Image – Getty: Ismagilov
By Arpita Das | @arpitayodapress
‘Too Many Swigs of the Corporate Work-Ethic Kool-Aid’
In the fateful spring of 2020, when India announced a stringent lockdown throughout the country, and it became difficult to drive or even walk from one locality in Delhi to the neighboring area where my office was located, we soon decided to give up the Yoda Press office space and work remotely from our homes.
Arpita Das
As the lockdown dragged on, we realized that it was the best thing we could have done as a team, considering the fact that the rent would have been a wasteful expenditure in an already difficult situation in which our publishing revenues based on book sales had gone down to zero overnight.
How we survived the pandemic under those circumstances is something I shall relate in another column, but here I want to wonder aloud about hybrid working, which we all learned about at that difficult time.
Working remotely became the norm for our team for the next four years. Even after the pandemic had abated, we continued working from our homes or neighborhood cafés, or wherever each one of us liked to work from.
Our focus remained on deliverables, and since most of us in this tiny team love to work in the quiet of the night, we soon found that we were getting more work done than before, and more happily so. The long trudges from one end of the city to another on the metro no longer mattered. We were constantly chattering and brainstorming and affirming decisions and ideas on our WhatsApp group chat and once the city opened up, we slowly got back into the habit of meeting once a month, then once a fortnight, and then once a week to co-work with a newfound sense of appreciation for our time together.
Many new initiatives came into being at our office at this time, and when we did opt for having a dedicated office space earlier this year, we were clear that our office life was going to remain democratic and hybrid. That means that we decide together when we meet in the office, and we decide how many times a week we work there, usually twice or three times. And no, we have never regretted the decision to remain hybrid and democratic.
However, in talking to others in the industry, both seniors and younger people, I have realized over the last few weeks that “hybrid” is not a desirable state of being for more people in the industry than I understood.
What’s more, there are no rules in terms of who would rather go hybrid. It’s not like the biggies in the industry resist it while the smaller ones find it easier. Among the Big Five, there are offices which are determinedly hybrid, many of them even “hot-desking” in their office spaces, while others are insisting on five days of in-person work weekly. It’s the same with the family-owned larger businesses in the Indian ecosystem. Some allow hybrid working to some extent; others don’t. And frankly, the small independents are the same. too.
So, why does “hybrid” work for some and not for others?
The People Making the Decisions
As I keep finding out, it often depends on the people making the decisions. And if these people have a more deliverables-based attitude, then it seems they are happy going hybrid.
“Some managers’ ‘raison d’être depends on having a workforce to manage. If there isn’t such a workforce around, in person, why are they being paid in the first place?'”Arpita Das
Now, what is this deliverables-based attitude? Being champions of it ourselves at Yoda Press and having spoken to others who follow it, as well as those who don’t, to my mind, I think this attitude boils down to the important parameter of trust: How much do you trust your team to do the work and deliver it on time even if they are not seated at their designated work station?
There is this notion among those who are insisting on in-person attendance at offices that unless the seniors are there to breathe down the necks of the younger people in the team, work will not happen.
To my mind, this is a mistaken notion, and also, the result of taking one too many swigs of the corporate work-ethic Kool-Aid. It’s based on a system designed to create managers who manage while ceasing to do the actual creative hands-on work of bookmaking.
Their salaries are paid on a basis of their ability to “manage” junior members of their teams; in other words, their raison d’être depends on having a workforce to manage. If there isn’t such a workforce around, in person, why are they being paid in the first place?
The pandemic taught us that hitherto unimagined work situations could actually be functional, and even let us thrive.
- It taught us that women—who are often caregivers to children and the elderly at home and have to juggle this “invisibilized” but expected role while rushing to drive or take the bus, metro, or cab to the office or home—could manage to get more done from home.
- It taught us that not having to go into an office space for a meeting—which could be conducted equally well on Zoom or Teams—saved us time to get on with the work right after the meeting.
- It taught us that those of us who edit or design or write marketing pitches and blurbs in the quiet of the night—and there are so many of us in the industry who are night owls—felt more enabled now, since we were not exhausted with the daytime trudge from the office.
- It enabled young people to go back to their remote hometowns and work out of their elderly parents’ homes while spending time with them.
- It allowed a sense of safeness for trans- and non-binary folks since they could avoid unpleasant daily travel on public transport.
Should we really consign all this vital learning to the bins?
The Phrase We Got Used To: ‘Work From Anywhere’
From my chats with industry folks here, what also emerges is that a lot of offices—across the board, even those with hybrid working systems in place for editorial, design, and publicity folks—demand that their accounts and production people come in on a daily basis.
“It made me wonder if this was more of a class-divide at work—which is, of course, always present in every industry in my part of the world.”Arpita Das
I’ve been given a range of reasons: “All the accounting is done off one laptop in the office;” “The printing-press people need to be met in person;” “The stocks have to be carefully monitored on a daily basis;” and so on. Since all of these issues exist in the lives of the few of us who have gone wholly hybrid, I am not entirely persuaded.
More and more accountants across industries are working remotely now, using cloud-based software. Print-on-demand has reduced the constant concern about stocks, and printing-press folks are terrific over mobile phones and email as well.
It made me wonder if this was more of a class-divide at work—which is, of course, always present in every industry in my part of the world.
The fact is that editorial, design, and marketing and publicity people are usually the private or prestigious public institution-educated, vocal segments of the office who can demand certain entitlements assured as they are of their social capital. That might not be the same for those working in accounting, or production.
Perhaps it’s now incumbent on folks in the more “entitled” segments of the business to make sure that others in their offices have access to the same entitlements as themselves. After all, if we allow hybrid working systems in the office, it should be hybrid for all, or not at all.
But what about those who like coming into an office space?
Well, my response is that is why we keep it “hybrid.” In fact, I did chat with a couple of folks who said they loved the discipline of going into the office every day. And they particularly loved to work in the office when it was entirely empty.
I also want to add here that during the pandemic and in regular times, there are those in our offices who needed to get out of toxic home environments, for whom safety lay outside or, indeed, in the office space.
I suppose the point I’m making about hybridity is in keeping with the phrase which we got used to during the pandemic, work from anywhere.
This phrase needs to be taken more seriously again, because at times, building a sense of community within a team is about letting members of the team be on their own, if they so like, and trusting that they will get the work done.
Join us for Arpita Das’ columns to come. More coverage of her work from Publishing Perspectives is here. Arpita Das’ opinions are her own, of course, and not necessarily reflective of those of Publishing Perspectives.