Workers: Yes, RTO makes sense. No, we’re not going to do it UK workers totally understand why bosses want to get them back into the office – but would still jump ship if they were forced to give up remote working. Research by Owl Labs showed that "the UK workforce is bending the workplace rulebook" as they demand greater autonomy, and even four-day work weeks, just as bosses play ever …
"The sales guy was working from a home near the beach in Florida."
And why not? The result is the same, cruise tickets, and that agent may be much happier and relaxed than if they were in a 1sqm cubicle in Birmingham.
I find it distracting from the far end when I'm talking to somebody in a cubical farm and there's a loud background cacophony of other "workers". The noise gating they sometimes try to use is also horrible as the sound cuts in and out.
Conversely, I get distracted when I can hear the extended family of the person I've called, living their lives in the background. I expect this could be solved with noise-cancelling headphones for the work-from-home employees.
As someone who lives under a final approach flightpath, and two miles from a large hospital, I understand the audible distractions of landing jets and hurrying ambulances.
"Conversely, I get distracted when I can hear the extended family of the person I've called, living their lives in the background. I expect this could be solved with noise-cancelling headphones for the work-from-home employees."
That's solved by there being a requirement that the remote worker has a space that isn't in the midst of their household. When I was a kid, if one of my parents was on the phone, I was to be quiet and not bother them. Running and screaming through the house would have met a painful end, as in rear-end. I agree that doesn't work so well with adults in an extended family that have no comprehension of what it means to have somebody in the house that is "at work". In that sort of situation, it would seem more likely that a person would want to go work in an office to get away from that for a few hours.
It's been a thing for ages, organisations like the AA (Automobile Association) were allowing their call centre staff to WFH more than 10 years ago, the availability of good broadband has removed the need to be office based and made it possible to fit your work life around your personal life.
It's only incompetent and dinosaur management and those invested in commercial property who are demanding RTO
I was working from home 25 years ago, as it allowed me to get on with what I was being paid to do without the inevitable office distractions. I went in when it suited me (and the work). The work was desk and PC based and I set up dedicated office space in the spare bedroom. OK, I was lucky to have that space and didn't need to camp on the dining table, etc and, in particular, able to close the door. Work compromised on my involvement in other activities in return for better productivity on my primary role; home life compromised by dedicating a bit of space to my work.
I'm retired now but I had gotten myself a good work/life balance by considering both sides. The trouble comes when one side won't compromise...
Also gets them sacked
I had 4 developers, 2 support engineers and an infrastructure engineer that refused to RTO last year. Fortunately for us only 1 of the developers was a good performer and the other 6 were no great loss. I gave them 90 days to reorganise and get back to the office but it didnt happen so out they went. I later found out that the good developer who didnt return had been working for another company for 8 months while taking a salary from us. That did explain his unavailability during work hours. He got found out by his new employer from his non standard tax code and they contacted us to confirm his employment dates. He got sacked from his new employer too for double dipping. Shame, he was quite good technically and good with people and would have made director and a shareholder within a couple of years if he hadnt got so greedy
This is turning out to be quite common, our place has found more than a few doing it including one who was working for a competitor. Its a few people that is spoiling it for everyone. Still bad management to not spot it earlier.
"How do you expect the management to spot it?"
If management can't spot it in a remote worker, how would they spot it in an office?
Over the course of a day/week/month, there has be be a measurable quantity of work that has to be done. If it's done, the employee has met the standard. If it's not done, they haven't met standard and maybe there's an issue. A good manager would sort out where the problems lies and if it's the worker skiving off, they'll get a warning. If it's due to unreasonable expectations, the employer needs to reevaluate what a common worker can accomplish. If it's just that a particularly difficult assignment took longer than expected, no foul on either side. It might then become policy for a worker to contact their manager to let them know that something is taking up more time than expected and maybe the manager can offer some advice, reassign the matter or just take it into account.
Nothing new.
In my first real job (1979) the production manager was running a large wholesale grocery business from his office.
I had to liase with him quite a lot as I was tasked with producing the training manuals.
Mum was really happy with all the free fruit and veg I was given and never questioned how, as the factory didn't produce fruit or veg.
"If they were no great loss why did you wait to replace them?"
It may have been unreasonable expectations on the employer's side. That would mean there would need to be some effort put into how much it takes/how many hours to do certain jobs. I've been at jobs where the boss had no clue how long something would take and I had to bite my tongue so I didn't jump salty. I told them that wiring x many points in the junction box multiplied by how much time it took to do each one properly was x hours. Doing it in half the time would either mean sloppy work or an impossibility. Not only did that work need to be done neatly, it also had to be fully documented. Sometimes I was working from comprehensive plans and sometimes those plans were created according to how the work was done. It depended on how much the job would have to be fit to what was already in place so there wasn't a way to plan much in advance. If there are detailed plans, things can often be done very quickly on-site. I couldn't say if the times are still the same for the entirety of the job, but my guess is they'd be very similar.
We replaced the key developer with an internal promotion and the infrastructure engineer with a promotion from the support team. We only employed 2 new peeps, 1 developer and 1 support engineer
Productivity is significantly higher back in office than WFH, especially in the dev team. We also get better collaboration less head butting. Only a very small percentage of people are more effective working in isolation or a WFH environment. Most people take advantage of it and do less or just cant structure themselves effectively. This was the last of our 3 offices that had been RTO's, the first came back over 2 years ago. The patterns were pretty similar for all 3. The only team that didn't see a decent productivity change between WFH and RTO was sales
Yes, yes, I know. Everyone here is a superstar and in that few percent that works more effectively in isolation / WFH and coming back to the office is a terrible idea. The problem is the real world doesn't match that utopia for the majority of people. If it did the vast majority of businesses would not have RTO'd. No business want to reduce productivity
Totally agree isolation and motivation to deliver are big issues for the lone worker, as is taking breaks.
There was a period (some years back) when I regularly attended computer shows/exhibitions just so that I could put on a suit and walk around and talk technology to people and feel part of the enterprise computer industry. Similarly there places I went just to be among “general public” and so have non-IT related interactions. Both helping with the motivation to sit down and get stuff done.
What I find notable is that the way I work is markedly different to the way my son works with his geographically dispersed colleagues. For example, they having spent more time online gaming are used to having an open chat channel, screen sharing and people talking as and when needed, whereas I tend to only use the chat for “meetings” and do “controlled” screen sharing; all of which helping to reduce isolation and keeping everyone engaged.
