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If you have been successfully completing your employment tasks for the last two years in a remote/WFH capacity the demand to return to the office is a bit of a slap to the employee.
It doesnt matter if its time to come back then you come back
The fact is, that many managers have no idea how to properly manage people. Some believe that hovering over their employees and nit-picking their work is "management". They not only risk losing good employees, they DO lose them, sometimes in serial fashion, every 6 months: hire a new one, they can't take the hovering, and quit. Rinse, repeat. Others believe that being a manager means they can take all kinds of perks, bend the rules in their favor, but lord it over their subordinates. With luck, those get eventually raked over the coals by someone in charge who's paying attention.
I don't know if this WFH situation is going to separate the what from the chaff, or if offices will just keep on limping along as always, whether with people working at home, or on site.
Yes it does come down to management. It will be interesting to see if the employees can push real change.
I am Gen X and when I was in college in the 80's we didn't have personal computers yet. I did work with the punch cards. Shortly after, the whole world changed. During my working career I have been forced to adapt to every new technology that has come along. Now that the shoe is on the other foot, companies are refusing to adapt to change themselves. Hypocrites. They could make it work, but some don't want to put in the effort. Hard to feel sorry for them considering how many times I had to practically relearn my job over the years to use a new computer system that was thrust upon us.
This Forbes article ties up nicely the reasons there is pushback from management. Many were brought up on these threads. It was written by someone who makes a living giving career advice about how to move up in the corporate world. He knows the game being played. Any naysayers can read the article and it will start to make sense.
It is wrong to assume that remote workers live in low cost areas. In reality, remote workers live in all kinds of areas, not only low cost areas. I worked on fully remote teams long before Covid and co-workers lived in various places, all across the US. Some lived in high cost areas because their spouses had jobs there. Some lived in high cost areas because these areas are nice places to live. Many lived in desirable areas with nice weather ...areas that make the "Top 10 places to live" lists, areas that are vacation destinations.
You might have misunderstood me.
I did not say all remote workers live in low cost areas. I merely said that remote workers who choose to live in low cost areas will eventually see their pay decrease vs peers who work in high cost areas, job for job. Yes, talent is talent and it costs what it costs, but employers are not going to add that "you live in downtown Manhattan" premium for a worker who lives in Joplin Missouri and spends nothing to commute.
I am Gen X and when I was in college in the 80's we didn't have personal computers yet. I did work with the punch cards. Shortly after, the whole world changed. During my working career I have been forced to adapt to every new technology that has come along. Now that the shoe is on the other foot, companies are refusing to adapt to change themselves. Hypocrites. They could make it work, but some don't want to put in the effort. Hard to feel sorry for them considering how many times I had to practically relearn my job over the years to use a new computer system that was thrust upon us.
Right? I had never owned a device of any kind -- not even a "smart" phone -- when I was sent home along with the entire world in March 2020 and basically told to figure out WFH; I was given no office laptop nor any instructions as to how to navigate one. The IT team I'd always relied on was gone. So I figured it out, buying my own on Amazon and teaching myself how to use it. My performance for the next year was highly praised. Then just as suddenly, with just as little warning or preparation, I was ordered back because "it's what we do and who we are." Apparently we were doing TOO well at home! And management trembled. I called that one, and the Forbes article confirmed it. So I called their bluff and quit (retired) just because it was all so incredibly asinine -- there were reasons I needed to continue WFH -- hurting probably no one but myself in the process, but at least I have my pride!
This Forbes article ties up nicely the reasons there is pushback from management. Many were brought up on these threads. It was written by someone who makes a living giving career advice about how to move up in the corporate world. He knows the game being played. Any naysayers can read the article and it will start to make sense.
Fascinating article. Thank for the link. I thought this was an interesting insight, though I slightly disagree with his conclusion.
A recent study conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) found that supervisors are not happy with the extra work associated with remote work. The findings of the survey showed that supervisors don’t hold remote workers in high regard. Managers reported “negative perceptions” of the work-from-home trend.
The managers were brutally honest. Nearly 70% replied that remote workers are “more easily replaceable than onsite workers.” About 67% of supervisors said they spend more time supervising remote workers than onsite workers. Around 43% of supervisors say they “sometimes forget about remote workers when assigning tasks [and] 72 % say they would prefer all of their subordinates to be working in the office.”
I don't think the supervisors were totally honest there. If they spend more time supervising remote workers, what are/were they doing with their time when workers are in the office? What's really happening is they are having to spend some time actually managing -- doing their jobs -- instead of posing and schmoozing with the senior management.
I got to see this in action a year ago when they decided to bring folks back in mass. Senior management, the older folks who you'd think would be against WFH, instead are totally sold on it. It was the younger middle managers, who first started pushing to bring everyone back in. And looking deeper, the first one to bring it up is the manager of one of the support functions because his folks weren't being included in project teams and discussions. In other words, WFH was shining a spotlight on the fact his whole organization only provided minimal value and the organization was more productive without them in the loop. Hmmm?
