This week we have read about how one in ten businesses have seen staff quit over office working demands, particularly the suggestion that they should come to the office rather than work from home. We have also read about how the sickness rates of civil servants are rocketing due to “being forced back into the office”. This has resulted in the civil service losing more than four million working days to staff sickness a year, with absence rates rising by more than ten per cent a year in some departments. And, of course, we already know that vast numbers of the population are out of work due to mental and other illnesses.
While obviously there is genuine sickness and disturbance for some within these numbers, I really question whether such decisions by employees are not simply handing an invitation on a plate to those organisations to replace them with AI. On the one hand everyone is terrified, it seems, of being made obsolete by AI but on the other they are not interested in showing their value in the workplace as living breathing human beings. They are choosing to disappear behind a screen, which is probably the closest they can get to being robotic.
I was vice chair of the Work-Life Balance Trust back in the early 2000s, so I am very much in favour of flexible and hybrid working, job shares and part-time arrangements, but I am not in favour of working from home five days a week. As I have written before, I do not see how the experienced workers can possibly pass on as much of their expertise in narrow-focused Zoom calls, with workers often far away, nor can I see how people working from home can come to have anything like the broad understanding of an organisation that someone working in the office will accumulate.
Earlier this week I was speaking to someone who had been senior in a business, let’s call her Sally. She mentioned to me a moment where she saw a younger member of staff remain silent as she drew a meeting to a close. When she had asked the group if everyone had understood the project plan, they all answered in the affirmative, including him. However, Sally intuited by his body language that he had not, and made a point of quietly going up to him after the meeting had finished and checking if there were gaps in his understanding. There were, and she was able to explain the plan further to him so that he fully grasped his role in the team.
Translate this to a Zoom meeting. Would Sally have been able to intuit that body language, that problem? I argue that it is less likely that that she would have been able to identify such a problem on screen. It is hard to gauge someone’s expression, emotions or body language in a Zoom or Teams call where all you see is head and shoulders. Depending on the number of people on a call it is often near impossible to see people’s eyes in detail, so unlikely that you might ‘catch the eye’ of someone who agrees or disagrees with you on a point, or who potentially believes that the person speaking is bullsh*tting, whether they understand something, or whether another person on the call might be a mentor or ally.
In the workplace, yes, there is distraction and some of that can be time-wasting. However, you will inevitably get a broader understanding and overview of the organisation for being physically present. Simply by walking around a building, listening to conversations at the coffee machine or in the lift, you will brush up against people in different departments and roles who, in the small-focused targeted milieu of a Zoom call will not be there. You will overhear phone calls to clients, hear a manager give direction to their direct reports, hear two colleagues problem-solve an issue that is not in your remit but might be interesting. Sitting alone somewhere will not give you these opportunities. And AI, as it exists at the moment, is not privy to picking up all those random conversations and clues in lifts or corridors!
If humans are not valuing and actively demonstrating what they specifically bring to a workforce – creativity, intuition, warmth, wit, compassion, challenge, diverse ideas and opinions, collaboration, a collegiate approach, charisma, leadership, expertise, skill, experience, wisdom, emotional intelligence and far more – then why wouldn’t that organisation choose to go down the route of AI? So much less problem, less sickness, less “quiet quitting”, less truculence. Look at driverless trains – no strikes, no problems. Surely there will be a renewed incentive to replace civil servants with AI if those civil servants are always ill? (Statistics show that people in the private sector or who run their own businesses, and therefore have less of a financial safety blanket, are considerably less likely to be ill.) Surely there will be renewed incentive to replace those employees who demand to work from home five days a week with AI if they are not demonstrating to their bosses how much more they bring to the workplace if they are there in person, not necessarily every day but most days?
I really fear that there will be a competency dip in years to come as those who work from home come to realise that they do not fully understand how the business actually works as a whole. Today’s means of communicating – mobiles, emails, Teams calls etc – are so narrow, so focused. There is none of the randomness of answering a colleague’s landline ringing on a nearby desk and being asked a question or being asked to take down a message that might give you some insight into an area of the business that you had not thought about previously. In addition to this, in picking up a call for a colleague or a boss, you have spoken to someone you might not have spoken to had you not had that random opportunity, and this could lead to expanding your network.
Yes, AI can be brilliant and do some of the work, without doubt, and be brilliant in the right place and right time. Flexible working is supportive of productivity as it allows someone to address a personal issue that they might otherwise be sitting at a desk fretting about. Indeed, Zoom and Teams are the answer to some meetings, but, in general, technology brings oh so much less to the party in the long run. Of course we make mistakes, have blind spots, are biased, yet isn’t it more likely that these issues will be challenged more forcefully within a group setting, where the nuances of a situation can be explored in more depth, than sitting on our own?
Human beings have created a multitude of ideas, innovations, solutions, machines, beautiful buildings, innovative tech and more. It makes me wonder whether the Industrial Revolution would have happened had those men not been in a room together. For collaboration in person is energising – working in a team in a room brings both focus but also laughter and, if someone has some problems in their lives, at home or work, this is more likely to be picked up by the human skill of ‘reading’ their body language and, as Sally did in the example above, taking the time to find out what the problem might be, human to human, before it negatively impacts performance.
Each one of us is unique. Each one of us has unique perspectives and ideas to bring to an organisation. How much harder to bring those ideas to fruition if you are isolated. How much harder to ask for help on a tech-based call than it might be to quietly ask a person you pass in the corridor whom you know has worked on that type of project or issue before.
If people don’t want to be replaced by AI, then turn up and demonstrate your human value, skills, talent, experience and emotional intelligence to those around you. Enjoy sharing your knowledge with others and learning from others. Use AI as a tool but, as I see it, it doesn’t make sense to give your organisation the excuse to replace you with technology just because you are absent or too much trouble to manage.
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