Here's a hint: It's often not the workers.
 | By Michal Leibowitz Editorial Assistant |
Back in 2003, Harvard Business Review published a conversation with the etiquette expert Judith Martin (a.k.a. "Miss Manners"), in which she argued that American workplace culture was in trouble. |
The problem? It had gotten too casual. |
"There is no distinction between your business life and your personal life," she wrote at the time. |
If that was true in 2003, years before the ubiquity of the smartphone and the rise of remote work, then it's doubly true now. The formalities of the white-collar workplace continued to erode in the last two decades, and sped up during the pandemic, sometimes in ways Martin couldn't have predicted. |
But just like in the early aughts, the people who are most hurt by the lack of boundaries and informality are not the employers, but the employees. |
In a guest essay this week, Elizabeth Spiers explores how the casual white-collar workplace — something many employees believe they want — can sometimes have harmful consequences for the very people it seems to benefit. |
Asynchronous and remote work, for example, seems to be great for workers. It's freedom from the shackles of the desk and the clock. But there's a cost, Spiers argues, when work and life become fully integrated, and 24/7 availability becomes the standard: "Your home is no longer the office; the office is now your home." |
Spiers isn't arguing that we should return to a buttoned-up work culture. But she does suggest that we be skeptical of all the changes that have taken place over the past few decades, and especially since the pandemic, and that we should interrogate them honestly to understand who really benefits from an uber-casual work culture. Here's a hint: It's often not the workers. |
Here's what we're focusing on today: |
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