Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Flexibility is a benefit to employers and employees alike. Whether that's telecommuting or flex schedules, it's now a "low cost" benefit in the modern job market. It saves the employer money by requiring less office space to conduct business. It also saves on overhead like utilities, because the employee is now working at home and using their own utilities. It saves the employee time in commuting, which adds value to their work-life balance. And while there are costs associated with expanding network security for WFH staff, those costs are generally offset by the savings in commercial real estate leases and utilities. Other than that, it's a benefit that costs the employer nothing else, but offers them a pretty big bargaining chip when it comes to recruiting talent.
Quote:
Originally Posted by macroy
Everyone is entitled to their reasoning. But everyone is also going to have different perspectives. There is no "right" answer here. All of these "studies" are just what people prefer in their study. Just because 51 of 100 people surveyed say those who go into the office are better workers doesn't necessarily mean that is now a fact. It simply means someone may prefer to work for those other 49 people.
You may appreciate someone with a little more "grit". But what if the other person is actually more productive? Or just gets along better with everyone? It's easy to make an argument by isolating specific qualities. But in practice, you can't just ignore those other factors. And there are SO many factors that makes it impossible to have one broad answer.
Thank you for your thoughts and please keep in mind that I was looking at this from the standpoint of how some industries may be more standoffish to this. Even if they could do this easily, there's still the perception that people need to be in the office, especially for those businesses that serve customers who may demand this. That's not always just food service and groceries (the occupations people think of when they think of "essential workers"). It is other professional services. Of course, some services, such as medical, require being at work in person.
But like it or not, sometimes perception wins out, which is why I was playing devil's advocate in bringing that point up. I think work at home sounds good in some situations, and I will be happy to do this myself, at least some of the time if given the opportunity.
In some fields, there can also be an even distribution of this benefit, which can create issues, especially if management (i.e. "talent") are allowed to do this but rank and file employees must appear in person with no such flexibility ("someone has to be here" but it's always the same people who have to be in-person). So what seems like a great benefit can backfire in terms of morale if there's a great divide in who is able to avail themselves of this and who isn't.
Tell that to the tends of thousands of US Citizens laid off by Disney, Cengage Learning, Abbot Labs, SunTrust, and the other dozens of companies, who replaced them with H-1B visa holders.
What could the US Citizens do to keep their jobs? Nothing. These people were forced to TRAIN their replacements - who didn't know how to do their jobs.
Even the California Unemployment office hired H-1B visa holders instead of, you know - the obvious, looking at the large number of laid off US Citizens collecting benefits.
But wait. That's not all.
Imagine the hiring manager gets two resumes.
* H-1B visa holder currently working at Disney
* unemployed US Citizen who last worked at Disney.
Guess who gets the job?
The H-1B visa holder is a "passive candidate" and the hiring manager drools over that. So the visa holder gets the job.
The US Citizen is discriminated against for being out of work. Rejected, and stereotyped as worthless. Age discrimination on top of the nonsense.
If you like being a number, then be a remote person. And when your numbers up, you get to be a number in the unemployment system.
I get that it saves you from gas to time.
That in itself means your putting in a fool's day of work.
Sorry but I sat in offices (which I enjoyed!) And anytime one of our sales person's played the...'im working from home' . The weekly projection fell and the response was...it's a tough market ! My boss said, get in front of your client. Show the product. Stop this nonsense that they just want a price and a picture. They want YOU to earn your worth.
If you like being a number, then be a remote person. And when your numbers up, you get to be a number in the unemployment system.
I get that it saves you from gas to time.
That in itself means your putting in a fool's day of work.
Sorry but I sat in offices (which I enjoyed!) And anytime one of our sales person's played the...'im working from home' . The weekly projection fell and the response was...it's a tough market ! My boss said, get in front of your client. Show the product. Stop this nonsense that they just want a price and a picture. They want YOU to earn your worth.
And yet study after study has shown remote workers are more productive.
Everyone is "replaceable" in The eyes of Corporate Management Sociopaths. They only have two concerns: Themselves and their bonuses. Who cares if the company crashes and burns with a bunch of people sitting at home doing god knows what all day or sitting in the office doing nothing? They made out with the loot before the company fell off a cliff.. The "best scenario" for these people is to have no workers at all. . Just their management buddies.
If your job can be done by a robot or an illiterate Third World peasant, the problem isn't the robots... it's you.
Many jobs in engineering have been taken away over the last few decades due to automation. It is not just manual labor being replaced by robots. Automated design software (CAD/CAM/CAE) has reduced the number of engineers needed to design and analyze a new product by a factor of 10 at least. And this trend will only continue.
Try to find ANY job in any field that is not in active decline due to automation. Good luck with that.
That's assuming anyone is going to get promoted anyway.
Promotions are more of an old school way of climbing the career ladder. Fewer people stay at one company and seek promotions these days as compared to people who job hop to obtain higher salaries and levels of responsibility.
Promotions are more of an old school way of climbing the career ladder. Fewer people stay at one company and seek promotions these days as compared to people who job hop to obtain higher salaries and levels of responsibility.
Which itself may be a drag on promotions. Why mentor or give increasing responsibilities to someone if they're just going to leave in a couple or three years?
This now becomes a chicken or egg discussion.
This also may be a reason, along with financial reasons, that companies don't offer traditional pensions now.
Promotions are more of an old school way of climbing the career ladder. Fewer people stay at one company and seek promotions these days as compared to people who job hop to obtain higher salaries and levels of responsibility.
I think many "ladder oriented" companies are going to have to offer some kind of perk to keep people in this new labor shortage environment. Telecommuting is one of those perks.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
