I recently moved offices and took the opportunity to have a clear out. In the process I came across a pile of old Director Guides, on a variety of subjects. Many of the topics remain relevant today. But one sounded distinctly outdated. It was from 1995: a Director's Guide to the Information Superhighway. Remember that?

In the introduction, the IoD's then director general, Tim Melville-Ross, asked whether it was a matter of "superhighway or superhype". He concluded that it was not just hype, but rather "a powerful tool with the potential to revolutionise the way business is done".

But hang on a minute, the language may be a little out of fashion, but the sentiment is tragically up-to-the-minute. Just last week I read a column written for the Daily Telegraph by prime minister Gordon Brown. In it he extolled the virtues of super-fast broadband and talked in somewhat wistful phrases of the "very real possibilities" it offers for business.

And so it is that despite the continual development in technology, one week of severe weather is still enough to bring the economy to a halt. As one business organisation after another lined up to quote the economic cost of "the big freeze", the real question was not why grit stocks were so low, but rather why, when the technology exists, more of us aren't working from home as a matter of course. Why do we still have rush hours in towns and cities all across the country? Why does the journey into work still count as "an essential trip" for so many of us?

The answer (as the Director team discovered for itself in the summer of 2008) is mostly cultural. And the most important missing ingredient in most organisational cultures is trust. If bosses could trust their workers to work at home, if IT departments could trust employees with access to the required server and if employees could trust their bosses not to discount their efforts and cut their roles if they aren't always present in the office, perhaps the members of the UK workforce that fall into the category of knowledge worker might be able to work remotely.

There is another reason that remote working struggles to gain acceptance, a reason more profound and problematic than either technology or trust. We all struggle through rush hour—even when pavements and roads alike have been transformed into temporary ice rinks-because we like the familiarity, comfort and company to be found in the office.

This is why, I suspect, that when the incumbent of this office is asked to move during the great freeze of 2025, he or she will probably come across that 1995 Guide to the Information Superhighway, this time with a clipping of a column from a newspaper in 2010 attached. They will then muse as to why, with all that's happened in mobile connectivity, internet and video technology, we still insist on coming into the office from 9am to 5pm. I take heart in the ridiculousness of that scenario, but there's a part of me that suspects it might come true.

Richard Cree

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