Remote Employment won't last (vacations, Hawaii, employees, applying)
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Yeah. She refuses to acknowledge that people connected and socialized AFTER the day's work was done. Evening, weekends, holidays, days off don't exist in her mind.
The modern day office has NO resemblance at all to hunter gatherer societies. Offices are artificial spaces that bear no true connection to real community and family. It's sad that some folks don't know the difference.
Ncole1, if your coworkers are such great friends, how many of them have you spent time with over the last year? Any backyard barbeques? Birthday presents, Christmas cards? Any phone calls just to chat and catch up?
1 for sure, could easily have been 2 if so many people didn't skip town as soon as work went remote. 5 if you count people I have stayed in some form of contact with from previous jobs, with 2 of those having moved to another city (and thus contact by phone only) and 3 local / semi-local with some form of in-person contact .
I would estimate maybe 1 new friend per year from work, so after staying at a job for several years it is a good handful. But by then 50% of them have moved to another city. And eventually at some point I will want to move as well and will need to meet new people.
Ncole1 it's likely that your office will return to work in some way shape or form. It might not be 5 days a week but it will probably be at least 2.
I'm wondering if offices will open up, people will start going back because they want to and then realize wow I really did like working remote. I think some folks are fatigued from wfh all the time but will realize it's better than being in the office once they return.
I keep hearing this from people around here. I think IT and management is getting the flexibility but not necessarily everyone else. Attitudes seem to keep evolving - which is how it ALWAYS works. It is playing out as I expected where the lots of the WFH has changed to flex schedules and more in office time now that vaccines are rolling out and numbers are dropping in some places. One acquaintance was considering quitting because her company has asked people back sooner that the antipicated July/August date.
Where I am, the WFH policy was originally made up for IT, but then taken to HR and made company wide for most corporate departments. Most of these roles can be done from home at least most of the time.
I would consider in-office roles in the future, but it would not be in the area I live in now.
Where I am, the WFH policy was originally made up for IT, but then taken to HR and made company wide for most corporate departments. Most of these roles can be done from home at least most of the time.
I would consider in-office roles in the future, but it would not be in the area I live in now.
That's interesting. At my company, when the pandemic started, they sent everyone home that could go, including a lot of the IT staff. It took 3 or 4 months to realize that that was a failed system because you need a certain number of IT people on site as "backup" in case the systems go down. If you send too many IT people home, then some others will have to come back to work because their remote connection system has become unreliable due to too many IT staff working from home! I suppose companies that have done this for a while may have worked all those issues out, but it surely takes dedicated management to avoid running into these issues too frequently.
Well, Ncole1 needn't have worried that the "pro WFH" folks would keep people out of the office. Looks like the "butts in seats" team scored a victory. We've been about half time telework since June. Got word today we're going back to mostly in office with telework at individual supervisor's discretion later this month.
In our division of our law firm we are 100% "Butts in seats" in our White Plains office, with the discretion to WFH on a day or two.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ncole1
I suspect that is the reason a lot of employers are giving a return date - they are trying to "deter" people from moving further away from work. They don't want to be "trapped" in a position of not being able to bring people back to the office because too many have moved further away.
You may be on to something. I think WFH works just fine as long as most workers know each other. That starts to break down over time.
Ncole1 it's likely that your office will return to work in some way shape or form. It might not be 5 days a week but it will probably be at least 2.
I'm wondering if offices will open up, people will start going back because they want to and then realize wow I really did like working remote. I think some folks are fatigued from wfh all the time but will realize it's better than being in the office once they return.
If I had to speculate, there's going to be a lot of variation in how people feel. I don't doubt that people with horrendously long commutes will miss working from home, as well as those that have a personality and role that is well suited to doing most work independently.
There are also people that are ”creatures of habit” - they'll work in almost any way, but want to ”get used to” something. When I was in grad school I saw this a lot - people went home for the summer and worked from home for 3 months, and then came back to campus. Many of them, once back at campus, came to the office almost every day, even when they didn't have any big meetings.
Having part of the week in office and part of the week at home seems like the type of arrangement that would be disliked by the type that just wants to have a consistent routine one way or the other. And as for me, as long as I am allowed to go to the office 5 days a week and there are a few others, it isn't really that big of a problem. What gives me anxiety is reading articles written by people who want to force telework on people for part of the week, like this one for example:
If I had to speculate, there's going to be a lot of variation in how people feel. I don't doubt that people with horrendously long commutes will miss working from home, as well as those that have a personality and role that is well suited to doing most work independently.
There are also people that are ”creatures of habit” - they'll work in almost any way, but want to ”get used to” something. When I was in grad school I saw this a lot - people went home for the summer and worked from home for 3 months, and then came back to campus. Many of them, once back at campus, came to the office almost every day, even when they didn't have any big meetings.
Having part of the week in office and part of the week at home seems like the type of arrangement that would be disliked by the type that just wants to have a consistent routine one way or the other. And as for me, as long as I am allowed to go to the office 5 days a week and there are a few others, it isn't really that big of a problem. What gives me anxiety is reading articles written by people who want to force telework on people for part of the week, like this one for example:
Time will tell what philosophies (or mix thereof) prevail.
This is why the ideal situation is giving the employees the choice. Assuming it's work that can be done from anywhere/home that is, let the employees decide whether they want to come into the office, work from home, or work from anywhere. Basically, a hybrid approach.
The exact percentage of people that would be remote if given the option is going to be highly variable depending on the nature of the job (one that can be done mostly independently would make more people believe they can be productive while remote vs. one that needs more collaboration and trainings), and on the nature of the city (a badly designed city trapping people in horrific commutes would lead to more wanting to be remote, vs. a city with affordable housing close to the office.)
Opinion surveys on returning to the office seem all over the place, some showing very few wanting to go back full-time and others showing 40% of workers saying they would prefer in-office 5 days per week. If I had to guess, I would think the exact statistics on remote work post pandemic will be somewhere in the middle between people's claimed preferences and where they were pre-pandemic. Maybe 50%ish of white collar workers go back full-time and another 30? or 40? % perhaps part of the time? But very variable depending on the job and the commute logistics. We'll see!
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