do our job is more important than where we do it.”
Assessing and addressing the pros and cons of homeworking
The pandemic has certainly removed the taboo of working from home, with managers learning to give their staff more freedom and trust. “Organisations found that if they treat people as responsible, trustworthy adults, the vast majority will repay that trust and put their whole heart into the work they’re doing,” insists Garner.
The pandemic has certainly removed the taboo of working from home, with managers learning to give their staff more freedom and trust.
Going forward, then, it’s going to be important for all of us to re-evaluate our homes in order to maintain a healthy separation between our personal and professional lives. But while there are definitely challenges to homeworking, there are big, obvious benefits, too, such as eliminating commuting time and reducing transport-related emissions.
“On the other hand, people will be heating their homes for more hours of the year,” says Garner. “That said, we have to address energy inefficiency of UK housing anyway – and, if we’re successful in doing so, homeworking can be a real benefit for the environment, too.”