As for Sales, surely the only time you want them in the office is when they are working on a bid with the support team.
If their work quality and response time remain fine, few meetings require rescheduling, and they're not working for your direct competitors ... then it's completely immaterial, and none of your goddamned business anyway other than noting you're underutilizing them and probably underpaying them as well.
If they're double-dipping and not performing as well as you need? You'll get that sorted at some point.
"I later found out that the good developer who didnt return had been working for another company for 8 months while taking a salary from us. That did explain his unavailability during work hours. "
That's why you'd need managers that can manage remote workers. If this person was available/reachable during work hours and accomplished the things assigned to them, who cares if they are working two jobs. Companies almost never pay more for somebody that works more efficiently and is better at their job. They just heap more work on them if they are spotted. This is why one needs to watch out for being "too good" for their salary level.
@botfap In the UK it is not obviously possible to identify an organisation using a tax code. The most you can say is that they have another source of taxable income. So how did your colleague’s other employer identify your firm, or vice versa?
As the employee was working for Company A, Company A would be regarded as the employees primary employment. Thus Company B would get a different tax code typically a BR or more likely in IT a D0 code, thus Company B would know the worker had at least one other job. Company B probably should have been suspicious about the absence of a P45, unless the prospective worker had a valid reason for not having one.
I suspect someone at Company B then looked at the CV and simply made a phone call to the last listed employer’s HR department to confirm some details…
You get different tax codes for your primary and secondary jobs. The primary job is the one where your tax free allowance is used and usually the job that employed you first. The tax code for the secondary job is obvious its for a secondary job so if you have someone with that tax code as an employer its clear they are working elsewhere. It was actually his LinkedIn that directed their HR to us, he was still listed as working for us
Your post is most informative. Informative about your management abilities. It tells us, for instance, that most of the staff you were employing weren't up to scratch anyway (at least in your judgement) - so why employ them? It tells us that you didn't have any idea what the developer you thought was good was actually producing.
I very much doubt you'll be better managing staff in the office than remotely but look on the bright side - your own managers probably haven't noticed.
COVID taught everyone that working from home was possible. No company went under because their workers were not on site.
Now, you try to find excuses and brute-forcing your way back to pre-COVID, but it ain't gonna work. Your employees have a taste of the WFH crack and they're not going to forget it.
Neither will they forget that they did their jobs just fine and the company continued chugging along and even turning benefits.
So sell your expensive offices with their empty cubicles, set up a small, plush office for yourself and the secretary you bang, and leave well alone.
Find another status symbol.
It's going to vary from business to business. If your company does retail, it needs employees to show up. If it makes widgets, it likely requires some live humans in the widget foundry to handle deliveries and make sure the machinery is working properly. But a lot of jobs really can be done remotely and it seems kind of dumb not to do them remotely. Why add to your costs and aggravate the staff by requiring them to show up at an office? Of course it requires skills to do that properly. If you lack those skills maybe you ought to consider acquiring them or maybe it's time to retire.
That's not how management thinks.
Let's say, public transport is built to serve only 75% of the real number of actual users. If the number of users goes down, and they are able to serve 100% comfortably, management will see this as an opportunity to cut costs by maintaining the original 75% ratio.
That’s also not how governments think.
Lack of people commuting means less money being spent on transport (fares, fuel etc.) so go into headless panic because GDP is lower…
Plus they are over sensitive to London, so businesses that rely on commuting office workers, not getting the foot fall, yet are blind to the communities that now have thriving small businesses serving their local WFH workers.
Just shows just what a load of tosh The formula used to calculate GDP is. I suggest done correctly, the UK could have multiple years of negative GDP, whilst maintaining living standards and moving towards becoming a more sustainable society.
I’m a little surprised Tim Worstall hasn’t been more vocal about why GDP isn’t a good metric; although I suspect any article even from a respected economist attacking the established orthodoxy automatically gets buried.
"Why add to your costs and aggravate the staff by requiring them to show up at an office?"
It doesn't add any value to have the dress designers working in the back of the retail shop or accounting to be on the same campus as where the widgets are made. In days past where there wasn't everybody walking around with the smartphone and no such thing as overnight packets, putting everybody in one building was important. These days, most office work is digital so Accounts Receivable can be in a town where cost of living is less expensive and there's a post office to receive checks and a bank to deposit them to the extent they are still getting paid by check. If there's a building going cheap, the company can buy it outright and even put A/P in with them, a sales office for outside sales people, a parts depot to be able to ship spares to customers from a closer starting point, etc. That puts people in an office, but also someplace fit to live with some easy allowances to collect kids from school, go home for lunch and so forth. Somebody with more responsibilities could work from home, but be close enough to a remote office that they can visit on short notice rather than having to commute to a dense city center that can take over an hour to get to. I've mentioned it before, but I think it would be brilliant to have offices like that in a nice village located in a building on the high street. It's going to support local businesses and, with good links, it's not hard to do an all-hands elsewhere once a month.
"My daughter is currently selling a load of stuff online and having to use a variety of courier services, not all support delivery or collection from our village…"
If you are a company and might need to send out invoices, statements and dunning notices, having a post office nearby is important.
The primary owner of our manufacturing group has been tearing his hair out with senior and general managers making the most of remote working and 2-3 days onsite a fortnight, behaving as though they were consultants, that it's been a disaster for OEE over the longer term in small manufacturing businesses.
Junior management and supervisors can struggle, many of them have no formal qualification or training, nor the peer-to-peer communication ability to get production-affecting tasks quickly prioritised by other departments.
Whilst you are correct what is constantly overlooked in the entire "Working From Home" debate is the environment.
All the same regulations apply to WFH as an office in terms of disks, chairs, monitors etc. This is constantly overlooked and is going to end up in yet another litigation frenzy as people end up with issues because they are hunched over a laptop 8 hours a day.
Everything to do with WFH tends to favour those who are better paid or further on in their career:
Dedicated office space
No family (children) in the house during main working hours
What is also missing is the social interaction, this is not just having a group call on Teams but all the things that used to happen when a team was in the same place.
I have been working from home since the start of Covid with a job change in the middle of that. My currently employer fully supports WFH but at the same time ensures that at least once a quarter the team are in the office for a day at the same time. There maybe less work done on that day however the resulting gains for the team are significant. Very occasionally we get a mandatory office day, usually for some major training session where it is actually beneficial to be there in person. This happens maybe once or twice a year.
