WFH!? GTFOH!

Who doesn’t enjoy a moral high roading from out of touch insanely rich A-Listers? I mean, that’s why I tune into every awards show ever. Ol Elon jumped on CNBC a couple of weeks ago with some insight I’m sure had all yes men within a mile radius nodding in unison. His direct quote is that people need to “get off their moral high horse with the work-from-home bulls***.” He swears! Just like me and you! That puts to bed any lingering cyborg rumours. Elon holds a mirror up to society and exclaims how dare you!? If there is one man who can truly empathize with the plight of a Doordash driver or assembly line worker, it’s the homie Elon. He cares so deeply that they were front of mind when exampling just how “messed up” and “un-fair” it is that the people making cars or delivering food can’t work from home. Like many business owners of his stature and tax bracket, they are deeply concerned with the moral ramifications that WFH could have on society. It’s for sure got nothing to do with productivity or the cost of office space.

Mark Benioff is a name you might not be familiar with, but you will be familiar with Salesforce. The cloud-based software CEO was a little more honest, I say honest, his opinion came in the form of leaked messages from an ‘all hands’ meeting. He said that workers hired during the pandemic are less productive and asked if the new office (or lack of) policy was to blame. Mark Zuckerberg shared his 2 cents from his $93.1b fortune. After conducting internal analysis of employee performance, the data suggested that engineers who work in person “get more done.” Sam Altman of OpenAI went as far to say that remote working was one of the biggest mistakes the tech industry ever made. It’s not just the tech heads that have had it with this working from home stuff, overlords from other industries are having their say. CEO Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase & Co sent an internal memo which was optimistically titled “The Importance of Being Together” unfortunately the sincerity was lost on a number of staffers who called the message “tone deaf” and “divisive”.

Recruitment agencies tend to mirror the market they are recruiting in. So, it was no surprise that the more IT & Digital leaning agencies were the first to embrace remote working with 4-day weeks or most of the working week spent off site. However, in recent months there has been a deliberate shift to try and bring people back to the office. For how cynical I am of rich listers poo pooing the cost of a commute, not every reason for returning to the office has an agenda. Flexibility is a given in our field now but are we running the risk of losing what makes our industry great? An agency at the height of core hours is a great thing to experience. A crescendo of different accents, consultants regurgitating scripts with varying levels of confidence, every phone call representing a different stage of the same process. It’s a sales symphony. It’s also crucially important to the development of junior and even senior recruiters.

I often say that in recruitment you learn via osmosis, especially in your early days. You hear how someone has said something, their tone, cadence, inflection, and you take it on board. You see the high fives rain down on someone who has got a deal across the line, and you empathise with the consultant whose candidate has gone MIA for their first day. We like to go to extremes when things slightly change, the “what’s next!? *Insert implausible outcome* reaction is a common occurrence these days. But imagine a world where we only came in once a week. I feel that consultant would start asking me for offices with an atmosphere, a place with energy and excitement. Personally, I struggle to work from home. I can say that with impunity because I’m my own boss. I understand that being completely truthful about the level of productivity whilst at home can be shooting yourself in the foot. I also get that there are exceptions to the rule, some offices may be more distracting than home for some people. Just because you can WFH, does that mean that you should? The data on hybrid and remote work arrangements is “at best inconclusive” In my opinion, recruitment is one of those jobs where you have to be in the trenches with your platoon. Especially if you’re within your first couple of years. Earn some stripes and then once the billings get consistent, do what you want! But don’t come in expecting complete autonomy, it’s something that’s earned in time.