You say it will be expensive for companies to set up employees to work from home? Almost every organisation of any size or sense updates its’ tech every 2 years or so -it’s a fixed, budgeted-for expense which will only marginally change if one decides to give ones employees laptops instead of desktops. That’s what the organisation I used to work for did some years ago.
Broadband access? I don’t know how things stand in the Colonies, but over here, unless you rely entirely on analogue TV and have no landline, you probably have broadband. Because the various companies (Sky, Virgin, BT etc.) sell their products/services in bundles. My parents don’t own a computer, tablet or smartphone but their basic Virgin package still gives them broadband. Anyone earning an office-job salary will be able to get broadband.
Teams? Teams are a con. They hold back the best and allow the dead-weight to coast. One competent person, working alone, uninterrupted and without micro-management, can achieve more in less time than the best-drilled and most closely-knit team, if only because of the time saved by not constantly having to attend meetings.
In default of an affordable, sustainable and reliable system of public transport, the commute to work is one of the most environmentally damaging things we do. Millions of cars, most with only one occupant, travelling anything from two to thirty or more miles a day, crowding cities, clogging motorways, poisoning the air, killing and maiming innocents by the thousand! That has to be stopped, and soon!
No, the issue over here — and over there, I’ll bet — is a class one. The middle-class management believe in their bones that unless their working-class admin assistants and clerks are physically under their eagle eyes, they will skive or goof off. It’s about what it’s always been about — keeping the peasants in line. Allowing them to work from home is the same as respecting them, trusting them, and treating them like human beings, and we can’t have that, can we? They’d be wanting dignity next, and maybe even decent pay -the end of civilisation as we know it!