I did not say all remote workers live in low cost areas. I merely said that remote workers who choose to live in low cost areas will eventually see their pay decrease vs peers who work in high cost areas, job for job. Yes, talent is talent and it costs what it costs, but employers are not going to add that "you live in downtown Manhattan" premium for a worker who lives in Joplin Missouri and spends nothing to commute.
The federal government already does that with location pay, someone in San Francisco gets a location differential that someone located in, say, Pittsburgh doesn't.
The military Basic Allowance for Housing (BAH) is also partially determined by location (it also takes into account the number of dependents plus a couple other things).
So to think private industry won't, at some point, also start applying location differentials isn't out of the realm of possibility.
Fascinating article. Thank for the link. I thought this was an interesting insight, though I slightly disagree with his conclusion.
A recent study conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) found that supervisors are not happy with the extra work associated with remote work. The findings of the survey showed that supervisors don’t hold remote workers in high regard. Managers reported “negative perceptions” of the work-from-home trend.
The managers were brutally honest. Nearly 70% replied that remote workers are “more easily replaceable than onsite workers.” About 67% of supervisors said they spend more time supervising remote workers than onsite workers. Around 43% of supervisors say they “sometimes forget about remote workers when assigning tasks [and] 72 % say they would prefer all of their subordinates to be working in the office.”
I don't think the supervisors were totally honest there. If they spend more time supervising remote workers, what are/were they doing with their time when workers are in the office? What's really happening is they are having to spend some time actually managing -- doing their jobs -- instead of posing and schmoozing with the senior management.
I got to see this in action a year ago when they decided to bring folks back in mass. Senior management, the older folks who you'd think would be against WFH, instead are totally sold on it. It was the younger middle managers, who first started pushing to bring everyone back in. And looking deeper, the first one to bring it up is the manager of one of the support functions because his folks weren't being included in project teams and discussions. In other words, WFH was shining a spotlight on the fact his whole organization only provided minimal value and the organization was more productive without them in the loop. Hmmm?
My manager, FWIW, would *love* to work from home full time. And she's been remotely supervising at least half of our task force prior to the pandemic anyway (half our team is in Denver, the other half in an office in another city, and a few WFH contractors in four different states.) The nature of of our work is fairly independent, so her main focus is to be a point of escalation when things go sideways on a project (which does happen) and keep track of the overall metrics. I'm more-or-less her right-hand-man (or woman, rather), so we discuss how folk are doing, and she had mentioned once that she mentally had us in three different 'groups'--Group 1 were the ones more unsure of themselves, so keep coming to her with all sorts of questions. Group 2 are the ones who do pretty well on their own, but do copy her on stickier situations, and Group 3 consists of myself, Coworker B, and Coworker L, where she seldom hears from us because we can run our own stuff pretty well, so if *we* copy her on something, she's immediately "Oh crap, if they weren't able to handle this one, it's *really* bad!"
But she prefers not having to be so hands-on, because it makes her day less stressful. Plus, she feels she can take time off and not make herself 'available', even while on vacation. When I first started (I was the second hire and still learning), any time she was out, she was always, "Here's my number, call me if you need me." The more independent we've gotten, the more she's, "OK, I'm out for the next week, Indigo's in charge while I'm gone, if you need something signed, please go to the director (you have to be a manger or above to sign certain documents)." She's perfectly happy to not have to monitor every little thing.
My boss, incidentally, is probably the youngest of us, and her birthyear puts her in that odd category of where she could either be considered the last of the Gen Xers or the first of the Millennials. The majority of my department are Gen Xers, with two Boomers in the group. All the Gen Xers would rather work from home. One of the Boomers wants to work from home. The other Boomer only doesn't want to because he and his wife downsized into a one-bedroom condo right before the pandemic (and his wife had been working from home for years before the pandemic), so with both of them working from home, they're tripping over each other. But he's going to be retiring in a few years, so I think he's just riding things out until then.
The other Boomer only doesn't want to because he and his wife downsized into a one-bedroom condo right before the pandemic (and his wife had been working from home for years before the pandemic), so with both of them working from home, they're tripping over each other. But he's going to be retiring in a few years, so I think he's just riding things out until then.
I don't see why they should be; one takes the bedroom, the other takes the living room. Switch them out for variety. Or sit on the balcony or patio, if they have one. People overcomplicate things!
I used to favor Americans but ever since the pandemic it's been nothing but whining about having to "get dressed and come to the office" like it's something they've never had to do before. The overall workload is similar but now it's like pulling teeth getting them to do the same amount of work they did in 2019 and prior.
Sounds like you might want to consider looking in the mirror. People will kill to work for (say) a Steve Schwartzman. There's also the matter of the work. Is it worth doing? Personally, I've turned down jobs because it was clear from the interview that the company had bad management, and because the job was not worth doing.
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