Think of our cafes and dry cleaners, says Ohio as budget slashes WFH for govt workers Government employees of the US state of Ohio are in for a rude awakening - and commute - if the state's budget bill for the next year passes, as it includes an amendment that will limit those workers to one day a week of working from home. The amendment was added to the Ohio Senate's version of the budget bill, which passed on …
https://www.entrepreneur.com/growing-a-business/the-damaging-results-of-the-mandated-return-to-office-is/454043
A trio of compelling reports — the Greenhouse Candidate Experience Report, the Federal Reserve's Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking (SHED), and Unispace's "Returning for Good" report — collectively paint a stark picture of this brewing storm.
Unispace finds that nearly half (42%) of companies that mandated office returns witnessed a higher level of employee attrition than they had anticipated. And almost a third (29%) of companies enforcing office returns are struggling with recruitment. Imagine that — nearly half! In other words, they knew it would cause some attrition, but they weren't ready for the serious problems that would result.
...which other countries seem to want to adopt even if their situations are very, very different. Labo(u)r laws in the USA aren't exactly in favour of workers; commutes are often extraordinarily long; there are usually no public transport options at all; and traffic jams seem commonplace.
No wonder so many North American employees don't want to go through that!
While some cities might have people that feel the same, many places in the world *do* have viable public transport, *don't* have such huge commutes and often have much more pro-worker labour laws. What's more, we recognise that it's really a very clever move for the corporate profit sheet to make *us* ask *them* for the burden of paying all day for our heading, water, internet, drinks etc., rather than using the company's already-paid-for services in its building. It's kinda bizarre - we take on all the cost and risk, and actually *beg* for this to happen and, in some cases, even accept a *cut* in pay when if anything it should be a raise.
For many towns and cities in many countries, when it comes to clamouring for work-from-home, be careful what you wish for - you might just get it.
*don't* have such huge commutes
Whattdamean? It takes me at least *seven* minutes to drive to work - or an astonishing 15 minutes to cycle!
I'm amazed I can cope..
(We have a 'one day a week in the office' semi-official policy. We can go in any other time as needed - generally I'm in 1.5 days/week)
I mean I see hills, valleys and the river; cows, and sheep grazing in the fields, along with all sorts of wildlife. Seeing the odd steam train during the summer is a bonus. Granted being stuck behind a tractor for about 5 minutes is a real pain, but most these days can happily zip along at 40mph.
You know I had to wait a whole 10 minutes the other week due to roadworks.
Such a nightmare.
Oh yeah, my old commute into Brum...yeah that's been completely wiped from my memory.
"You know I had to wait a whole 10 minutes the other week due to roadworks.
Such a nightmare."
It IS when you have a review and they throw all the times you've been a couple of minutes late in your face. Of course they'll be no mention of the times you worked a bit late to finish something off. I've had that happen. I've been pulled aside and spoken to when I was late due to traffic and told I should just leave earlier just in case.
I work half my time in the the field and half from my home office. When I'm home, my commute is 20m and takes me right past the coffee maker.
Agreed.
Besides, how can they say such bollocks when we were locked in during Covid and the work continued just as well ?
Hello ? We were there, we know.
The only difference here is that it is state government. I do acknowledge that WFH is not going to take care of citizens showing up at Reception for an administrative problem. For that you obviously need a meatbag (or more) at the desk. But I doubt that there are that many government workers who are in direct contact with citizens. Those who are not can very likely be dispensed from going to the office.
Yeah, the bigwigs are having an existential crises, we get it. They don't see their peons any more, poor things.
Besides, how can they say such bollocks when we were locked in during Covid and the work continued just as well ?
Our employee satisfaction indexes went up and out IT engagement indexes also went up. We're still working on improving the infrastructure (new firewalls/VPN concentrators and an uplift of the internet link to 10Gbps) but, in general, the workrate is the same or higher than it used to be and people seem happier in their work.