There is no expectation that people must be in the office for a certain numbner of days in a week.
"This is constantly overlooked and is going to end up in yet another litigation frenzy as people end up with issues because they are hunched over a laptop 8 hours a day."
A laptop is a poor choice and a company can provide some guidelines on office setups to promote good health. A nice big monitor at a proper height should be mandatory. I'm going from 2x 24" monitors on my production machine to dual 27's. My daily driver is a 27" iMac Retina and it's sat on a wood box to get it up to eye-level.
Office furniture is often easy to come by. There's so much of it on the used market that many second hand dealers will only handle the best quality in the best condition.
Children under a certain age can be an issue if the person is the sole adult in the house. A newborn takes some time, but that can be factored in. Once they're walking, that's where they can be too distracting. Over 12-13's don't need constant supervision and will likely want to be doing something else than pestering their parent(s) and at that point aren't any more distracting than co-workers trying to get you to do their job every 10 minutes. Or the boss wanting to "check progress".
The social interaction can be a negative as well as a positive. One bad apple can spoil a whole barrel. Getting a whole team together periodically is a good idea when there is something that needs to be gone over en masse so everybody understands it and all questions get asked in front of everybody. If an employer isn't paying for space to have everybody working in-house every day, they can splurge for lunch. It's also nice if it starts mid-morning and ends mid-afternoon to avoid the busiest travel times. When I was in aerospace, we had engineering meetings schedule for projects and a weekly Monday meeting of about 45-60 minutes for a quick status briefing. Between that, we all scattered to get our bits of the projects done and would confer with colleagues as needed. Designing all of the electronics for a rocket engine test cell takes time and I could do that pretty much anywhere. Over time it wound up being less of a project as I came up with standardized modules that applied to multiple setups including on-board the landers we were building. Towards the end of working at that company, I did more things at home. I could be in the office in 20-30 minutes if I needed to, but that almost never happened. The main people I worked with were the software engineers and we could talk on the phone until we were doing testing of tangible items. One of them got me into wearing noise cancelling headphones in the open plan office to screen out background noise while I was working. I picked my spot and oriented my desk so I wouldn't be distracted by people walking about. My electronics bench was more central as a bit of advertising for the boss. When hardware was going together and being tested, that's when something could be seen more than a PCB layout on my monitor what looked mostly the same unless looked at closely.
My boss made all of us sign a "my WFH spot is suitable for my needs and I will not sue the company for my own failure to provide comfortable working conditions" waiver during the whole COVID thing and basically told us that if we felt we couldn't work comfortably at home, we'd just have to come to the office (with proper protective measures in place).
"my WFH spot is suitable for my needs and I will not sue the company for my own failure to provide comfortable working conditions"
It's sad that a statement like that is even needed, but, job done.
I would want to assume that somebody working from home has total control over their workstation so it would be suitable to several decimal places.
"My currently employer fully supports WFH but at the same time ensures that at least once a quarter the team are in the office for a day at the same time."
Do they pay for the long distance/international travel and overnight accomodation? If not they're not taking full advantage of remote working. Can they fit everyone into the office? If so they're not tull advantage of remote working.
Yes the do, more than two hours from the office then overnight either the day before or on the day.
Travel is expensed and in theory one can travel in working time. There is give and take on this because it actually suits everyone.
There is insufficient space for all staff to be in the office at the same time so I believe we probably have an excellent WFH policy and outcome.
> a parts depot to be able to ship spares to customers
Whilst Amazon Fulfilment/logistics is well known, there have been outsourced fulfilment operations since at least the 1980’s when I used one to duplicate floppy disks, package product and ship to customers). Accounts, sales and marketing were also outsourced. The office was only used by 5 developers.
In today’s world, we probably would still have the office, but the regular attenders would be the 2-3 developers who were living in bedsits/couch surfing or who’s young family prevented WFH.
Obviously, broadband means everyone could be online anyplace, anywhere, anytime to suit their home life and desire to achieve work objectives - I paid a good salary for delivery not for attendance.
"Whilst Amazon Fulfilment/logistics is well known, there have been outsourced fulfilment operations since at least the 1980’s when I used one to duplicate floppy disks, package product and ship to customers). Accounts, sales and marketing were also outsourced. The office was only used by 5 developers."
It will depend a lot on the business. If you want to outsource your reputation to Amazon's fulfillment services, go right ahead. If your company has a product or provides services for products, you need to be able to ship/deliver an item to a customer right away or have it available for a service tech to pick up so they can execute a repair. It might be several products and I've had issues with suppliers that stock inventory across the US where I might order three things to make a repair and they span the whole continent. I'd prefer to get everything in one box and pay one overnight charge than triple that.
If a company is willing to set up remote offices, they should also think about other uses for the office that can add value in their customer's eyes. If the company has outside sales staff, it's useful if there is office space they can use in various places rather than trying to hole up in a coffee shop with a laptop and not get asked to leave. There could be samples of the companies products they can retrieve/check out for an on-site demo with a customer. Remote techs, for an EV charging company as an example, could drop off borked items to be shipped back to a repair depot and pick up replacements to restock. The other option is for them to wait for a shipment to get to them and Then leave for the location needing a repair. Common items such as card terminals can be stocked deep, but an expensive fast charger control PCB can't be, it's expensive multiplied by how many techs there are when it might be a once/month thing. The cable company used to have an office in town that had a retail counter and also acted as a central point for installers/techs. Now they just make customers drive an hour if they need to swap out a box or pay their bill in person and the techs are dispatched from elsewhere and frequently don't arrive when they promise.
Agree much depends on the business and country you are in and the image and reputation you want.
Personally, I’ve not used Amazon, and a friends small business (Meccano) is run wholly out of his spare room - he enjoys the routine stock picking and shipping gives. Interestingly, his biggest grip is couriers as they are the doorstep face of his business.
“If there's a building going cheap, the company can buy it outright and even put A/P in with them, a sales office for outside sales people, a parts depot to be able to ship spares to customers from a closer starting point, etc.”
Reminds me of the time, about 15 years ago when I attended monthly meetings in London and used an OysterCard for travel on the underground. OysterCards were managed (and sent out) from an office building on a small business estate about a mile from my home. I live in a village in NE Scotland!
I found out about them when I dropped into their office to pick up some mail that had been delivered to them in error (we had similar PO Box numbers and one of mine had got mixed into a stack of theirs).
