Re your editorial (The Guardian view on empty offices: goodbye to all that?, 4 August) on working from home (WFH), in 1992 I was commissioned to edit the book Teleworking Explained, which analysed and promoted the socioeconomics of not commuting to work. My colleagues have just formed a new group, Resurrect the High Street, to encourage the conversion of redundant commercial premises into 6 million new, good-quality family homes with home-telework offices or local hubs. From 30 years of case studies, we can assure employers, employees, families, economists, environmentalists and property owners that WFH is hugely beneficial and will, as you say, transform all nations and clean the air we breathe.
On the downsides, the most neglected issue is family life. My wife wrote Bringing Home the Electronic Baby in 1995, a psychotherapeutic analysis of the impact on families. One of the earliest recorded cases was of the Canadian prime minister Lester Pearson retiring to work from home. His wife, Maryon, commented: “I married him for better or worse. I didn’t marry him for lunch.” The disruption to the home is significant. As you say, we must plan for the downsides.
Noel Hodson
Oxford
• It is extraordinary that in an editorial exploring the pros and cons of working from home, there is no mention of the impact on family life.
As a couple psychotherapist I see the stress, albeit currently on Skype, that working from home can bring. It seems that neither employers nor employees – nor indeed the couple – take seriously the impact of this new way of working. Consequently no allowances or understanding are brought to the new situation and therefore no emotional or psychological help is sought or given.
I believe there is an unconscious expectation that “home”, just like “mother”, can cope with anything and adapt to any situation, but just like the office our home is an institution, and as such has a culture and adheres to a set of rules and boundaries that need to be recognised and taken into account if working from home is to be successful.
Pauline Hodson
Oxford
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