Remote Working — The Climate Change Solution
Someone mentioned to me an interesting solution to climate change just the other day. They said that instead of having all of these car taxes in London which would prevent people from driving there day in and day out, they should just give out tax rebates to companies that allow employees to work from home.
I’m not quite sure how the financials would work themselves out, but the money that comes in from the emissions taxes in London have to go somewhere, right? Why not ship those directly to businesses who give their employees a couple of days a week to work remotely? Can you imagine if a company like HSBC decided to give all their staff a day to work from home each week? Assuming at least half their employees take it, want it and would use it, it would already be a massive step in the right direction.
Obviously, this is something that’s going to take a lot of out-the-box thinking because many companies may be run by an older generation, or for some reason, a collection of people that think you need to go into an office to do a good day’s work. For some reason, the validation of having an office space seems to legitimise the business. I don’t quite understand it myself…
Looking at benefits for employees, having people work from home will often get people to work longer hours (not that this is a driving factor), but companies talking about them not getting the same amount of work done just don’t have the latest evidence as studies show that remote workers are often more productive. It also gives employees the chance to take an hour lunch break and head out to walk their dog, or go to the shops or even head to the post office to get some “life admin” done.
Companies can get benefits from having their employees work remotely too. No more air conditioners running 24/7, no more having office lights on constantly, or workers leaving their computers powered on each day. The companies that jump onto something like this quickly will probably also get a great deal of some of the best employees joining their company for the benefits of remote working.
There’s also a congestion issue at rush hour in the Underground. I’m not sure when last anyone actually travelled into Central, but any time at rush hour, it’s a horrible mess. People are crammed in like sardines and whenever someone visits the UK as a tourist and heads into London, people actively discourage travelling at that time. I think the vast majority of people travelling in may actually have just gotten used to it. It would be interesting to see if and how this would increase tourism potential. You’d have less people going in and out, and more tourists being able to actually enjoy their time in the big city. Perhaps it’s a case of people working in Central London not even realising it. It’s called the “boiling frog” syndrome. If the frog is suddenly put into a pot of boiling water, it would instantly jump out, but if it’s placed into tepid water which is then slowly brought to the boil, the frog wouldn’t perceive any danger and would therefore be burnt to death. Look, it’s quite a dramatic comparison, but it’s something that may be impacting you without you even realising it. It’s one of the reasons I left South Africa to come to the UK in the first place…
Imagine a world where the average person would be encouraged to work from home for 2 or 3 days of each week. Just having a few companies implement such a thing would decrease the amount of people travelling into London each day. It would therefore reduce carbon emissions, solving some of the filthy air that plagues London, something that Sadiq Khan is fighting so adamantly against. Not only will it benefit workers, companies, the environment and everything else, it’ll also decrease that sardine effect in the Underground.
I think, for the most part, companies will prevent employees from working remotely, or perhaps, just try to keep the idea on hold for a while. For the most part, it feels like businesses think that they can’t trust working adults to do their jobs. Unfortunately, I’ve been part of a few of these companies, which pushed me to leave and start working for myself. I feel like everyone wants to actually do their work when they start in a new position at a company, and there are also a lot of studies that can confirm that based on scientific data. There’s a certain amount of pride in doing what you do, obviously for some, the money is a huge driving factor, but nobody wants to come to work to do a bad job. That’s just insane! I think companies may fear that the burden on middle management to actually do their jobs would be too much and the walls would collapse around them.