David Schmidtchen

Young people are often asked to demonstrate readiness before they are trusted with responsibility. The harder institutional question is whether readiness can be known without giving them consequential work in the first place. Early on a Saturday morning across Australia, people watched 18-year-old Lucas Herrington play 120 minutes against Mohamed Salah, one of the pre-eminent players of his generation.

Lately, I’ve sat through a few presentations from senior business leaders, chief executives of major companies, and chairs of national and international boards. The insights into business trends are often useful. But I’ve noticed when the conversation turns, as it often does, to declining national productivity and the role of working from home (WFH), assertion tends to take the place of evidence.

Modern work is increasingly discussed as if it has become a theatre of effort: people perform busyness, organisations reward appearances, and the link between contribution and recognition grows harder to see. That perception has helped make workplace alienation one of the defining anxieties of contemporary employment. In 2013, anthropologist David Graeber gave that anxiety a memorable name.