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Working from home to boost productivity | accountingweb
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Homeworking is set to change businesses for good

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Since the pandemic, working life has changed for ever, meaning that reducing costs, increasing productivity and boosting staff wellbeing are all possible.

6th Apr 2023
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It is almost exactly three years since a plague of biblical proportions struck the world like a bolt from the blue and forced a very reluctant UK government to close down the country.

At the time, nobody had any idea what would come next. With the benefit of hindsight, we know that over 200,000 people died in the United Kingdom, while millions have perished worldwide.

In addition, an estimated 2m folk on our shores are still suffering from long Covid, uncertain when, or if, they will ever recover.

Not only did our lives change but so did working practices. With everybody confined to their homes unless absolutely necessary for an indeterminate period, firms in our beloved industry suddenly discovered the benefits of homeworking, as well as the practical difficulties.

Three years on, I thought it might be a good idea to take stock and consider some of the theories propounded in recent months about optimal working efficiency.

Balancing acts 

Context can sometimes be all and the struggle to recruit good staff – or in some cases any staff at all – will undoubtedly colour the views of those managing firms large and small. They are only too happy to find anyone willing to work with them, even conceivably someone able to do so online from overseas.

As Jeremy Hunt and his cohort are so keen to remind us, the British Isles and high productivity do not seem to be close cousins. I doubt that anyone disagrees with the proposition that increasing productivity is a good thing, unless it destroys the ozone layer or leads to nervous breakdowns. We just don’t seem to know how.

There now seem to be almost as many theories about optimising work-life balance and increasing productivity as there are complementary health fads.

In one corner are those who have been experimenting with four-day weeks on five days’ pay. I doubt that any accountant has thought seriously about implementing such a scheme but a hybrid version might be worth considering. If you run a practice that largely completes personal tax returns, there’s a strong argument to suggest that you could operate on a four-day week structure for nine or 10 months of the year, in return for which you would expect the equivalent to six days (and nights I fear) in the other two.

Frankly, given that nobody seems to work on Fridays any more, it might even be worth taking a shot at cutting them completely and seeing if anyone notices.

Happy thoughts

This proposition can look even more tempting in the context of a survey of 23m people by the MIT Institute for Work and Employment Research which determined that UK, US and Canadian workers would be willing to take a 10.5% pay cut for “above average” happiness. Wouldn’t you like even happier staff, especially when recruitment and retention are so critical? A deal could be struck at four-day weeks for 90% pay?

Happiness would enthuse your staff at the same time as increasing productivity. I know that there is a large group of generally more experienced accountants, who have a firm belief that their colleagues do no work when WFH. But a limited survey by the Equal Parenting Project in association with a couple of UK universities takes issue with what they would undoubtedly regard as the Neanderthals, suggesting that three-quarters of managers surveyed believed that flexible working increases productivity and 62.5% that it boosts motivation.

Office culture

Clearly, cutting working time would reduce running costs, which brings me nicely to the thorny subject of offices.

I get the impression that few professional practices would currently take the same amount of office space if their leases ran out today. Indeed, I was talking with someone from a magic circle legal firm, which is planning to relocate at the end of a lease and cut space drastically. I can’t believe that accountants aren’t making exactly the same calculations.

Losing space only be facilitated by cutting the number of days worked in offices. Already the norm for accountants is trending towards spending 40% to 60% of their time working at home. This isn’t ideal for junior members of staff but otherwise has many benefits, most of which have been analysed to the point of boredom over the past three years.

A further option may be a move away from expensive office space in inner cities to cheaper locations slightly further out, on the basis that employees don’t need to attend so often.

Another survey by LinkedIn determined that over a third of UK workers (and 52% of women) would seek new jobs if they are asked to go back to the norm that we all remember, working 9 to 5 in an office every day. How did we do that for all those years and why?

A more radical approach would be to ditch the office completely. I have no doubt that some readers have done exactly that, while others will be contemplating the idea, perhaps with trepidation.

Work out a balance

The cost savings are immense and there may be very few downsides. Occasionally, you might feel obliged to meet a client, either at someone’s home or office or in a coffee shop, which isn’t ideal. If something more formal is required, there are organisations out there desperate to provide a meeting room for a day, half a day or even an hour, albeit at a premium cost. As long as this option is used frugally, it can’t cost nearly as much as paying for office space seven days a week, 52 weeks a year when you don’t need it.

