Lockdown means we’re all losing touch with just about everyone. I vaguely remember these things called friends, but frankly “normality” is now such a long time ago that the details are blurry. In this out-of-touch Olympics, it turns out there is, however, a clear winner: bosses.
A gold medal is the bosses’ reward for living on an entirely different planet from their workers (everywhere except for the Resolution Foundation, obviously). At least that’s the takeaway from a global survey by Microsoft that polled 30,000 people from 31 countries, focusing on office work that has moved online. The Work Trend Index found that 62% of business leaders were personally “thriving” during the pandemic. The lucky things were also more likely to be earning more and to have been able to take more of their annual leave.
Back in the real world, more than half of employees recorded being overworked, with more than four in 10 planning to leave their jobs. The young have been most likely to lose their jobs in the crisis, but even those keeping them have suffered more from the move to remote working; 60% of those aged 18-25 report they are flat-out struggling or merely surviving.
The takeaway for bosses? Time to recognise it’s a bit easier to chillax mid-Covid if you’re at the top of the office food chain and a lot harder to realise your workers are unhappy when they’re sitting in their bedrooms, rather than grumbling by the watercooler.
• Torsten Bell is chief executive of the Resolution Foundation. Read more at resolutionfoundation.org