I work in an environment where most people have to be physically present[0]. Personally I could do 50-70% of my job remotely. Bosses are reluctant. Partially due to the usual control issues, but also the convenience of me being on hand for things that come up that needs hand on. On the other hand I can be at the POW[1] in 15-20 minutes should the need arise. On the third hand some of the people who do need to be there for their job might feel that it is unfair if I can work in my undies from home while they have to wear clothes and be at work. On the fourth hand setting the precedent that if your day does not require your physical presence then you can work form home would benefit some of them as well, just more infrequently.
[0] No matter how much we automate people still have to be on hand to wrangle the automation when it fails.
[1] Place Of Work
"On the third hand some of the people who do need to be there for their job might feel that it is unfair if I can work in my undies from home while they have to wear clothes and be at work."
The Elon argument.
I didn't choose my jobs based on being able to work at home or in an office. I chose what interested me. Now I work in the field half the time and in my home office half the time (self-employed). I don't have to be dressed when I'm at home and business casual when I'm in the field to maintain a certain professional look. I'm in the office right now and a real scruff since I was in the garden a little while ago. I have to do a quick call in an hour and I'll have to change not because I'm meeting with anybody, but I'll be at a vacant property and if neighbors call the cops (which can happen) they are more likely to be satisfied with why I'm there and be on their way in a couple of minutes. If I went to the property right now looking like I do, they'd be more suspicious.
>” Now I work in the field half the time and in my home office half the time (self-employed).”
That provides good motivation to get up and dressed. Whilst there are times I have sat down at the computer and got involved with something, the most irritating aspect is realising you need to be somewhere in half and hour and you’ve not yet showered…
"the most irritating aspect is realising you need to be somewhere in half and hour and you’ve not yet showered…"
That's happened! and it led to a very rushed shower.
If I have more than only one or two things to accomplish on a given day, I might not make a list. Most of the time I have more than that and build a to-do list for the day with time notations. I find it keeps me on track. I'll know I need to get somewhere before a certain time so I'll be careful about chatting with a client on a job too long and to get things done in order so I don't find that the post office is closed and I won't be able to get something shipped when I could have prioritized that over going to a shop that's open later, but was closer.
When I was working for somebody else, I kept a list of all the things that I needed to get done and would tick things off and build a prioritized schedule for the next day before knocking off. I'd also do an update in my work journal. For the job I'm recalling, that work journal came in real handy. The company wanted to claim that I wasn't in a some days when I had notes that I clearly was and what I was doing/accomplished. They were going from emails where I said I would be out, but then something cancelled or something was scheduled at work that I needed to be there for and didn't wind up taking the day off. Notes had when I arrived, times out for lunch and when I left for the day. I was on salary and exempt from punching a time clock but that doesn't mean I wouldn't have to defend my work schedule at a tribunal hearing. If something happened, the journal would also show if I were there or not. We often worked late or started early. I'm not a morning person, but If I needed to communicate with somebody in a different time zone, I might have needed to be in very early to reach them and that's why I might have left mid-afternoon. YMMV, but keeping good notes is important.
But jobs that require workers on site are already onsite. They were onsite as soon as, and to the extent they were allowed to be open.
RTO is a combination of:
- we have expensive office space that is going unused
- we have an "office culture" which I was immersed in, and I miss it
- I have a need to be in meetings around a big table. I need to plot about who I'm going to sit next to, since I never stopped thinking of everything in terms of school
- the expensive office space has commercial tenants, and they're making noises about how they shouldn't pay such high rent if no one actually goes to that office and shops in their space
- I'm worried about people slacking off and the only way I know how to manage that is to hover over people's shoulders
- No one at home is interested in my golf score
It's crap.
"What? And I had just turned my dungeon in to an office!"
Where I am, summer houses are being turned into home offices. If it has power, a mini-split is a cheap way to add HVAC and it's nice and separate from the house which adds mental separation between home and work. I've read that doing that can be important for many people. It's the same thing as using a bedroom mainly for sleeping so when you are in there, your sub-conscious is programmed to associate that room with sleep (or dressing) and it can allow you to fall asleep much easier.
"plush office for yourself and the secretary you bang"
Given the rash of forced resignations, "scandals", firings and abuse claims, I'd rather not hook up with anybody from work myself. (What does that mean for me, being self-employed?)
I can't remember the latest C level exec that's announced their resignation for having it off with somebody else in the company there's been so many. I couldn't care less since it seems like the vast majority of them are consensual.
"COVID taught everyone that working from home was possible."
Companies had to scramble to find something to stay above water, but they never figured out how to measure and manage people remotely. If they can't measure the work output, they DO have the problem of not knowing when people are working. It seems really odd to me as when I had a manufacturing company, I needed to know what somebody could do in a given length of time to understand what my costs were/where and what it would take to scale up/down. That's easier to manage since much of that was repetitive tasks that didn't have many variables. On the other end of the spectrum is a marketing department tasked with coming up with some new campaigns where it's not possible to schedule creativity. The best that can be done is to have targets to aim for and keep tabs on progress towards them.
At least with manufacturing you can come up with useful and fairly easily obtained metrics, rate of production, uptime/downtime, materials waste, maintenance costs changes over time, and so on and so on. With an awful lot of office work, it can get a bit more nebulous and you start to see metrics gathering for its' own sake, more often based on what kind of metrics are easy to gather rather than anything really properly useful.
"With an awful lot of office work, it can get a bit more nebulous and you start to see metrics gathering for its' own sake, more often based on what kind of metrics are easy to gather rather than anything really properly useful."
If the office work is repetitive such as matching delivery receipts with purchase orders so payments can be made, there may be some variability but over the course of a few weeks to a month, a single person should be able to clear a consistent number. The same with matching payments to invoices which can get off kilter if a customer pays for a later invoice first and it's not applied that way in the accounting program. With production, I can look at hourly or daily numbers if the process isn't that variable. Some of our product line had seasonality so it took some time to gather the data and find the best way to analyze it.
Bonuses are often based on easy to game metrics and so they will be gamed. It makes me think that once a way is devised to measure something, It's never evaluated at a later time to see if it's valid. If a process has been changed, how it's measured has to be looked at again. Something that gets changed that adds one minute to a process done a thousand times each month is an additional 17 hours (ok, 16.6666). 1000 times each month is 46 times each day (22 day work month) or 6 times each hour. The arithmetic must be done since waving off a few minutes here and there as inconsequential adds up and that should change the expected output of a person/department.
"Presenteeism is measuring inputs instead of outputs."
