The EconomistMarch 28th 2020 Business 592
1Bartleby Diary of a home worker
M
orning: wakeup at 7am. Listen to
radio news full of government
restrictions, disease numbers and tales
of economic decline. Stop on the way to
shower to wake up teenage daughter so
she can get ready for school. Daughter
tersely points out that her school has
been closed for days.
7.20: Breakfast is tricky decision. Is
the family closer to running out of milk
and cereal, or bread? Realise that cat has
only two food sachets left.
7.30: Email inbox consists almost
entirely of companies explaining how
they are coping with the pandemic. This
includes every hotel and restaurant that
ever took an online booking.
8.00: Head for supermarket to pick up
extra cat food. Shelves resemble scene
from zombie apocalypse. Purchase tub of
ice cream on grounds that virus poses-
bigger threat to health than obesity does.
8.30: Attempt to read company’s
disaster recovery policy. Hitherto had
been more likely to pick up a newly
discovered novel by Ayn Rand. Can’t
make head nor tail of it. Beg daughter for
help as she has actually heard of these
apps. Think wistfully of the days when
journalism involved a typewriter, carbon
paper and the telephone directory.
8.50: Look at academic paper in the
hope it will provide column idea. Give up
when the abstract turns out to be too, er,
abstract. Wish that vital books were not
left in the office, seven miles away.
9.00: Check Twitter and news web-
sites for virus developments on grounds
this is “research”. Disappear down rabbit
hole for 45 minutes.
9.45: Cough briefly. As paranoia sets
in, check temperature. All fine but then
second thought: what if thermometer is
broken? To be safe, wash hands while
singing all of “Bohemian Rhapsody”.10.30: Time to dial into editorial meet-
ing. Realise cannot find phone number or
meeting code. Send email to colleague who
returns a WhatsApp message with the
answer. But as that arrives on the phone
needed to dial in. Hunt for pen and paper
to write down the numbers.
10.35: Finally get through to meeting.
Wonder about etiquette for conference
calls taken at home. Is it okto put the
kettle on? Eat a biscuit?
10.45: Try to contribute. Realise phone
is on mute. After two minutes, work out
how to unmute phone. Discussion has
moved on. Mute again to avoid embarrass-
ment. Reflect that listening to meeting in
which one does not contribute is akin to
watching a play performed in a foreign
language. Start to miss regular meetings, a
concept previously beyond imagination.
11.15: Go for stroll. Have conversation
with neighbour who stands a careful two
yards away. Wonder whether, like medi-
eval lepers, we will all eventually have to
walk down street, ringing bell and shout-
ing, “unclean!”
11.30: Return to house to find cat has saton laptop, and accidentally opened a
whole bunch of tabs and typed random
letters. If cat does this long enough,
could she write entire column?
11.45: Check Google calendar and find,
after cancellations, there are no meet-
ings left for the whole of 2020. Perhaps
this is how it is going to be.
11.59: Think of virus-related joke.
Noon: Tweet the joke.
12.01: Realise quip was in terrible taste
and hurriedly delete it.
12:15: Lunch dilemma. Eat perishable
food before it goes off or non-perishable
food which could be out of stock in the
supermarket? Settle for ice cream on the
grounds that should never have bought it
in the first place. Start to watch tvdetec-
tive series for a few minutes as deserved
mental break.
1.30: Suddenly realise the time as
detective show ends. Turn off tv.
1.45: Inbox now consists of pitches
from two types of prpeople. One group
wants to highlight products that will
make home-working easier and would
make great column. The other lot wants
to know whether The Economistwould
like to publish an article from their chief
executive praising their own company.
Hit delete button multiple times.
2.30: Think about working in Star-
bucks as a break from the kitchen table.
Remember that Starbucks and every
other coffee chain has now closed for
business indefinitely.
4.00: Consider writing column that is
not virus-related but worry it might seem
otherworldly. Conduct search of internet
for topic that is virus-related but at the
same time vaguely cheerful.
5.00: Wonder whether the business
editor would accept a column based on a
homeworker’s diary. Estimate the odds to
be rather long.The challenges of concentrating during a lockdownCom and Tyco got them more involved in
remuneration. A decade later bungled suc-
cessions at giants like hp, a printer-maker,
left them with a bigger say in filling top
jobs. More recently they have dealt with
firms’ often very public “me too” troubles.
As recruiting and retaining skilled
workers became ceos’ big concern—four-
fifths now fret about skill shortages, up
from half in 2012—hr heads’ desks moved
closer to the corner office. Today many re-
side right next to the boss. Shareholders are
inviting more outside hr chiefs onto
boards. In America salaries remain lowerthan cfos’ pay but have risen about 20%
faster since 2010 (see chart on next page).
A higher profile entails new expecta-
tions. hr was once the domain of history
graduates and masters in labour relations;
nowadays plenty hold business degrees.
Although most firms recruit them from hr
jobs, more are choosing outsiders or un-
conventional candidates. Russell Reynolds
Associates, an executive-search firm,
found that hr heads appointed to Fortune
100 companies in 2016-19 were around 50%
likelier than earlier hires to have worked
abroad, in general management or finance.Before covid-19 tight labour markets
and millennial empowerment forced em-
ployers to think about getting the most out
of workers, says Dane Holmes, a former hu-
man-capital head at Goldman Sachs who
now runs Eskalera, an hr-analytics firm.
Diane Gherson, in charge of hr at ibm,
overhauled the computing giant’s perfor-
mance management with big data. Algo-
rithms challenge managers’ instincts on
pay and promotion and alert her team
when employees are at risk of fleeing (of-
ten before they realise it themselves).
The pandemic makes such “people ana-