The history of office life in the UK – 1960s to 2010s - 04/10/10
Posted by Kevin Box on Mon, Oct 04, 2010 @ 04:02 AM
Introduction
The development of the office has mirrored both the social trends
of the day with technology available to carry out the work. The office has always been the administrative hub of any organisation reflecting the social conventions of the day and the technology available. In Britain, economic and business trend have been reflected in the office:
- the move away from manufacturing towards services
- the move away from big business to smaller businesses
- the move towards informality
- the need to cut costs and hence use less people
- more and more technology.
But through it all offices have been the places where many human dramas played out – where affairs have been born, where gossip is king and where people have lived worked and, yes, died.
1960s Office Pen Portrait
In the 1960s women did the typing and the men were the bosses. If you were a man and a high up manager then you had an office to yourself. You dictated letters to your secretary (a woman). She sat on the other side of your desk in short skirts and called you “sir” whilst she took down what you wanted to say in shorthand. You wore a suit all of the time with a white shirt and a tie properly tied. When you had finished she went away and typed up the letters for you to sign. If you wanted a cup of tea (and it would be tea - not coffee) you would buzz through on the intercom and ask for one. If you wanted to make a phone call you would buzz through and ask for the person you wanted to speak to, call him Fred, and she would make the call to Fred and when he came on the line she would put him through and you could have your conversation.
The main body of the office, however was composed of a number of desks where the lower people sat. There was a switchboard for the telephone system which was operated by a “receptionist”, a woman, who also greeted anyone who arrived and typed in between taking and making telephone calls. Calling abroad was an event marked by general awe.
Incoming and outgoing telephone calls were all routed through the receptionist. Phones had rotary dials which had to be turned and then rotated back. The receptionist also operated the telex machine, if the firm did urgent business. If you were a small company you didn’t have a photocopier – that was reserved for the big companies. The typewriters were electric but still generally had keys that flew up and hit the page.
Accountants and staff who worked with figures had adding machines which were electrically operated and could produce a paper tally tape of the calculations. The economy operated in pounds shillings and pence and so the ability to add up a list of figures in your head was pretty usual. By and large accounts were handwritten and a large amount of time was spent “balancing the books”.
Big companies had whole rooms of women typing, not only letters but onto key cards to feed into computers. Computers were massive machines which occupied whole offices and were tended by men who fed the cards into them.
The office staff tended to be young ladies predominantly because once you had children you left to look after them and with any luck never went back.
1970s Office Portrait
Things didn’t change dramatically in offices – there is a slow evolution as the old are replaced by the young. In the 1970s women continued to type and answer the phone. Bosses became known as Mr rather than Sir and as the decade advanced they were even called by their first names.
Dress continued to be formal with men wearing suits and women being allowed a wider range of formal wear. Jeans were unheard of. Although women’s lib had become a big issue politically in the offices of the land it had little effect at the beginning of the decade.
Decimalisation happened in 1971 and that made it a lot easier for people and office machines.
The machinery continued to advance. Calculators which started the decade as desktop machines with valves for displays became ubiquitous and cheap. Phones became push button rather than rotary and calling abroad was not uncommon. Typewriters also advanced and now usually were golf ball types or cassette wheel types which allowed different fonts to be used.
Photocopiers reduced in price and became more common.
Computers started to evolve to be smaller and the mini computer started to become the tool of choice with large computer terminals starting to appear on peoples desks by the end of the decade. Micro computers began to appear towards the latter part of the decade.
1980s Office Portrait
By the 1980s things were beginning to become more relaxed. People still wore formal clothes but men didn’t have to wear jackets – although ties were certainly needed. Pretty much everyone was now called by their first name. It was no longer unusual for a woman to be one of the bosses although secretaries continued to be universally women.
The old formality of the secretary doing the typing, making the tea (although now it might be coffee) and answering the phone continued. As the decade moved on the typewriter gave way to the word processor. Although there would be less of these people around as time was tight.
In 1984 British Telecom was privatised and for the first time there became some choice of telephone systems to buy. It was no longer British Telecom or smoke signals. Fax machines started to be seen and their use exploded throughout the decade until they were fairly universal.
Accounts were now pretty much done by computers and manual calculation was a thing of the past. Photocopiers were now pretty ubiquitous.
The PC began its rise to prominence becoming the machine of choice for all accountants. Desktop publishing became possible. Spread sheets became a commonly used tool. By the end of the decade PCs were in most offices but often they were standalone machines on which data was held and backed up on floppy disk.
1990s Pen Portrait
In the 1990s the PC became all powerful and was closely followed by the new mobile phones and the internet.
The business suit and tie were still obligatory in UK offices with semi-formal wear for women. Everything was on first name terms. At long last typing as a full time occupation started to disappear and other administrative tasks took over. Coffee and tea machines started to sprout up in various guises as did water coolers.
As the decade progressed pretty much every desk gained a large display unit for a computer to go with the phone. All of the computers became networked together with a central filing system. Most computers ran Microsoft Windows and Windows became pretty recognisable as it is today with the release of Windows ’95.
The world increasingly turned to email. At first the systems were solely for in house use but pretty soon they were world-wide. The internet was regarded as the big thing which was going to change lives but no one knew quite how, especially since you could only really gain access by using a dial up modem on a telephone line.
Mobile phones had been around since the late 1980s but they became widely available and used by more and more people. Businesses struggled to contain the cost explosion they brought in their wake. They could only be used for talking and sending text messaging though.
Phone systems continued to develop with more features such as DDI becoming available as there was take up of ISDN circuits. Voice mail became available widely. People had now learned how to make their own calls and hardly anyone now relied upon a secretary to get them a call. DECT handsets became fairly frequent allowing people to move around the office and still make and receive phone calls. Fax machines were ubiquitous.
2000s Pen Portrait
As the decade wore on informality began to creep into the clothes that people wore. Ties at long last started to become optional although still often worn. The gender gap in occupations, although still wide, began to diminish.
The technology for the internet began to catch up with the hype and ADSL became a reality with always on Internet availability. Computer screens became flat – freeing up acres of desk space and causing a revolution in desk sizes as employers sought to make offices smaller. Hot desking and home working became paradigms which were seen as being the next big step. However people seem to like to work in offices and were reluctant to go home. Flexi time working was introduced in large offices allowing employees to work when (and if) they felt like it.
Everyone, everywhere had a mobile phone and 3g mobile phones began to gain acceptance giving initially email on the move and then some limited internet access.
Office phone systems evolved towards integration with computer systems but only slowly. Forceful selling of systems and misleading information regarding call charges meant that businesses tended to leave them alone if they weren’t broken. VoIP systems using the internet started to be seen as the next revolution but were regarded with great suspicion. People’s experience with Skype often dissuaded them from going further on a business basis.
Offices - The Future
Offices seem to be here to stay. There is great pressure on prices and the tendency to cram ever more people into an ever lesser space will continue. The rise of informality will also continue with jeans and t shirts becoming normal wear for non-customer facing staff before spreading out to customer facing staff.
The technology that drives everything will become ever more closely integrated with the web allowing everyone to do anything from anywhere and driving customers to do more of their own work in exchange for reducing costs. Communications will be exclusively over VoIP of one flavour or another. The technology will reduce even more any mundane tasks still left but making a good cup of tea will always remain best done by humans.
However, no matter what changes we are still all people and the gossip and matters of life and death, romance and betrayal will continue to fuel the fascination of the people who spend their lives administering.
Written by David Hill, Chairman, Cloud Net