It also means rewards are being handed out for perfect attendance and everybody gets sick once in a while which means people showing up ill and handing it off to their co-workers. Half the place is out with the flu after that. If you've got that scratchy throat, do us a favor and stay home and you will be well faster if you don't push it.
Manufacturing is difficult to do from home due to the equipment requirement - I could empty the garage and install a CNC machine, although whether the domestic electricity supply could cope…
Interestingly, the original Wolverton works built houses for its workers and many of these had outbuildings that could be used as a workshop - they intended some of the carriage furnishing work being done at home; okay “at home” was within a mile of the works.
"Manufacturing is difficult to do from home due to the equipment requirement - I could empty the garage and install a CNC machine, although whether the domestic electricity supply could cope…"
Obviously, that's the sort of work where WFH isn't going to be a thing. When I was in aerospace, I had a better electronics workshop than what was at work. I'd spent ages building it up which was much longer than the company had been around. Very quickly I made it policy that I wouldn't bring my own gear in as somebody "borrowed" a piece of my test gear to use over the weekend without asking and people (interns mostly) would get tools out of my tool box without permission thinking they belonged to the company.
I have a CNC router on my wish list and it will work fine on a household supply in most cases. I'm not talking about a 5'x10' model with a 4kW spindle and a massive vacuum pump. That wouldn't be workable. A small mill and lathe work just fine since it's just me and I'm only using one at a time. I still do some product development work and having a workshop of my own is crucial for that. Not much of a chance I'd take on any volume production work or add a bigger 3ph lathe. One place I was supposed to work at had acquired a largish home as the engineering office. The idea was that we'd all work for several days at a time there and then scatter to continue at our own homes the rest of the time until we needed to gather together again. The garage would be set up as a basic workshop with a few tools (compressor, drill press, band saw) mostly to modify things and to assemble a few things. We'd all stay there for the few days we were on-site. It was on the edge of Silicon Valley where R&D space is extremely dear. Couple that with engineers that weren't keen on upping stakes and moving to the area and leasing a home was the best deal. If they had rented office/shop space, they'd have to pay for all of us to stay at local hotels which could quickly add up to the lease payment (5-6 times $250/night at a middle grade hotel). To require WFO would mean having to pay everybody a salary that was commensurate with going rates AND the local cost of living where leasing a flat can be $4k/month.
"Try Boxford, they do really good, small, CNC routers and lathes. No idea if they have a dealer in West Pondia though."
East West Pondia to be slightly more accurate.
There's a bunch these days and loads of kit/DIY options. I'll get serious about the hunt when I've cleared enough space in garage and have a new roof put on.
COVID also had positive side-effects, apart from giving the plebs a taste of WFH.
In my industry, it was common practice to have meetings in-person, regardless of whether they were long or short, important or merely informative. Thus, people wasted plenty of time and money getting to and from these meetings. Skype and video conferencing were things for decades already, but was not used.
With COVID these things became accepted standard, so now, we only waste the time spent in useless tele-meetings, but no more wasting time on the road for useless meetings. That's progress.
"COVID taught everyone that working from home was possible. No company went under because their workers were not on site."
Nonsense. Huge numbers of staff were furloughed, and companies were able to take out massive covid loans - that's why they didn't go under.
These are now having to be paid back.
WFH only applies to the Service Industries. Welders, car mechanics, oil rig workers, shop floor workers, sailors, construction workers, dustbin men (except in b'ham!), drivers, deep sea divers, airline pilots and so on and so on... none of them can work from home.
I think the original point was that it was discovered that many jobs could be WFH.
A great many of those jobs were originally clustered in urban centres so large that housing the workers was spread over many hundreds of square miles. The commuting from such large areas sucked up unreasonably large percentages of people's lives and had a carbon footprint that really shouldn't have been acceptable. Now we know that it was largely unnecessary those calling for RTO should be asked some searching questions to which woolly answers such as "company culture" and "team cohesiveness" are unacceptable. They should be asked would they still require it if they had to pay commuting time and a carbon tax - asked in the form of being required to pay those things.
The situation should never have been allowed to have existed in the first place. Now it's time to dismantle it.
Considering how many managers have taken a view that they own: my health[1], my time out of work[2], my creative output outside of work[3]; I find it of no surprise that the RTO mandate is pushed. After all, few things reinforce the ownership of a company over a worker than sitting in an office, looked over by the manager.
Saying workers can guess the stated reason doesn't mean they agree with it.
[1] Managers have consistently pushed people to come to the office when they know those people are contagious and there are others with serious health problems in the office
[2] Managers trying to require not just 40 hours, but 45 or more as "expectation of a knowledge worker". To the point that nine hours a day, working, is expected by many managers (in addition to any off-hours work for changes or incidents, with no comp time for that extra time)
[3] Despite pre-declaring ownership of creative material, I've seen more than one company attempt to claim they somehow owned works and material created before I ever worked for them, just because I continued creating, having filled out the disclosure forms that it was a "prior invention"
"[3] Despite pre-declaring ownership of creative material, I've seen more than one company attempt to claim they somehow owned works and material created before I ever worked for them, just because I continued creating, having filled out the disclosure forms that it was a "prior invention""
I had that problem with an employer and refused to sign their new contract. I was no fresh out of Uni engineer. I had decades of experience and numerous projects under my belt so even just documenting all of that to submit to them would be untenable. I was fine with their claims on work I did on company time using company resources and I'd just be cautious about anything I created outside of those two things that I brought in. It has to be taken into account that many engineers come up with ideas for things as they work on company assigned projects. Those things aren't free for the company to claim. They shouldn't think they own the entirety of somebody when they hire them. Rarely will they pay for that.
Companies claim that employees are hesitant to adopt the new RTO mandates despite a VERY expensive contractor-created study showing that in-office workers live in a magical land of happiness and fulfillment twixt the chocolate trees and orange juice rivers, while the grumpy and unwashed remote worker has thunderclouds over their head and a perpetual frowny face. Experts argue that leadership needs to "raise the stakes of the narrative" to drive their RTO goal.
Fortune 500 companies have responded by hiring another contractor to introduce & familiarize employees with the dancing musical animals that will brighten up their workday, but that instantly expire as soon as they are removed from a corporate office setting and are therefore not available to remote holdouts.
Some managers have reasoned that it costs $$$ and impacts their bonuses for those mostly empty offices. So the options are to downsize the office. Or you get bums in seats. Or you office share.
