ZURICH, Switzerland–One expert on jobs and working isn’t yet sold on the idea the future is all about working from home.
Alain Dehaze, who heads up Adecco Group, one of the world’s largest providers of temporary employment, outplacement services, headhunting and retraining services, said he sees the same benefits many do in the promise of working from home, but he also sees risks.
“Remote work is unfortunately creating a social distance that we should not have,” Dehaze told The Wall Street Journal, acknowledging he sees no return to workplace normalcy until a vaccine is widely available.
Dehaze participated in a Q&A with The Wall Street Journal by video from Adecco’s mostly empty headquarters in Zurich, where he agreed with a point made by many credit union executives that the pandemic “will accelerate digitalization.” He noted, for instance, his company recently recruited 16,000 people in Europe digitally.
While working from home has its positives, Dehaze said some of the negatives have included the quality of broadband infrastructure, computer screens and the separation of private life and work.
Questions Raised
“Then there is the question, Who will pay for all the digital infrastructure work needed? Who will take the benefit of time and money saved not commuting—the employee or employer?” Dehaze told the Wall Street Journal. “And there is the third part, which, for me, is very important: What about the culture—the social proximity—you have in a company?”
Dehaze also said he doesn’t care for the term “social distance,” because “that’s what we need. The question is physical distance versus social proximity. By being with colleagues, you align, you share a lot of things. You cultivate your values, you cultivate your purpose. If you are permanently alone, I don’t know how you can cultivate this.
“It’s like friendship and love. You cannot cultivate friendship and love only from souvenirs, from memory,” he continued. “You need presence, you need to nurture. And with culture, it’s also about nurturing through experience. This social proximity will remain important.”
The full interview can be found here.