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I’LL SLEEP WHEN I’m dead,’ my son tells me when he’s working into the small hours. ‘Sleep is wasted time,’ he adds to justify his view.
Just two of the tropes we tell ourselves as we glorify hustle and sacrifice sleep like it’s optional, while we bow to the gods of power, money and success.
Sleep is your brain’s most productive state – the time when new brain connections are made and creativity is maximised. Memory, creative thinking and emotional resilience – all built at night.
‘You can train yourself to need less sleep,’ is another Capitalist mantra, when what happens is you normalise operating at half-throttle with a slower brain, more caffeine and lowered mood.
Now, businessman Denis O’Brien has weighed in, stating that remote work has destroyed Ireland’s work ethic and compromised productivity.
“This lark of people saying, ‘I’ll come into the office on Tuesday and Wednesday; otherwise, I’m going to be working at home,” is a load of nonsense,’ Mr O’Brien said at the Mazar’s Irish Investor Awards at the Mansion House in Dublin last Friday, where he was given a ‘lifetime achievement’ award.
‘I don’t employ those kind of people, and to be honest with you, I never will.’
This viewpoint is a handy little reminder of the working model we’ve been living with for decades — the post-WWII model of Capitalism that champions constant work, endless productivity and exponential growth — where office workers commute to the city from suburbia, clad in Mad Men-esque outfits of suits, ties, dresses and heels.
Add technology to this model, and the constant requirement to be ‘switched on’, and you reach the semi-dystopian point where everyone is burnt out, anxious and life has lost its meaning. Billionaires are growing in number, the global wealth distribution no longer makes sense, the planet and its resources are hanging on by a thread, and somewhere, in the dark of night, everyone begins to feel like something is broken.
Many believe we are close to reaching that tipping point, if not already there. Newly elected Pope Leo XIV last week highlighted what he called ‘the dark nights of the world,’ which has normalised burnout, anxiety and a lack of meaning, leaving behind a systemic spiritual and emotional vacuum.
Laura Bambrick of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) this week reacted to O’Brien’s take on remote working, saying the billionaire’s comments show a disregard for work-life balance. Any employer insisting on five days in the office raises red flags, she said. Her comments reflect a more modern, balanced and tech-evolved view of the working week.
Founder at 4 Day World, Dr Dale Whelehan, summed it up when he posted on LinkedIn that the world of work has become one of the new false gods. ‘That the human soul is being bent out of shape by our worship of success, speed, productivity, and performance.’
‘We are not just living through a mental health crisis,’ Dr Whelehan said.
‘We’re living through a failure of lived philosophy. We’ve built entire systems on the assumption that humans are machines.
‘Optimisable, Unemotional. Always on. And now, we’re cracking.
‘Climate crisis, inequality, and loneliness are not isolated problems. They are symptoms of a deeper misalignment: a world that values extraction over connection.
‘Speed over soul.’
Whelehan suggests that what is needed now is ‘a new spiritual architecture — for work, for time, for how we live.’
And it is not just hours spent in the office that have caused the spiral in health, resulting from a culture consumed by extraction and productivity. The drive for profit and growth at the expense of health, mental wellbeing and equity is the legacy of the last century. It is the idea that trickle-down economics works, but with rising costs of living, the jury is still out on that one. This approach has worked handsomely for the few, but it is not necessarily the healthiest model for the many. And as the health of the climate is rapidly declining, this is a working approach that no longer fits.
There is mounting evidence of the health benefits of working from home or a hybrid model of working, including allowing people to eat more healthily, feel less stressed and have lower blood pressure, according to a recent large-scale research review.
While remote workers are more likely to eat snacks, drink more, smoke more and put on weight, the research suggests that employers who believe that people working from home are lazy are mistaken. The research found that people who work from home are less likely to take sick leave and more likely to work longer hours, including evenings and weekends.
The research was funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research Health Protection Research Unit in Emergency Preparedness and Response, a partnership between the UK Health Security Agency (HSA), King’s College London and the University of East Anglia. It considered 1,930 research papers on home working, teleworking and other types of hybrid working.
Lead author, psychiatrist Neil Greenberg at King’s College London, said the study showed that workers and employers needed to consider home working with the same seriousness as office working.
‘In the old days of office working, people realised that if you put everyone in the same room with no sound proofing, it was all unpleasant, and you didn’t have a very productive workforce.
‘Now that we’ve shifted to a home working culture,’ Prof Greenberg said, ‘it makes sense for organisations and the government to make sure that people who are home working are doing it in as effective a way as possible.
The review, published in the Journal of Occupational Health (2024), examined the working environment at home, the effect on workers’ lives and careers and the effect on their health.
Overall, the research concluded that the working environment varied depending on the amount of space at home, available equipment and how much control workers had over their day.
Higher income workers found working at home more satisfactory, and those with more responsibilities, including childcare or housework as well as those living alone, often found it stressful.
Generally, people tended to be more productive at home, particularly for more creative projects and less so for more repetitive tasks. Career prospects, however, were also a concern, with employees feeling they might be missing out if not seen to be in the office.
In terms of health, younger workers and females in particular benefited from healthier eating with more fruit, vegetables and homemade meals in their diet. Overall, the review found that home workers tended to have less physical activity in their day, and some of the studies showed that almost half of employees working from home had gained weight.
Greenberg suggested that for home working to be effective, staff training for both managers and employees is essential.
‘There’s a great adage in science that at some point we need to stop admiring the problem and actually think about the solution,’ Prof Greenberg said.
Since the Covid pandemic ended in 2022, some companies such as JP Morgan have refused to accept hybrid working, insisting that workers return to the office full-time. Prof Greenberg is succinct in his views on this.
‘If companies like JP Morgan are afraid that people at home will be slacking, or won’t be doing a good job, and they can’t keep an eye on them, then I think that is an outdated concept.’
As with fossil fuels, it seems that the concept of the full-time office environment, no matter what Denis O’Brien or JP Morgan think or want, is gone. In an era of online work and burgeoning AI, full-time office work is likely to become a stranded asset.
What we do know is that, in terms of home working, a one-size-fits-all approach does not work. The review suggested that staff training is essential, including considerations of a home office and ergonomic supports; establishing boundaries between work and home life; relevant training in software and systems for working; and maintenance of a healthy lifestyle while working from home.
Training for managers should include: specialised training for managing staff who are working from home; training on awareness of telework challenges; consideration of financial compensation for staff; ensuring provision of appropriate equipment; discussion of career progress opportunities; and consideration of good communication, social opportunities and optimised working arrangements to enhance wellbeing.
Denis O’Brien’s comments reflect an outdated industrial mantra that was designed to count, standardise and extract. But thankfully, people have changed. People want lives that are more nuanced. Lives where people are recognised as individuals with time to create and imagine. To put their children to bed and pick them up from school, and sit down together in the evening. To live in harmony with their communities and the Earth that created them.
A hybrid mix of working at home and in the office allows that to happen. Sitting in an office five days a week, clogging up the roads with traffic and bad air or following a one-to-two-hour commute does not. The old ways taught us how to work, but not how to live well. Time to embrace a new world of work that enhances productivity within the confines of health and wellbeing.
Dr Catherine Conlon is a public health doctor in Cork and is former director of human health and nutrition, safefood.
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