All of them have their own issues, but bums in seats is the least fuss and risk, and may even be cheaper than the alternatives.
Employees don't care: Those who like working from home don't have to suffer the office commute, nor the distractions and disturbances common to the office. Those who already work from the office may actually prefer that it's quieter without so many people around. I'm in the latter camp, but I live near the office so the commute is a nice walk, or bike ride in.
Providing no bums are attached to people who's skills are transferable. Then the "least fuss and risk" approach just lost you all the good quality people who have easily found somewhere else that wants them.
I don't think you understand risk management.
"Some managers have reasoned that it costs $$$ and impacts their bonuses for those mostly empty offices. "
The priority then is to get rid of those offices, not add costs by making sure they're occupied. If staff is working from home for the same salary, not having to run the HVAC in that empty space could offset the rent. Not to mention, electricity, internet, phones, etc. My home internet costs the same (and keeps rising) whether I'm working from home or not. I use a big more electricity, but I'm also not commuting nor eating loads of take away lunches. If I were working for somebody else, I'd add a SIM to my phone to have a number that's dedicated to work ($16/month). If a company owns their space, they can figure out how to find new uses. Hell, turn it into a fulfillment warehouse right in the middle of downtown that stocks the sorts of things that people downtown buy frequently. There can be a ground floor bike/scooter garage for delivery people. Parcel lockers, a shipping center, post office and packaging store. Desks and people in fancy clothes is only one option. They'll probably want the upper floors with the best views anyway.
The official reasons for RTO - “culture,” “oversight,” “collaboration” - are corporate fairy tales. The real beneficiaries aren’t companies or employees but landlords desperate to rescue their bad office investments, coffee chains craving morning queues, and investment funds terrified of vacancy rates. Dragging people back is basically an extra tax on workers’ time, wallets, and mental health.
The office itself is a relic of the 70s and 80s, when you couldn’t fit a mainframe into your spare bedroom. That’s no longer true. Today, being forced to commute just to sit on Zoom calls from a different postcode is absurd.
And let’s be blunt: a big chunk of RTO is about managers. At home, they’re nobodies. Just another square on the screen. In the office, they get to cosplay as generals, strutting up and down the floor like they’re leading an army. They feed on proximity - watching employees, overhearing conversations, sniffing perfumes in the lift, mistaking surveillance for leadership. It’s ego, it’s voyeurism, and it’s creepy. Their “culture” is really just a thin excuse to reassert dominance, because without an office full of captives, they’re irrelevant.
The truth: workers don’t need offices to do their jobs. Managers and landlords need offices to feel important and to protect their shaky investments. Everyone else is just footing the bill.
Companies could save themselves a good deal of cost by getting rid of the managers who depend on a sea of occupied chairs. Just retain those who can manage remote working. It would save more if they could get rid of the big offices but in a lot of cases they're tied to them by contract or maybe eve own them and can't offload them.
The company for which I work had a ten-year lease on a big office, with hundreds of desks, which was kitted out at the time with a shiny paint job, corporate slogans on the walls, breakout rooms (which nobody used, because if you were playing PONG, you obviously didn't have enough work to do) when we moved in. This year, the lease was up for renewal. Guess what? Our office is now a co-working space with other companies with seats for twelve bums at a time. I've not even been to the new location yet. I may never, given that the vast majority of my day job involves sitting in front of a screen that is hosting a remote desktop session to another virtual machine on "the cloud", and other people yabbering around me are nothing more than an annoying distraction, and certainly not "collaborators," or engaged in some sort of magical "culture".
AC, because this probably identifies me to my employer.
Even if they are tied to the lease - it's a sunk cost. Moving to WFH would still have saved company money. No need to employ cleaners that often, no need to have anyone to manage upkeep full time and they would be fully remote once lease ends. There is no downside.
If they have a good contract, they could sublet it, create coworking space or whatever and recoup some costs that way.
"Especially those who can manage remote working in India and China and especially North Korea"
That can be much harder since somebody working from those countries will have different bank holidays and often different religious holidays/restrictions. All of that has to be taken into account and the grief from more senior managers that don't understand any of that and time zones as well.
"The office itself is a relic of the 70s and 80s, when you couldn’t fit a mainframe into your spare bedroom. That’s no longer true."
That depends on the size of your spare bedroom and how much junk is already accumulated there.
I assume the mainframe would also require 3-phase power which very very few homes in the UK have.
Not only is that a brain-dead term, it's nothing new.
I wasn't the only one who refused "management" roles. I remember one older guy I worked with shocked I "had no ambition". That was very close minded. I did have ambition, and expanded my range, responsibilities, and financial rewards through becoming a better techie.
I had the job I loved. Why would I want to turn into some stuffy suit?
And I would fall into the category of Gen X.
Edit: I must add, in my last long term salaried job, I did become "manager" when the boss was away. I said I didn't mind doing it, as long as they understood I'd be crap at it. It was weird having older people asking me for days off - I just said yes to everything.
More importantly, it said a lot about the state of our team when I was considered the best substitute when the boss was away!
It certainly isn't new. My did resisted promotion to foreman and that was a long time ago. It's a completely unhinged notion that just because somebody's good at one thing they must be good at another. If you don't see the (lack of ) logic in promoting a bean counter to chemist why don't you see the same in promoting a chemist to manager?
"it said a lot about the state of our team"
It might have said they were all techies like you.
Same, I honestly feel like I have more ambition refusing a managerial role than accepting one. I want to advance as far as I can on the infrastructure side of things, in fifty years I want to be crawling through wiring tunnels knowing exactly where each unlabeled wire goes and does, not signing off on expense reports and managing PTO requests.
So 40+ years ago some North American companies had individual contributors career paths. You could get quite senior on that. The company I now work for still does, though it’s harder to climb the ladder now. These are people who have hard earned knowledge and experience who know the bear traps and can dig projects out of dark pits.
Yep "technical career advancement track" was one I saw and not 40 years ago either. You have a technically competent person, willing, intelligent and useful. But they either don't want to manage people or you wouldn't want them managing people. So you advance them up the technical track, put them in virtual teams with a decent BA and PM interfacing them to the general populous and good things happen. Occasionally you get the whiny "I manage x people and he/she manages none, how come they are on the same pay scale?" to which I would reply "Because they earn that pay by being dammed good at their job, are a lot harder to replace than you due to specific skills versus general"
At the risk of pigeon holing people generally these are 25+ year veterans, more often than not male, zero people skills (by choice), and take their role and tasks very seriously. Usually a person you have on speed dial for SHTF problems. That same person who is in day to day interactions a pain in the back side to deal with will, after doing a fair bit of I Told You So, move heaven and earth to fix, build or remediate whatever SHTF doodoo you are knee deep in. That's why you keep them fat and happy with career (salary actually, typically they don't care one iota about titles) advancement.