It helps that our employer has publically stated that, absent of Government rule changes, they will never force us back into the office fulll-time. *And* it's now in their policy statement and HR handbook..
Agree, total BS.
I do more work when WFH.
No unwanted background noise so I can focus better & thus a lot more productive (I'm not one of those people who can work with headphones / music playing so general office noise / disturbance is a PITA)
Put in more hours (office drive commute is horrendous, minimum 2 hours in total on a good day, no viable public transport options), when WFH often do some work in what would otherwise be commute time so typically exceed contracted hours substantially when WFH (unlike office as with hell commute don't want to be there longer than contracted hours) so employer gets some "bonus" (unpaid) working hours beyond contracted, as with no commute its often worth chipping away at the code an extra hour or so to get a niggly issue dealt with at the end of the day instead of saving it for the morning.
More relaxed working at home & being less stressed makes people more productive.
Flexibility over my hours, I can start early & finish early or take a long lunch & make up for it etc., not dependant on office physical opening hours - as above more relaxed = more productive..
> "You do more work, you do more effective work, when you are physically present at your workplace," Ohio Senate President Matt Huffman told NBC4.
No. YOU do more effective "work" when your employees are present at YOUR workplace because then you can substitute managing (ie. your job) for taking a list of names.
Is your job becoming harder (ie. happening) now that all of your competent employeers refuse to warm your chairs and thus no longer hide the pointlessness of the rest?
Is your headcount budget at risk?
"excuses can be made about the importance of coffee houses, fast food joints, and laundry facilities, or how you can't advance your career from afar, but the bottom line is that property values and their investors' bank accounts are on the line"
The real reason of enforced worked from office right there. The managers, C-level execs, board and shareholders do not give a flying f**k about whether it's cheaper and better for their employees to work from home, nor about the local businesses next to the offices and the people working there. That's impact of hundreds or thousands of $$, chump change to them (even though multiplied by many thousands of people). Doesn't matter so much to them whether it's more efficient to work from an office (it really isn't). Either way a bit of efficiency gain or loss is a few millions.
But big blocks of commercial real estate are tens or hundreds of millions, that's real money, and needs immediate action!!
"saying state employees such as police, firefighters, and garbage collectors didn't have the luxury of working remotely, and with the COVID-19 pandemic over, no one else does, either."
Oh great, instead of seeing how they can make things a little better for some people they have decided to make things a little worse for the rest.
"If I can't have a puppy then no-one else can have one, so there!!!" Does sound like the reasoned argument of a spoiled child.
"saying state employees such as police, firefighters, and garbage collectors didn't have the luxury of working remotely"
However, they *do* have the luxury of being left to do their jobs without being summoned to pointless meetings. Ergo, it's time to create such meetings for police, firefighters, and garbage collectors and make they show up a few times every day.
That is the same BS reason my PREVIOUS employer gave for forcing all of us back to the office. Because we had some workers (warehouse, etc.) that could not work from home, it would not be fair to them that we got to work remotely. So, back to the two hour commute for me. That is why they are my previous employer (after 17 years of working there).
"Having those folks back in the office will be very important for our restaurants, our coffee shops, our dry cleaners."
What happened to that great American entrepreneurship? Their customers might not be coming to them any more so why not go to their customers? Open chains of suburban dry cleaners. Start mobile catering.
And repurpose those redundant office buildings as residential. The huge city centre drawing in commuters from more than a thousand square miles of its surroundings isn't sustainable for the future. That needs to be realised and accepted. A city offering a balance of workplaces and nearby accommodation who want to work in the office is OK but that's going to support very large workforces in the office.
" repurpose those redundant office buildings as residential"
Yes, this... we need to accept that the 'old' way of designing city spaces based around central work locations just isn't the way forward anymore. There are other reasons why people might want to live in cities (culture, nightlife, friends, basically everything that requires density or network effect) and will continue to do so, and also environmental concerns about land use sort of require more people to be living in less space. But more WFH means that you don't need the surface area per person of flat + office space, at most you will average out to slightly bigger flat for everyone doing WFH, but less (home + office) area occupancy per person overall, which is also a win.
