To phrase it plainly, given the current employment market, there’s no fucking way I’m going back to brave an arduous commute to sit in a crazy-making open-plan office again. Especially not after I’ve proven exhaustively for a year that I don’t even need to be in the building, and that I don’t need as much money as I thought I did.
Want to provide me a private office or at least a cubicle as Jesus intended? Great, we can talk. Expect me to sit in a loud, crowded space with a hundred noisy Gen-Z extraverts screwing off and playing ping-pong all day? Fuck you buddy, I don’t need income that badly.
I actually have gotten to know team members better through Slack. I don’t need ‘face time’ at all.
One fellow that everyone thought was just a total recluse and would not talk to others is funny as hell. The other coworkers and I communicate as much or more as we ever did.
Part of that may be that I’m hard of hearing. I much prefer the written word. Everyone is different.
This is an example of why a business would want everyone to be in the office. Even if some employees are fine onboarding remotely, not all will be. From a business perspective, it’s better to have an environment where everyone can be onboarded efficiently, which is likely with in-person office teams. It can be done remotely, but overall it’s likely to work out better in the long run to bring new employees in to a traditional office. And I would also expect this to be something that has age as a factor. I would expect that older employees would typically be better onboarding remotely compared to a college grad. There are probably lots of these sorts of business processes as well. The business overall is probably more productive with people working locally even though certain individuals or teams are more productive WFH.
Because businesses are greatly driven by profit, I would expect that many businesses would mandate WFH if it truly led to more profit. Businesses hardly think twice about doing stuff like kicking people out of expensive private offices and into a shared workspace with cafeteria tables if it helps the bottom line. If having everyone working from their bedroom made a positive difference to the bottom line, that’s the way it would be. There wouldn’t even be an option to come into the office.
Businesses often screw up as we all know. The Open Office concept is failing for a lot of places. It drives out good experienced workers and reduces productivity for what is largely a one time savings. There are places it works well and places where it works terribly and everything in-between.
However, it would mean inconveniencing some employees for a possible benefit to a few other employees. In my case, I would absolutely not be able to do my job from the office - I cannot commute due to disability - so there’s zero chance of me being forced in because the law’s on my side, but I wouldn’t appreciate being forced in if I weren’t disabled. Sure, they could do it, but I’m not sure that it would actually lead to a pleasant working environment. Would I really be able to be friendly and chatty to the person who’s made me spend time and money commuting just because they prefer the office? Would that actually lead to a more productive onboarding process?
Some people work from their bedrooms, but many don’t. It’s incorrect to describe working from home as working from your bedroom.
Regardless, the business only cares about employee well-being in as much as it helps profit. The only reason they are considering WFH is because of the potential risk of losing employees, which drives up their operating costs. If an employee won’t quit and is just about as productive in the office or from home, the business is going to pick the one which leads to the most profit. Maybe if an employee is greatly more productive at home they will make an exception, but for the most part they will force the employees in the most productive scenario regardless of their personal preference.
We’ve talked about it in this thread so I know it’s an overgeneralization but from what I seen the main reason for people to go back to the office is that older people seem to have trouble believing the milenial is working from their homes even if they have been seeing work product consistently for the last year.
I think we’re going to see a wave of people quitting and changing jobs and then more companies will adapt. Not every job can be done from home my wife runs a lab and people have to be there to do the test work but every oil field engineering job I had could have been done from home, and was since they expected me to work 24/7, so I think we’ll see companies offering work from home positions at a reduced salary going forward with a premium paid for office work that will slowly disappear.
That’s my point - it might well not be more productive.
Also for a lot of businesses there will be cost savings from having people work from home - maybe not immediately, while they still have contracts on office space, but in the long term they’d save money.
But that has to be balanced against profits. Saving money only makes sense if it means increased profits. Profits are the only thing that matters. If getting rid of the office and having everyone WFH means future revenue declines enough, then the cost savings of getting rid of the office may not matter. If you personally are more productive at home, that doesn’t necessarily mean that all businesses process are more productive in that environment. It could be that being in the office allows more quick collaboration which enables the business to react quicker to market changes and be more profitable overall. But since business really only cares about profits, they will eagerly embrace WFH if it leads to more profits. If the CEO can buy a 3rd vacation home because everyone does WFH, the office leases will be cancelled immediately. If the CEO feels generous, they may send an email to the employees saying they have until the end of the day to get into the office to remove their personal belongings before the landlord throws everything out.
Sure but how do you expect businesses to figure this out? Some will jump into from COVID and others will watch their profit margins if the ones that go to full WFH succeed then the others will be playing catch up.
Right now we’re seeing the employees who are doing the best at wfh jumping ship to the companies that will allow them to continue. That sure seems like a large first mover advantage to me.
Yes… I’m not sure whether I should just repeat myself again, and say that forcing unwilling employees to come into work, for the sake of the few employees who actually want to, is going to lead to more profit. Some businesses choosing to do that does not automatically mean they have made the right, most profitable decision.
In the 24+ years in my job, I’ve gone through 100% in office, 50% telecommuting with set days, ROWE (Result Oriented Work Environment - basically, come in when necessary), to flexible mandatory 50% in office, to 100% WFH.
I’ve been out of office more than I have been in office over the past 15 years. For me, I prefer WFH. I am much more effective offsite. Not all feel the same. When the manager decided we needed to be in office 50% of the time, it was fairly clear that it stemmed mostly from her desire to see bodies in office. When the commissioners announced we would remain WFH through at least early 2022, she immediately retired.
