There was something quite grand about sweeping down the stone steps of the library to meet a guest in the reception last week. Later I could return to an uncluttered oak desk free from the distraction of ringing telephones and email. You can get through a lot of books this way.
One of the books was by Arnold Toynbee, the historian. He was recalling some childhood visits to a professors book-lined study filled with many monographs in different hands. Over the years, the generalist books retreated, replaced by specialist periodicals.
On successive visits, he wrote, Each time I found the study a less agreeable room to look at and to live in than before. Those periodicals were the industrial system in book form with its division of labour and sustained maximum output of articles manufactured from raw materials mechanically.
What would Toynbee have made of the electronic output demanded by the information age? I think I can guess. I spent a year away from my day job to write a book. Then I spent another year creating a website. The book was better. The internet is a marvellous medium in its way but you dont find much beauty there. I couldnt find much beauty in the large office either, one reason why I abandoned it.
Last month I discussed some of the psychological traumas of moving from institutionalised salaried work to the uncertain world of free agency. This month reality is beginning to bite. Some of it is good, some is not so good and some is much the same.
The good stuff is pretty obvious. I am no longer required to report into the office. In fact there is some tension about this that relates entirely to the Inland Revenue. There is a fear that unless I distance myself from my old employer the taxman will begin to think that I had never left.
I am no longer employed and have no desire to be employed again. But employers have things I need: desks, office space, plug sockets, telephones, meeting rooms. Ricardo Semler, the Brazilian industrialist, is aware of the usefulness of such equipment to employees but he doesnt bother to monitor its usage. He knows that some of the equipment is used by freelance workers who may be in the building one week and out the next.
But the Revenue is suspicious of such arrangements. Its rulebook belongs to a world where people are employed or unemployed. Human resources practitioners, particularly those engaged in administering redundancy programmes, are well aware that the Revenue may view a redundancy payment as a tax dodge if someone leaves one day then goes back to his old desk as a contractor the next. If you are going to get rid of someone, the Revenue wants that individual to be firmly ensconced on the other side of the fence. Those who hang around risk losing their tax-free redundancy payment.
Such a policy is a big mistake. A redundancy package is not just a cushion. It can be an opportunity. It can be the difference between a successful freelance career and the heartache of the interview treadmill. Every interim manager I have met has insisted it is impossible to do the job without a safety net of capital to tide you over the lean times.
But who is gunning for the free agents? Not the trade unions. Contract work and temporary work is not worth the candle in their view. Legislators and employer organisations like the CBI need to recognise the desire for independence among a growing number of employees and meet them halfway. It was bad enough when us and them defined the relationship between management and unions. Lets not allow the same gulf to develop between the salaried sector and free agents.
Big company employment has begun to resemble the professors bookcase. Free agency is shedding some light in the attic. The Government, the European Commission, the CBI and other organisations such as the Health and Safety Commission that have statutory powers can let in the sun or they can draw the blind. Which is it to be?
richard.donkin@haynet.com
Richard Donkin is employment columnist at the Financial Times
