Put superfast broadband ahead of HS2 on national priority list after home working revolution: David Richards

Rosie played a vital role in the retooling of US industry from peacetime to wartime production, according to the Harvard Business Review. Factories saw improvements in productivity, product cycle time and quality when women took over the shop floor. The men then returned victorious from the theatre of war and the women were laid off.

But Rosie and her motivational message of ‘We Can Do it!’ helped revolutionise attitudes around women and the workplace. The change had been coming but the onset of war accelerated the adoption. Eight decades on, we are seeing another change in the workplace with coronavirus as the catalyst. And it is creating similar economic benefits to Rosie’s revolution.

The home is replacing the office as the new centre of economic activity. Enabled by technology, knowledge workers are finding a new lease of life around the kitchen table, in the garden shed or wherever they want to sit or stand with their laptop. Companies are realising they no longer need expensive offices with the associated costs.

In our experience, people are more productive working from home. WANdisco plc has office space around the world and is jointly headquartered in Silicon Valley and Sheffield. The drive towards automation, machine learning and artificial intelligence is increasing demand for our company’s data software. The work to meet this demand can be carried out anywhere. I spent the lockdown at home in the Hope Valley from where we successfully raised $25m from investors in Wall Street and the City of London.

Modern meetings have much less fuss. No longer do we have to wait 20 minutes for someone who has been delayed in traffic, pour the tea or talk about the weather. Before Covid-19, it would take half an hour to get to the meat of the meeting. Now it takes two minutes. Extrapolate these savings across the knowledge economy and we are talking about significant gains in time and energy.

People tend to be happier at home. Liberated from the tyranny of the daily commute, they begin and end the working day without having to endure the stresses and strains of creaking transport systems. People can spend more time with their loved ones or doing the things they love, like exercising in the park or cycling in the countryside. All this means we will burn less oil with the resulting environmental benefits.

Over time, the rise of home working will reduce the reliance on big economic centres. Young people with prospects can pursue careers closer to home without having to up sticks and head to overheated cities like London or San Francisco. In this sense, the pandemic could serve to “level up” those parts of the UK and the US left behind by making properties in these places more desirable.

The lockdown has had a catastrophic effect on the hospitality sector, shaking down food and drink outlets across every major city centre in the western world. No office workers: no flat whites. I suspect we will see more providers opening up in the suburbs, towns and villages, closer to the new centres of economic activity – people’s homes. We will also see growth in logistics jobs. With the decentralisation of our economy, we will need more people to help distribute products and services between buyers and sellers.

Sadly old jobs won’t survive, but new ones will take their place. In turn, this will spur growth in self-employment. Necessity is the mother of invention. As we saw after the 2008 financial meltdown, Britain gave birth to a new generation of start-ups and scale-ups.

If the Government wants to turn the coronavirus crisis into an opportunity, it should bet on Britain’s ability to bounce back and go big on infrastructure investment to support the businesses of the future. Who needs high-speed rail when train carriages are all but empty? We all need superfast broadband and the Government should consider how they can roll out world-class connectivity in double quick time for every part of the country.

Rosie the Riveter rolled up her sleeves to join the war effort in the 1940s and opened the door to women in the workplace. Eighty years later, her great grandchildren are carrying on with the same can-do attitude, working from home, boosting productivity and fighting for the economic recovery. We can do it!

David Richards is founder and chief executive of WANdisco plc.


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