Now, we’ve learned our building is going to be put up for sale. We had heard scuttlebutt of a possible move a few years ago; the county had purchased a building and the idea was to consolidate the many Human Service departments into the one site, versus us all scattered around downtown. So who knows, when the head honchos decide we need to be back in office, there may not be an office to return to.
For large firms in expensive markets (like New York City, where I live and work), WFH can mean a massive savings in office space costs. And I assure you that savings will not be passed on to employees. Certainly not to non-C-suite employees.
My own firm is going with a hybrid home/office model, based on an estimate of (I’m told) 60% of staff in the office on any given day. Already they’re looking at reducing the square footage of leased space.
My employer has started making noises about wanting us to start coming back into the office, at least part time. I’m gonna fight it every step of the way- I really don’t want to deal with 2+ hours of commuting ever again, and my dogs really appreciate having us around the house all the time. One of our dogs is recovering from knee surgery, and there’s no way we could’ve done this when we were both away from home 10+ hours a day.
I think the main reason my employer wants us back in the office is because they recently spent a lot of money to renovate the building’s basement. Well, screw that- I’ve got a perfectly good basement right now- actually, we bought our current house because it was so well suited to a work-from-home situation. They’ve talked about allowing WFH on a case-by-case basis, but since several of my coworkers have moved out of the province in the last year, I suspect that won’t go over too well.
My wife is working two days a week in her office- but that’s mostly because she wants to take one of our dogs to daycare for socialization, and it’s close to her office. Me, I’m going to stay right here as long as I possibly can.
Yeah, because people lose a couple hours a day or more by having to go to the office to do things they can do from home. Lots of people like the extra sleep, more family time, better work/life balance, ability to take care of errands during work breaks, etc that comes from working at home.
All the blue collar workers, if they lived in Japan would be forced to waste several hours a day after work ‘socializing’ with the boss. Time they could spend on recreation, with family, resting, etc is instead wasted on a counterproductive work culture tradition. If Japan suddenly got rid of that wasteful several hours a day for a year, then tried to implement it back all those blue collar workers would revolt.
The only reason employers want people back is either because middle managers are trying to justify their jobs, or because they invested in real estate. Its going to cause an exodus as people leave these companies for companies that all WFH.
A couple people responded with “but is it smart” and “people are finding they can work as well at home” and the like - and I absolutely agree. It is a HUGE benefit to the employees - I figured that when I started nearly 100% teleworking some years back, it was like getting a 10K a year raise (clothing, commuting expenses, wear and tear on the car and on my nerves…). A friend at another company told me that their new CEO was very against teleworking at all - but then they had a couple of years of tight budgets, and they realized they could offer more telework options as a partial reward since they couldn’t give raises.
It also gives the employers access to a larger pool of qualified people. In about 2 months, I will be starting a project in another time zone. Formerly they did not allow telework at all - but had to rethink things with the shutdown, and that made that project a possibility for me. I’m currently on a project providing call center support - where telework is not just as good as, but BETTER than being onsite as things are, I imagine, rather noisy in a workplace for this sort of job.
In my career (IT consultant), the workplace has evolved over the years in such a way that it is actually harder to commute to the office than it was before. They’ve gone to a “hoteling” approach regarding office space - which means you can’t leave your computer and paperwork behind, so you have to lug it back and forth with you every single day - and you never even know where your desk will be from day to day. It’s a pain in the neck (quite literally, when hauling a heavy computer bag).
So - I stand by my “every right” opinion, but I also agree that if work CAN be done remotely and still be as effective, the employers are being shortsighted in not exploring this option.
When asked how we’re doing, I’ve felt a bit bad saying my wife and I came out ahead in 2020. Both of us started working from home last year and we’ve saved money by not spending it on gasoline, lunches, or new clothing. But I’m one of those people who is looking forward to going back to the office and mainly it’s because I try to maintain a strong separation between work and home. And that’s very, very hard to do when I’m working from my home office where I would normally go to relax.
A few years ago, we started allowing our customer service representatives to work from home provided they could maintain the same quality of work they had in the office. Our CSRs are pretty much on the phone for their entire eight hour shift so it doesn’t really matter if they’re in a cubical or at home. Within a few years, engagement was up and turnover was down. While some CSRs came to find they didn’t care to work from home most of them prefer it.
We’re set to come back to the office soon and a lot of employees aren’t happy about it at all. Especially those who aren’t going to be able to work from home even part of the week. And I don’t really have any idea why some employees will only work from the office part of the week and while others won’t work from home at all. I have to be available in person to talk to employees so it make sense why I’m in the office.
This is almost exactly what I’m doing right now. While it’d be nice to have the boss come over and look at my screen for a tricky scenario, there are screensharing options that are about 99% as good. I’ve spent some of my own money equipping my home office - but far less than I’d have spent on commuting for a month or two. I have to have high-speed internet (at my own expense - but I have that anyway). I have a very, very comfortable headset - but I bought THAT 2 years ago, for commuting. I get up at 7:25 to be on the clock at 7:30. I am off the clock at 4:30. The separation of home / work is not nearly the problem it is with more traditional consulting work - I am online for specific hours every day and then I’m DONE.
I can’t imagine any good reason for needing to go to an office to do this, unless the house was overwhelmed with screaming kids (mine, fortunately, are adults).
For me, the perfect compromise (for my regular work, in IT) would be 2 days onsite, 3 home or similar.