Delicate snowflakes, unite!

Are you sitting comfortably, delicate snowflakes? If you're working from home today you might be one of the people that the Daily Mail recently referred to as "delicate snowflake employees allowed to work from home in their slippers and dressing gowns."

I was pretty happy to read that, firstly because it made me laugh out loud but secondly because it reminded me that their fight to get people to return to the office has mostly been lost. Flexible working is here to stay.

Stanford's Nick Bloom, the most prominent analyst and commentator about these things, says in his 2024 Flex Report that working from home is five times more common than it was five years ago in 2019. Bravo.

It is clearly a good thing - just ask a few working parents, young people, carers and commuters; just some of the people who have traditionally had a harder time accommodating old-fashioned and inflexible attitudes to work. (While you're at it, see how they feel about the Daily Mail's telling assertion that people should be working in offices "as people have done fine and without issue before for decades until now".)

Knowledge work is not immediately visible to other people so no one really knows what others are doing in the moment. That really bugs some people and is why the term 'Productivity Paranoia' has gained quite a bit of traction lately as a term to describe anxious managers who are struggling to readjust.

The emerging data has shown for some time that giving people more control over their lives through flexible working makes them happier and doesn't harm their productivity if it's managed well.

But it's not a struggle that's based on data, it's also based on control issues and so it will go on for some time to come.

The struggle continues.