Work & Balance

Q: Do you think people work longer hours now than in the past? Why? A: In terms of contracted hours, probably not — a lot of countries have actually reduced the legal working week over the decades. But in terms of hours people actually feel like they're "on", I think it's gone up, because phones and email mean work follows you home in a way it never used to. My dad, for instance, genuinely couldn't be reached once he left the office; there was no mechanism for it. Now the boundary is porous, so even if the formal hours haven't changed much, the psychological experience of always being reachable probably amounts to something close to longer hours in practice. Q: How important is it for companies to allow flexible working? A: I'd say it matters a lot, but maybe not for the reason people usually give. It's not just about convenience — it's that people's productive hours genuinely differ, and forcing everyone into an identical nine-to-five ignores that some people do their best thinking early and others really don't wake up properly until midday. That said, flexibility has to have some structure around it, otherwise coordination between colleagues falls apart, so I think the ideal is a company giving people real choice within a few agreed core hours, rather than pure free-for-all. Q: Will most jobs be done from home in the future? Why or why not? A: I doubt it'll ever be "most" jobs, mainly because a huge share of work is physical or requires being with other people — healthcare, construction, retail, teaching young children — none of that translates to a laptop at your kitchen table. Among office-based roles, though, I think hybrid is probably the long-term settlement rather than either extreme, because companies have noticed real productivity gains from remote work but also real losses in the kind of informal collaboration that happens when people are physically together. So my guess is a permanent compromise for desk jobs, and business as usual for everything else. Q: Is it possible to fully separate work life from personal life nowadays? A: Honestly, I think for a lot of people it's become close to impossible, at least for anyone with a phone that has work email on it. The two used to be separated by physical distance — you left the building and that was that — but now the separation has to be self-imposed, through discipline about not checking notifications, and not everyone has the willpower or the job security to enforce that. I do think it's still achievable, just harder, and it depends a lot on whether your manager and company culture actually respect the boundary or quietly expect you to be available anyway. Q: Do you think technology has made it easier or harder to switch off from work? A: Harder, without much doubt, even though the same technology is sold to us as something that gives us more freedom and flexibility. The tools that let you work from a beach also mean the beach is no longer a genuine escape, because the same device is right there in your pocket. I don't think this is really about the technology itself being bad — it's more that very few workplaces have built proper norms around it, so the default expectation quietly becomes "always available" unless someone actively pushes back against that.