MORE A REFLECTION OF POOR MANAGEMENT
A study published this summer unpicked bullshit jobs and suggested workers’ sense of uselessness may not be “a direct indication of the social value of that work”.
Rather, it is “a symptom of bad management and toxic workplace cultures”. In the wrong environment, essential workers may see themselves as being in such jobs too.
Workers are more likely to think their job is useless if they have “a manager who is micromanaging … especially if they are doing it incompetently”, says Brendan Burchell, professor of social sciences at Cambridge university and an author of the study. Autonomy can reduce the likelihood that you see your job as bullshit.
The pandemic highlighted autonomy — or lack of it. Many of our freedoms — to meet friends and family, travel and even to hug — were curtailed. Yet for many white-collar workers it proved liberating to work more flexibly.
As offices reopen, the debate around white-collar work has tended to pit the workplace against the home.
But I would wager that for many employees it is actually a battle for autonomy. “If you strip away why people want flexibility, you find they want control over how much, where and when they work,” says Emma Stewart, development director at Timewise, a flexible work consultancy.
