I always think that “work from home” (WFH) will wane after the COVD-19 vaccines are well spread, and when we all “return to work”. In this context, it is interesting to explore this issue through the lens of an unexpected development during the widespread WFH.
Matt Levine, astute as always, recently discussed a recent Bloomberg article ($) Whistle-Blowing Soars to Record With Americans Working From Home.
The work-from-home phenomenon has triggered a fresh frustration for U.S. corporations: Americans are blowing the whistle on their employers like never before.
The proof is in the data, with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission receiving 6,900 tips alleging white-collar malfeasance in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, a 31% jump from the previous 12-month record. Officials at the agency, which pays whistle-blowers for information that leads to successful investigations, say the surge really started gaining traction in March when Covid-19 forced millions to relocate to their sofas from office cubicles.
The isolation that comes with being separated from a communal workplace has made many employees question how dedicated they are to their employers, according to lawyers for whistle-blowers and academics. What’s more, people feel emboldened to speak out when managers and co-workers aren’t peering over their shoulders.
This totally makes sense. Most of the article focuses on financial fraud and whistleblowing is made easier when there is going to be a “paper trail” or email trail of interactions.
Even though there is no comparable amount of fraud in Academia (I truly hope that I am right about this :), a lot of “political” discussion in academia is overwhelmingly subjective. This might surprise my non-academic readers, who might think of academics as idealistic people above the bar.
Academic careers thrive in peer evaluations and the opinions of other academics. Sometimes, these opinions have to be recorded to make some career decisions. In these settings, the “recorded word” is so different from “common knowledge”. Everyone has heard a story of a researcher who has scores of papers and hundreds of citations, accompanied by murmurs (“everyone knows”) about how the papers are faulty and so on. Recorded words weigh powerfully. We often see differing opinions depending on the “mode” of communication. Anonymous reviews from journals on research papers are overwhelmingly negative. Peer researchers feel that they get a license to shred the work (mostly on merits), as they feel this is done professionally without shredding the person. It is strictly business. On the other extreme, signed evaluations used for promotions are studious and calibrated in their positivity, and negative language is often but not always couched in doubt and uncertainty.
As there is a gulf of unknowable opinions that exist in between, academia resorts to “talk” or in-person conversations, to resolve ambiguities and establish gradations. Now, this is exactly the kind of talk that WFH and remote conferences have eliminated. However, in relationships, there is so much dependence on rumor as a means of communication. This is why even after remarkable efficiency gains of work from home, I think that we will return to pre-pandemic workplaces (with some changes).
As Levine comments:
[…] it is sort of a sad story from a human perspective. All these people feeling disconnected from their work and their colleagues, with no strong personal ties of loyalty and friendship and common mission.
After all, humans are social and political creatures. We all need each other, even if it was for an adversarial relationship.