Where We Work

Seems like a silly question at first … A workplace is a place where we work. But what does that really mean? People disagree on what counts as ‘work’, and what doesn’t. If we do work outside what we think of as a standard workplace, does it still count as work? Does just being in the workplace already qualify as being ‘at work’, even if we’re not doing anything?

Seeing as work takes up a good chunk of so many people’s days, the culture of our workplaces is an integral part of the culture of our societies as a whole. How we communicate with each other, the hierarchies we construct, and how we organise our time in the workplace has a huge ripple effect on the wider economy.

As we went from producing what we need to survive, to being part of industrial assembly lines, to highly tech-based service jobs in a lot of developed economies, workplaces have had to change to keep up. Although industrial production lines still exist, we also now live in a world where just pulling out a smartphone or laptop can turn anywhere into a workplace.

Now that technology lets us fulfil our basic needs without having to work as many hours as before, you’d think we’d all end up working less. Instead, we’re working just as hard if not harder, producing far more than the world needs, and somehow still facing the issues of unemployment and poverty. How on earth has this happened?