Mike's Minute: Here's the truth on working from home

The Mike Hosking Breakfast

Hasn’t working from home become funny?

Seek have produced a thing called Money Matters, and they look at work-life balance.

Actually, hasn’t that become a thing as well – work-life balance. I can't place it exactly, but it seems like a Covid thing. The world changed and so did we.

Working hard is now so last year, or so last decade. We all long for work-life balance with a good sprinkling of mental health days.

But working from home is a scam because according to Money Matters if you got a pay rise you would go back to the office quick as you like.

So is it about work-life balance or is it about money?

Everything is about money. We just like to pretend it isn't. You feel more virtuous if you pretend it isn't about money.

But Money Matters spills the truth. Working from home is easier, we save on the commute, you claim you are more productive, blah blah blah. "Hey, how about 20% more?" Then you're out of there.

We would work more hours for more money, we would take on an increased workload for more money, and we would commute further for more money.

There isn't much we wouldn't do for more money.

The work from home thing, by the way, is funny because before Covid there was virtually no such thing. The idea that you could invent a thing and then having invented it, because we were all locked down anyway, turn it into a permanent thing that could only be broken by a pay rise is the ultimate in farce. It's an insight into how quickly a habit can form if it suits you.

Anyway, the only other thing that can make us blow up our precious work-life balance is more time off.

But it still doesn’t beat money.

It's why lotto is popular I guess – money solves everything.

Do we value work-life balance? My word we do.

But do we value it more than money? Don’t make me laugh.

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