"That's why you keep them fat and happy with career (salary actually, typically they don't care one iota about titles) advancement."
Just keep them away from other people, especially customers. I've left a couple of jobs where they put somebody with zero people skills over me because that person was due some advancement. I made my case with somebody further up that didn't seem to care so I gave notice. On one occasion where I hadn't given notice, but was looking for another job, that person got themselves invited to leave and somebody competent was hired so I stayed until it happened again and I gave notice that didn't seem to register until the Monday of the week I was to leave. The COO had to go back through his email and only then discovered he's just glossed over the message which was one of the reasons I left, upper management paying zero attention to important things. I did get support from most of the engineering office that understood how much I did and how big of a hole would be left at the end of the week.
Being a manager is not the same as being good at your job. Managers need the skills to look after people under their watch.....while f**king every other manager other at every possible opportunity, building mini-empires and constantly having eyes in the back of their heads watching for those metaphorical knives from their co-managers about to be thrust between their shoulder blades!
No surprisingly I never even once contemplated wanting to be a manager in 35 years of working!
Over the last decade I've had an excellent manager, a mediocre, and a terrible one.
The best one had never done my job, but they absolutely knew how to manage people. They got moved sideways into a different office - seems like they'd embarrassed the other managers by being too good at their job.
The mediocre one had previously done my job reasonably well, but struggled at management. They pushed methods that possibly worked for them before being a manager, but didn't work for the team they now managed.
The worst had previously done my job, very badly, before somehow convincing TPTB that they would be a better manager. In short, their only skill was selling themselves, they cannot actually do either job.
Checked up on them a few years later, and the excellent one is still being slowly pushed out of the company. The mediocre one clearly wants to improve but doesn't know how, while the bad one is much worse and their new team is flailing around.
Glad I'm not there anymore.
"I had the job I loved. Why would I want to turn into some stuffy suit?"
Why can't somebody be given a raise for being really good at thing they do and a manager making less than some of their reports? Why would it be required that only managers have more worth to a company than the people that do the thing that makes the company money?
"A quarter have indulged in "work to rule" doing only what's in their job description. A fifth indulge in clock blocking and calendar blocking, filling out diary time to avoid meetings. And 17 percent are "task masking," or making an effort to appear busy when they're not. Other wheezes include hushed hybrid, quiet quitting, unbossing and quiet leave."
So, exactly the same that folks have been doing in the office for generations. Nothing special about RTO from the point of view.
"All true but you have to trade that off with being asked by partner/children/neighbour "can you just.....""
That's beat by setting boundaries. If a spouse or child is constantly bugging you while you are "at work" that's on you. If a neighbor is banging on your door, ignore them unless they're yelling "fire". I have a sign next to my door that tells people to F-off, using more friendly words. I don't want people causally dropping by because I work from home and during the day, I'm "at work". None of my friends do this so any knocks on the door are going to be somebody selling something and I can't be bothered to spend the energy to tell them to F'off.
I'm happy to talk with friends and neighbors, but not if they just drop by when I don't expect them. The phone is sitting right next to me. If I answer, I have time. If I let it go to VM, I don't. Leave a message.
I calendar block to stop pointless hour long meetings where no one ever agrees anything, just talk about nothing. I work-to-rule 'cos the company decided that they'd rather we all spend 3 hours a day sitting on trains than sitting at comfy desks at home, actually contributing to the company's bottom line, and all to satisfy the demented egos of mornic middle-managers with a "bums on seats" fetish.
I'm sure my employer has a very nice office but it's over 200 miles from me so I won't be commuting, ever.
One of my colleagues spends half the year in Spain and the other half in the UK, where he also lives over 100 miles from the office. He'd retire (again I suspect) rather than change.
Fortunately our managers like to work from home too.
"Over 90 percent of workers surveyed said they would "take action"
Can we start seeing surveys about how many do actually take action ? Folks can moan and whinge and complain, and they will, but RTO is here to stay. And the number of days in the office will only increase. And the number of jobs offering fully remote will continue to drop.
When we had RTO imposed we had loads of folks threaten to leave, then they looked at the job market, tried applying for the few available, and are still here.
Manglement want more people in the office. And more and more manglement want it more and more, so even when the market picks the jobs will be in the office most of the time. For the foreseeable future (years probably) working in the office some of the time is here to stay, and never working in the office will become as rare as rocking horse poo.
Roll on retirement in a couple of years
As I've said before, my daughter's employers are virtually 100% remote working where remote really means anywhere. She joined it after her previous job, which she'd taken just before Covid went RTO*. There's no chance that could possibly be an office based job - the UK office, if it really exists, must be little more than an accommodation address. By being able to pick specialist from anywhere in the world they're in a position to outcompete those who restrict themselves to local staff.
To pick up on Machdiamond's point above, although she only lives a mile or so away if there's a need to go over there during the working week for something it's carefully scheduled.
*I don't know why she took it. Her previous one was work from home because it meant frequently visiting sites over 100 miles from the HQ so it suited both sides.
When I left a position, the RTO pressure was one of the factors in that decision. I suspect that's how it is for others too - it's not the only reason. The point is that it needn't have been a factor.
IMO I was more effective at home, where it was quieter and with fewer distractions, than when I was in the office. I also had no problem going in to the office, if it was needed. My objection was being pressured to go in for a fixed number of days, for no defined benefit.
That said, the WFH could have been handled better. If a company wants to develop a sense of team/community then they should make time for social calls - not just formal meetings. It's often during social chats that work stuff crops up in different ways, where it might become clear that one team member can help another, having not otherwise appreciated the need or matching resource. There isn't a need for such chats to be around the same physical kettle.
The only time we had team social chats in my career was job1 where we had company camping trips (free bar) several times a year, and during COVID where we scheduled team coffee calls. Way better inclusion than the way people group in the office. Mind you, we have a higher than population proportion of neurodiverse people.
"When I left a position, the RTO pressure was one of the factors in that decision. I suspect that's how it is for others too - it's not the only reason."
Anybody given an ultimatum should do the math and see if taking a cut in pay is worth more than spending the time and money to RTO.