Public transport and all sorts of ways cities are structured can also be optimised if cities are more 'divided' into districts that are largely self-contained rather than have a 'center' and 'hyper-centre' around which everything else is concentrated.
"Yes, this... we need to accept that the 'old' way of designing city spaces based around central work locations just isn't the way forward anymore. "
The really old way was often to have retail on the bottom floor and apartments above. Many shop owners would live upstairs but in many cities, they've passed ordinances against that and while grandfathering in older buildings, won't issue permits to build anymore. A friend of mine had to wait in a very long line and pay a big premium for a live/work space. It was a new building and hugely popular. He operated a photography studio and graphic design company on the ground floor and lived on the two floors above. Many sole proprietors would love to be able to do that and still have the opportunity to have a few employees. I'm self-employed and work on my own so I can work from my home. If I wanted to hire somebody, I would be legally required to get business premises. Not that I would if it was just some office help, but it could come back to bite me if caught and insurance might not pay a claim.
"Many shop owners would live upstairs but in many cities, they've passed ordinances against that "
I keep saying that the present mess was actually planned. It wasn't planned to become a mess but that was the result of well-meaning post-war legislation to separate living and working space. It was built to avoid the slums built round sometimes heavily polluting industry. What happened was that commuting replaced heavy industry as the polluters.
It doesn't really come as a suprise that the mayor of a big city wants people to keep coming and spending their money in the city, does it?
After all businesses like restaurants, coffee shops, dry cleaners pay municipal taxes and having them move to the fringe area outside the current city limits will cut into the city budget.
Why the state would want it to stay that way is a more interesting question.
The dead end town centres that will be re-invigorated, the enironment becoming cleaner due to less cars, think of the little independent cafes, coffee shops and reseteraunts who will actually pay taxes, think of people having more free time to spend in them rather than commuting, think of the old factory buildings that can become local co-working type spaces, think of cities becoming more places to visit for enterainment and being able to afford some green spaces instead of car parks...
"think of the old factory buildings that can become local co-working type spaces"
I didn't see the sarcasm tag. Many co-working spaces in the US aren't doing well or have collapsed. A better way to do that sort of thing might be to convert a local mall to living/office/retail with a small people mover system to make getting from space to space easier. It might also be good to add some small affordable office space at a local shopping center (smaller than a mall) for small firms and also small/medium sized office blocks that are no bigger than the very local residential situation can support. If the whole of INC, inc's art department is off in Vermont or Sedona, AZ, it makes no difference these days that corporate HQ is in NYC or London. Communications are so good at this point that people don't visit another floor in a building if they need to talk with somebody outside of their department, they just text, call, email, DM or whatever instead. 50 years ago a phone call to someplace 10 miles away was (local) long distance. Now we can send voice, graphics and any other sort of data thousands of KM's for next to nothing better and faster than copying a memo and having the mail boy drop a copy on everybody's desk.
It might be a better idea to keep that factory site zoned for heavy industrial uses and redevelop it for that with modern touches and even some older concepts such as public transportation.
"Oath of Fealty" by Larry Niven has some really good concepts. I'm not a fan of archeology living, but there are people that wouldn't mind. I think there is an optimum size that would have to be determined. Too large and it's going to have social issues while something too small won't be cost effective.
Ah yeah maybe it's where we see factories being placed. Where I have been living there are a lot of old
factories that are smack bang in the middle of a small town. Different suburban environment to the USA so bit if adapting needed to each place.
So I think from your comments we may be on the same page (we don't really have small local malls in the UK in these little dying towns).
I think there is still use for a co-working space for these places because not everyone working from home can always work at home, so a local co-working type space using these local empty large buildings may have a place as a temp peaceful office with a five min walk commute.
