The pandemic was meant to change work, but what have we got so far? Free pizza

Commuters in London. Photograph: Johnny Greig/Getty Images/iStockphoto
Commuters in London. Photograph: Johnny Greig/Getty Images/iStockphoto

Earlier this month in lower Manhattan’s financial district, food carts lined what is otherwise a usually sterile stretch of pavement. Vendors doled out free burritos and ice cream to the mingling sun-kissed bankers – folks who had begrudgingly traipsed back to their physical desks after a year of remote working, following the stern orders of moneyed overlords.

Free lunch is entry-level when it comes to corporate perks, a trusted staple many businesses have fallen back on as a means of convincing workers to resume their pre-pandemic working habits and arduous commutes.

Elsewhere, on both sides of the Atlantic, some companies have demonstrated a little more creativity. From Peloton bikes to house-cleaning vouchers and meditative gong baths, the name of the game seems to be to conjure up the wackiest perk possible, to keep staff – forced to upend their working habits for the second time in two years – sweet. Companies, most recently the dating app Bumble, have given workers paid time off as a thank you for their commitment and resilience during the past 15 or so months, and no doubt as a means of retaining the smartest minds amid headlines warning of escalating talent wars due to labour shortages.

But as we settle back into some sort of routine, having lived through an entirely traumatic period of pain, anxiety and loss, extra holiday, fair-to-middling Mexican food and even gong baths aren’t going to cut it. The labour force in the UK and elsewhere is in crisis. Wealth inequality is staggering and getting worse by the minute. In January, researchers at the Resolution Foundation thinktank published a report showing that almost a quarter of all household wealth in the UK is held by the richest 1% of the population.

More recently, Credit Suisse found that more than 5 million people became millionaires across the world in 2020. The tally of people plunged into poverty and destitution, meanwhile, is still rising. Minorities are the worst off.

Experts have warned that the pandemic has wiped out years of progress towards a more gender-equal labour market. Constrained by limited childcare options, many women have left certain industries, such as finance, and even those who have stayed in jobs have never been more anxious and stressed.

Hybrid working, hailed by some as the perfect post-pandemic set-up, will quite feasibly create a two-tier workforce in which those who are physically present –predominantly able-bodied men who are not primary carers – are professionally favoured over their remote counterparts: women, disabled people and those with caring duties. Even the prospect of this trend materialising should keep every single business leader up at night and bathed in cold sweat.

So no, free sandwiches won’t do the trick. Companies and their leaders have the immense privilege of being in a position in which they can use this moment in history – the pandemic pause after decades of great acceleration – to recalibrate and reconsider what being responsible truly means.

A real perk would be to alleviate financial worries for workers whose spouses lost their jobs on account of the pandemic. A real perk would be free on-site childcare for those who need to be back in their physical office full-time. A real perk would be knowing that taking advantage of a hybrid work model won’t adversely impact your chances of getting promoted, winning a pay rise or generally being respected just as much as any physically present co-worker.

As we prepare to rethink how work actually works, businesses have a duty to understand, acknowledge and address the underlying systemic failings of the business world, not just paper over them with cheap headline-grabbing ping-pong tables , yoga classes and cold beer on tap.

Raising dividends for shareholders and executing massive stock buy-back programmes (in order to prop up their own stock prices) at a time when employees are worrying about how to stay physically healthy and mentally sane is entirely crass and ethically tone deaf.

And yet, so far this year, the volume of shares bought back by some of the world’s biggest companies is running at a record high – up to mid-June, $567bn, or more than £400bn, had been splashed by corporations. That’s money that could have been channelled into much-needed pay rises. It could have averted the need for businesses to employ merciless “fire-and-rehire” tactics. Alternatively, the cash could have been spent on research and development, particularly in the case of healthcare companies, or it could have been used to offer equity to more workers, beyond executives. At least that way the seemingly indelible culture of shareholder primacy that still permeates so many businesses could actually be a positive force for employees, because they, too, would be shareholders.

The ESG hype, the popular corporate pledge to consider economic, social and governance factors when making business decisions, has been around for long enough for workers and consumers to hold those business people to account who parrot the empty claims enshrined in their corporate strategy.

In the decades to come, it’s unlikely that most of us will witness another moment of such severe reckoning, a period of such extreme forced experimentation. Now is the time to capitalise on that opportunity, to rethink what an employee benefit really means and to understand what purpose it should truly serve.

Josie Cox is a journalist and broadcaster specialising in business, finance and gender equality.

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