Stefana Broadbent, digital anthropologist and professor at University College London, assesses the relationship between the private sphere and the world of work.
In the era of mass telework, how to redefine intimacy at work?
Work is traditionally a place of exclusion from the private sphere. One sells one’s attention; any outside distraction is considered a source of lost productivity. My research aimed to show how, through the mobile phone and digital tools, the private sphere had reconquered the workspace. With massive telework during the first confinement, the opposite happened: work was brought back to the private space. We have clearly seen that there was strong resistance from employers: there was enormous pressure for people to go to the workplace anyway. The idea prevails that there must be direct control of attention, otherwise it would not be productively employed. Through the notions of professional space and private space, it is a question of power that is at stake.
Are these fears partly justified?
There was a whole rhetoric about the fact that people at home were interrupted in their work by children, which moreover mainly mobilized the image of women. It’s true that it was a problem: we outsourced a lot of activities, such as education, cooking… which, with the confinement, came back to the house. But it would also be necessary to quantify the number of times an employee is interrupted on an open space. The employers’ argument is that these interruptions in the workplace are rewarding for the employee. The problem is the value to give to this interruption. Is the discussion in the desk next to mine worth more than the interruption of my child asking me something?
How is this reversal experienced by employees?
This inversion has been experienced very differently depending on the employees, depending on their personal situation, but also, it seems to me, depending on their degree of autonomy: the more people are autonomous in the organization of their telework, the more they appreciate it . Attention control is applied in quite different ways depending on the employee. Executive positions are less subject to this standard. They work in project mode, can organize their days as they see fit, while people who perform repetitive tasks are more controlled.
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