These are government jobs, slowly turning the wheels of bureaucracy. Practically by definition, government employee performance CANNOT be measured by levels of production. Only if management can observe the warm chair, shall they know that work is being done.
Therefore, return to office. Take attendance. And thus is the style of management necessary for these types of employees. For if a government employee was capable of unsupervised productive work, they would already be in that job.
Good. Performance of administrative staff has fallen off a cliff since "work" from home started. It used to be that after they hid behind their email for a week you could go and find them in their office to get them to do their f**ing job. Now they just ignore people as they feel like, and their managers are not much better.
"Yeah, it stinks to be running a lunch counter in the office district now that teleworking is the new normal. It stunk to be the owner of an iron lung factory when Dr. Salk came along, and to be the buggy whip salesman when Henry Ford came along, but that's life."
A lot of those lunch counters, catering firms and dry cleaners are already out of business due to government closing down business districts for a couple of years. Is it wise to encourage more people to get into those businesses? I expect more than a few people started to realize what eating out every day was costing and how much money was being wasted to take care of a "professional" wardrobe.
If WFH is viable for the sort of work being done, it's a good option. Management will have to be trained how to set goals and measure performance of people they can't watch in real time. If a couple of office days are appropriate every week, fine, do that. Some jobs will only be able to be done at a place of business for various reasons and that can be perfectly fine too. Some people might wish to be out of their house 9-10 hours/day. I see so much more value in somebody that can work from home AND take care of children by shifting a few hours here and there. The trick is to match output expectations with salary. Paying for child care and relegating the raising of one's children to others isn't a good thing. This is especially true with kids that need a bit more supervision to keep them out of trouble. WfH is a boon to people that need special accommodations. Not only will they have this at home already, they might feel socially awkward due to their condition. They can be perfectly great employees doing needed work, but it would be easier or just plain possible doing it from home.
Easy solution is for workers to commit to each other that under no circumstances should anybody use any cafe, restaurant, office canteen, vending machine or convenience store during the work day. Pack food and everything you need. Spend nothing on the commute other than the ticket. In work, practise quiet quitting as standard, output the absolute minimum required by contract. No volunteering, no free overtime, nothing. If forced to then grind the bureaucracy, ask for extra clarification of every request, book extra meetings, move them at short notice, elevate minor issues. Make productivity a fraction of what it was before, with zero impact on the local economy.
You'd think that serving coffee and dry cleaning suits is a poor use of human labor. It doesn't produce anything of lasting value.
Driving 2 hours a day to sit in an office doesn't produce anything of value either.
If the US wants to reduce wasted energy and wasted labor, you can be sure that it will never accomplish it with public transportation. WFH is the only hope. Improve broadband and create small walkable hubs of stores and restaurants in neighborhoods. People who must be physically present at their jobs will appreciate the reduced road traffic too.
"You'd think that serving coffee and dry cleaning suits is a poor use of human labor. It doesn't produce anything of lasting value."
Boiling water isn't a specialist task, I must agree. I have also avoided having much wardrobe that has to be dry cleaned. I have one suit suitable for formal occasions that needs dry cleaning and that's it. It's been so long since I've worn that suit I likely need to try it on to see how badly it fits on me now.
I can brew a whole pot of coffee seasoned to my taste way faster than it takes to go to a coffee shop and wait in line. Buying coffee at a shop on a regular basis wouldn't even save me time.
"except on holidays and for 6 week of leave a year.
"
6 F'in Weeks? No! If they are in the office for as many years as a regular working stiff would need to get 6 weeks of leave, they've been in too long. I'm convinced that political office should be mainly part time with a pay rate that requires having a real job too. Idle hands and all that.
"Travelling to work is unpaid work time. If employers had to pay for this time employers would be great supporters of WFH."
It would also make companies shun having offices in big city downtown buildings that take extra time to get to on overcrowded motorways and public transportation.
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