A text came through from Brett (my boss) on a Monday afternoon – “are you a TWAT?” For a second I wondered if I’d done something stupid, but then the follow up explanation came in and described that it stands for Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. It’s an acronym to describe the work arrangements of people who work these three days from the office and two at home. Brett had overheard someone use the expression while visiting Melbourne.
The benefits of being a TWAT
Are you like Brett and I, not having heard of TWATs till now? This cheeky acronym seems suggestive of the current state of many workplaces, where the pandemic has seen more of us adopting flexible work arrangements than ever before. However, the expression was used back in January 2019 to describe the original group of London workers know as TWATS in this article by Rory Sutherland (vice-chairman of Ogilvy Group UK) in The Spectator.
Sutherland described how these workers designated the office days predominantly for face-to-face meetings. Whereas their working from home days on Mondays and Fridays could be “dedicated to business activities which are location-independent: email, video calls, phone calls and so forth. Instead of their lives being a mess of different demands, they have partitioned their week by activity, meaning the ratio of communication modes they use is driven by their schedule, not other people’s whims.” Sutherland extols the benefits of this clear designation of work duties to workplace in contrast to the chaos of competing distractions that often besieged us in our modern working life when we’re full-time in the office.
Becoming a TWAT is an appealing prospect for many employees who over the course of the pandemic have grown accustomed to and enjoyed aspects of working-from-home but are now being expected to return to the office an average of 3 to 5 days a week.
It’s not all good news
Nevertheless, there is a darker side to being a TWAT in these times of economic recovery. This interesting opinion piece by Noel Towell, published in The Age last month was provocatively titled, “Here come the office TWaTs to ruin our city’s buzz”.
Towell addresses the potential for former office workers not returning to the office full-time to create a big issue for Melbourne CBD’s economic recovery. He refers to the alarm many city businesses are feeling and the potential for some of them to become unviable. “In a tight job market, the TWaTs have more leverage than workers did before the pandemic and if people are determined not to show up on Mondays or Fridays, many employers are just going to have to suck it up.
After all, patronising city coffee shops, bars and restaurants is not part of anybody’s job description.”
We’re in an interesting new era of widespread flexible work arrangements which companies and individuals are still navigating. Employees are typically embracing the chance to continue working-from-home for at least two days of the week, however there may be unexpected consequences. As Towell states, “we can’t expect to have the amenity of a thriving, buzzing, fun and world-class city centre if we leave it to other people to rock up to the CBD. We use it or lose it.”