Not only does the UK have the longest commuting times on the European scale with an average of 45 minutes per trip, but also one of the most expensive public transportation systems in the world. In addition,seven out of ten people living outside London travel to work by car, which causes both higher waiting times in traffic and pollution. According to the RAC foundation, UK commuters travel up to 17% further to work than they did just 10 years ago.
So how does the current working system present itself when we look at the commuting and energy efficiency aspects? Cutting the current office-based style system would result in 3 major advantages for both employers and employees.
The average 1,5 hours spent in transport per day would practically disappear apart from the need to attend occasional meetings.
The commuting costs and office keeping costs would similarly disappear.
The environment would benefit from decreased CO2 generation via lesser traffic levels and energy consumption.
The possible dangers of a home-based system are those resulting from isolating those working together. Isolation would result in less collaboration, which can be crucial in creative processes and also unless all individuals have a spotless work ethic, could result in much lesser work efficiency. Another question is whether people would actually like working from home. For some individuals the office buzz might be an indispensable element of their days.
With the emergence of locally-based desk rental spaces that orient themselves at particular industries, there may be some progress in sight, but they aren’t enough. The system will either remain as it is or will change beyond what we can see right now as far as simple location organisation system – entire organisations would have to change their ways of collaborating and doing business both internally and on a b2b level. The advantages of changing the system are immense both for their effect on the improvement of workers’ lifestyles and the energy/environmental level. Feel free to shoot ideas about this.
In my past years of studentship, I’ve gone though a good number of jobs I didn’t like. My first days in retail not only showed how brain-dissolvingly boring and mundane the work was, but also showed how much pain you can feel in your legs and spine from standing up for 8 hours a day. Having the wear clothes that don’t fit you and make-up you may be opposed to was a whole other story. Waiting tables turned out to be another bad trip and possibly the most exhausting work I’ve ever done. Unlike in the US, where the tipping culture might build some incentive to work, waiting tables in UK is bound to get you overworked and underpaid for what the job involves. I still haven’t gotten down to the bottom of how the tipping culture works in the UK, but it’s either not the customers’ minds or if applied on the bill by the traditional 12.5%, it either gets taxed and ends up being pittance or never actually makes it to the waiters’ pockets – there is no standard system of regulation over what restaurants do with the money coming in for the service charges.
As much as I may have disliked some of the jobs I’ve done, I still believe it was a good experience for me. In a recent discussion with a friend of mine, she suggested that everyone should have to do at least a couple of months in retails and a couple of months in waiting tables. These jobs not only teach you respect for what the so called working class people do to sustain their families and homes, but also discipline and perseverance. These are the people who keep a vital part of our society running, not to mention those who work even harder jobs in factories or farming. Below is a presentation by Mike Rowe, who works for the Discovery Channel and gives a very relevant and inspiring talk about the importance of ‘dirty jobs’.
The Element is a brilliant talk by Sir Ken Robinson, to me a pioneer in the philosophy of education. I first saw him at TED, in his talk on whether schools kill creativity. The Element talk is connected to his fairly recent book under the same title, which deals with questions about the currect education system, but also with what haunts so many people – whether what they do is what they should be doing and what their most meaningful application in life may be.
I’ve always loved a quotation by Confuciuos that says ‘find a job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life’. From our earliest days when the most fun hours at play seem to always pass by too quickly, we all long for finding more play. I still believe that finding the right work will inevitably bring play or transform the work into play (and hopefully into meaning, too). Excelling at what we love is so much easier than just aspiring to excel at something we happen to be doing, as we can do it with the happiness and hard work that passion can extract from us.
ligress 