If you haven’t already done so, this might be a good time to take a serious look at these issues. Even if closing the office for ever is a step too far, working out an optimum home-office balance for different classes of employee should be easy enough with the benefit of recent experience. I would also urge those with compliance-based practices to consider giving staff time off in quiet periods in return for commitment when it really matters.

Replies (6)

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By Hugo Fair
06th Apr 2023 14:02

These twin issues (WFH and Office space) have been on the agenda for many since well before Covid ... indeed I started 'playing' with permutations back in 2008 (for probably obvious reasons).

As so often, initial conclusions were hardly startling - including:
* Individual welcoming / suspicion of WFH was strongly correlated with personality type (i.e. not just the more obvious type of work);
* Productivity gains from WFH were closely aligned with type of work (individual vs team based), and less so with seniority;
* Use of technology as an alternative to face-to-face interaction was seen as a poor substitute (verging on antagonistic) as a direct correlation with age.
[There were loads of other findings, some more / some less interesting].

BUT the 'fun' started when trying to create a single 'solution' that took into account all these non-complementary factors.
The closest we got (before Covid descended) was triggered when I noticed the coincidence that we were (like so many) trying to achieve an 80% re-charge rate - and that represents 4 days out of a standard working week.
So ...

* Senior staff were ordered to WFH for 4 days/week AND to spend a pre-scheduled 1 day/week in the office - and told to target achieving 100% re-charge whilst WFH (taking into account time saved from not commuting and freedom from interruptions), but to focus exclusively on the needs of office-based staff when in the office (i.e. no shutting the door and sneaking in a bit of their own work).
* Junior staff were encouraged to seek assistance/support 'on tap' from Senior Staff (who could choose to apportion their efforts as they saw fit between individual mentoring / specific problem resolution / mini-workshops or whatever).

The theory was that the most junior (and typically young) appreciated the camaraderie of being part of a team and being able to get help when needed, whilst the most senior were most productive when not being interrupted and enjoyed the freedom to share knowledge when not conflicted.

This was already looking promising when Covid descended, which fortunately didn't have any major instant impact as we'd already sorted out all the technology (without Cloud apps!), but before we'd worked out a policy/procedure for staff moving between obviously 'junior' and 'senior'.

I'll stop there before this becomes longer than the article (although there's a lot of permutations of the details that will affect different organisations in different ways)!

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Replying to Hugo Fair:
paddle steamer
By DJKL
10th Apr 2023 12:55

Not just junior staff.

On 1st March we sold our commercial agency , the owner effectively retired and his two staff have left for the new employer's office under TUPE. Whilst I work mainly for a different property business the agency acted for us and for years they shared our office, so I had generally three others in the office to chat with etc for all these years, and back when younger the owners also came in most days so there was another two to add, a happy family of six, plus lots of meetings- lawyers, architects, surveyors , contractors etc back when we developed as well as invested.

Now, the dust nearly settled (we give up old office end April),I am sat here alone in this really nice office( 950 sq ft for one person and our paper based records) with stunning views over the water at The Shore , Leith, cafes and bars on the doorstep etc etc, very cosmopolitan.

However I am now just nipping out to see if I can get my hair cut on Easter Monday- (not so much of a holiday up here)- is this me seeking some human contact / speaking with someone not over the phone. (I did deal with Vodafone this morning on phone for 1.5 hours but not a lot of talking, most of that time on hold)

Whilst I worked happily alone at home when I had the practice I could at least pop down and see the family to break the day, I do find this office solitude a little wearing.

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By Geoff56
07th Apr 2023 09:20

"given that nobody seems to work on Fridays any more"

Have I missed something?

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Replying to Geoff56:
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By Open all hours
09th Apr 2023 06:09

As Gary Neville said in another context ‘hard work will beat talent if talent doesn’t work hard’. For those of us who have to work hard to keep up, the attitude of many of the more able allows us to go further than we first thought possible.
Good for us as individuals less so for the profession or the country as a whole.

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Replying to Open all hours:
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By johnjenkins
11th Apr 2023 11:30

When Messi works hard it's just magical.

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Della Hudson FCA
By Della Hudson
11th Apr 2023 10:02

We are 100% remote so obviously this is my preferred approach.

A lot has been made of the difficulty of training remotely but I suspect that it is the partners who are struggling as new trainees have had 2 years of remote education so are quite capable of learning this way rather than sitting in a physical office outside their manager’s door. I have yet to take on a new trainee so I may be proved wrong but I see remote training working well in other types of business.

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