How to Create Liveable and Productive Working Habitats

Written by Werner Eichhorst

These days, the role of paid work is being questioned from the point of view of the economy and the latest technologies as well as from the point of view of individuals. There is a lot at stake for work in general and for all those who must cope with their jobs for their existence. This holds for the structure and quality of work and for its boundaries towards the non-work side. The empirical account, presented in my recent book (“The Future of Work Environments: Creating Livable and Productive Working Habitats”, Edward Elgar, 2025), makes clear that for the time being paid work will remain essential for almost everyone, and gainful employment under capitalism will stay with us. While we do not really have to worry about an end to work, we must worry about the kind of work we do and the conditions under which it is done. Work done by humans has grown and continues to grow where it is least similar to machines, uses machines or opposes them in some other way. This is even more true in the era of fast advancing automation, including artificial intelligence. The sphere of human work is a narrow line at the frontier between automation and genuine human capabilities as bottlenecks. To enlarge this sphere, human work needs to be most different from what intelligent machines can do. People do shape the work they do and, if things go well, they are less and less replaceable.

While paid work will continue to take place under the rules of capitalism there is not only one form of capitalism. So, there are different scenarios that can develop from the quite critical phase we are in, the good, the bad and a mixed, ambiguous one. One is an unleashed, radical capitalism with a distinct core and a complex periphery, a combination of the old bureaucratic world of work with a new and strict regime of management of human capital, strongly vertical, with the greatest influence at the top and the smallest margins at the bottom. The other is the more egalitarian model. Hence, it is possible to imagine a more humane capitalism. That would be a positive development path, with a well-functioning labour market and more tolerable, better organisations and stronger individuals that can flourish in a more favourable setting. We can imagine a negative development just as well as a better one and probably even, as sober and realistic as we can be, a contradictory, ambivalent development in between, good for some, bad for others, good in some respects, bad in others.

To create good working habitats, I suggest a triple embedding, bringing all three levels of action – public policies, firm-level organisation and individual capabilities – into coherence so that they can stabilise each other mutually. A more horizontal, egalitarian sphere of work – and a more humane capitalism could be a good habitat for work and non-work for all. Narrowing differences means weaker incentives to compete as it would be possible to (more than barely) survive, at a reasonable level, and avoid or reduce accumulation of advantages in access to better jobs. Good institutions can be built and maintained through adaption, facilitating of livable and workable conditions, a habitat, with as most freedom as possible. Good institutions are essential to create working habitats that are productive and livable for normal people.

In this perspective, public policies can facilitate certain pathways, increase opportunities for habitable work, i.e. non-routine, non-machine work, draw outer boundaries, and influence power relations by limiting and balancing the different types of power and capital. They can enable access to the market, increase employment security and facilitate changes in the market. At the same time certain standards are crucial as they provide income security and help develop human capital, thus strengthening individual bargaining power that allows for better choices and reduces the risk of impasses, not only for some groups, but for all. Policy can build dykes and dams to influence the flow of work without being able to direct it in detail, but it is essential to provide an appropriate framework, which must not be too restrictive and block possible productive development paths. Productive and good work then depend on the actors. A good policy is therefore a productive infrastructure for the world of work, a productive factor itself. Public policies matter a lot, regarding wages, social benefits, education and adult learning, skills and participation mechanisms needed to enable less hierarchical structures of firms – given a more egalitarian labour market and power relations between individuals.

In the best case, companies are places of joint productive work. We then speak of management with fewer management layers and control systems and more collaboration among equals in a workshop setting, with significantly fewer hierarchical structures, but this does not work without self-management and high demands on the individuals, bringing in their human capital. Human work is always individual and personal so that it demands a lot of people’s own initiative and effort. But a workshop also allows limits of disposal and availability, it lives from difference and improvement, from participation in old and new forms, and this is supported by productive constraints stemming from labour market institutions, i.e. by politically set standards. There is certainly a greater chance of having workshop-like organisations to exist if capital is distributed accordingly, and if there is an appropriate frame, and if workable skills extend across the labour force and are not confined to some segments. Still, work in workshops is a serious effort but it feels less superfluous, absurd, not extending it unnecessarily.

In the era of human capitalism, everyone is a human capitalist, whether you like to call it like that or not. It does not work without expertise and self-organisation, embedded in work and cooperation, and the ability to assert oneself and see opportunities in the sphere of paid work, but also on the boundary between work and its hinterland, perhaps discovering new territory for productive, professional work on the one hand and the indispensable backcountry of non-work that goes with it on the other. A certain distance cannot hurt, not letting oneself go crazy and just also being in the hinterland, on the boundary, never completely sinking in the swamp of work. Individuals have a remarkable capacity to not just passively adapt or cope when faced with adverse conditions, but for shaping something so that it works, crafting their jobs and managing their boundaries, the more so the overall setting is supportive.

I argue that we can look forward to the whole endeavor with relative confidence, the more so, the better the overall settings help individuals to find and shape a working habitat, in particular if positive complementarities between the three levels of action can be realized so that they mutually reinforce each other in creating livable and productive work environments. Yet, the future will never look exactly as we expect it to. It would also be downright unbearable if everything were foreseeable. The present uncertainty is an expression of the openness of the future. The more is at risk, the more is uncertain, the more important is the idea of a working habitat. An attractive habitat for humans at work and outside of work is a sort of rescue and refuge. As good as it can get.