I've done really well making less per annum working for myself out of a home office than I did working at an aerospace job where I was expected in the majority of the time. It's 30 miles a day I'm not commuting. If I don't really feel I need a shower, I don't need to take one to be fresh for the office saving hot water costs. On a hot day where I've been working in the field, I might need 2. I've got a bunch of egg noodle lasagna portions in the freezer I can whack in the microwave at ~$1ea. The freeze dried bananas, strawberries and apples are all gone, but I'll replenish those and make some more zucchini crisps for snacking at the same time. My nice clothes stay nice longer as I don't need to wear them every day. The oil in the car needs changing less frequently. If I want pizza for supper, I can start the dough at lunch.
If people are looking at what it costs them to be at work everyday that companies aren't paying them for, they might find it more cost effective to work from home at a lower salary so the money might not be good enough. A commute that takes lots of time can be stressful and it's time out of the day that one can never get back. For somebody with children, that should be really important. If you have a spouse or SO, if you aren't spending time together, it's more like FWB than a relationship. Getting up in the dark to prep for the day and get to work only to get home in the dark with not much time before needing to go to bad is no way to live.
we had loads of folks threaten to leave, then they looked at the job market
That is definition of captive workforce. Long term it will destroy productivity and loyalty. People will become jaded and indifferent to what is happening even more than they are now.
Short term, it is a win for management for sure, but in the long term they'll leave the moment market picks up, whilst the output will take a nosedive in the meantime.
Basically it is a mirror. If employer is shite towards employees, it should expect to have shite returned often with interest.
Plenty of companies hiring remote workers. We may see the headlines about the big companies doing partial or full RTO, but it is far from universal.
So "take action" doesn't have to mean "quit on the spot". It could mean you start looking for jobs, and when you find one where you can work in the manner you prefer you turn in your notice. How easy/hard that is depends on the job prospects in your field, and whether you are willing to potentially accept a pay cut to avoid the time/expense of commuting and whether you're coming from a high wage state like California where it might be hard to salary match with a company based in a less expensive area unless it is a promotion rather than lateral move.
Big name companies like Apple or Google can do RTO because they know they have a lot of talented people who will want to work there regardless, and they can always make special arrangements with the truly elite talent if that's necessary to keep them on board. For lesser companies you've never heard of RTO is a more difficult prospect, especially if they are located somewhere without a lot of local talent. A company in Iowa or Vermont or small town Texas able to recruit nationally can get access to a lot of talent who would never consider them otherwise.
The really nasty thing about this is that a lot of companies told their employees "this is going to be the future" and those employees believed them enough that they sold their house located near their job and moved elsewhere. Either because it was closer to family, better access to recreation, bigger house for the money, or same sized house for less money. Then their company went back on that promise and told them to start showing up to work, and they were in another state with a very low interest rate mortgage they didn't want to give up.
Don't forget that worrying about these things - like daily unnecessary commute, associated cost - how to make it work financially, looking for a new job, researching the market, perhaps acquiring new skill - all takes cognitive load and it means employee has less capacity to think about problems they have to solve at work.
Companies don't think about alternative cost of doing this.
"high wage state like California where it might be hard to salary match with a company based in a less expensive area unless it is a promotion rather than lateral move."
California is also a high tax state so trying to find a salary match should be lower on the list if you aren't going to stay in the same place. Moving to Ft Wayne, IN would be a radical change, but maybe that's the wisest thing to do if there's an opportunity there that leads to more money in your bank account at the end of each month.
Before I bought my house I was looking for jobs far and wide. Yes, moving would put me further from family and friends, but I need to look after me. I was offered a house from a former employer so cheap that I would have been a fool not to take it. That makes me hesitant to move since I've since paid off the property and got it so cheap that property tax is not much either. It means I don't have to work that hard to make ends meet. To stop working for myself and move someplace else would need to pay significantly more to give me the same sort of lifestyle. I'd also wind up on the mortgage hamster wheel again and be paying more in property tax forever if I paid it off. At my age, doing that doesn't make sense. Going back to renting and just flushing cash down the loo every month would also be a poor decision.
If you want to work for a large company such as Apple or Google (eww), you have to accept the terms they hand you since they have no problem filling most roles.
I'm sure plenty of people also moved so their kids would be in better environment and attend better schools. Moving back to be near enough to the office is a total non-starter. It might be double the interest rate for a new mortgage and housing prices, at least in the US, have come down enough to take into account the higher rates so payments are more.
"A company in Iowa or Vermont or small town Texas able to recruit nationally can get access to a lot of talent who would never consider them otherwise."
It probably works the other way round as well - companies elsewhere prepared to recruit nationally will be able to get access to talent that prefers to live in such places.
What we're seeing is employers using the softer labor [sic] market to push for more face-to-face time, whether that's to encourage collaboration, rebuild office culture, or simply because they feel they can," said Jack Kennedy, Senior economist at Indeed.
Ah yes, those two, "collaboration", the thing that now happens entirely via tools such as Teams and Slack, and is not face-to-face, and "office culture" which is another term for the toxic workplace environment where bullying and stress thrive.
Neither of these things are tangible, measurable outcomes, and when they are brought out, it is always a clear proxy for what the bosses actually mean: presenteeism and employee surveillance, with just a hint of middle managers justifying their own existence and building their own little empires.
Here's a crazy thought: rather than dictating a one-size-fits-all policy and making up rationalisations for it, perhaps see what allows your employees to thrive, and what enables them to be the most productive. For some people, that is five days a week in the office, and for others, it is none. "Collaboration" and "office culture" are just meaningless shibboleths of the management class. In a rational world, employers would recognise that many employees do much better, and work much better, without a commute and forced presence in a hostile open plan disease-factory.
'We know what you're selling, and we're not buying it..."
And the unbossing thing is not a a new concept. My former employer (I'm retired now) to their great credit created a new job title, a new role, a new space in the org chart, and facilitated a corresponding salary bump in order to recognise my contribution (and level of seniority) after I repeatedly declined management track promotions. Management is a discrete specialism requiring its own specific set of abilities and talents which I acutely aware of not possessing...
... people like to work from home. So do I.
But when you're working on serious projects, video conferencing and phone calls just don't hack it.
You need the team cohesion that comes with actually being in the same room with a team.
You can't "read the room" on video - a lot of people don't get how much body-language matters.
If your job hinges on ‘reading the room’ and body language, maybe you’re not running a serious project - you’re running a séance. Engineers, designers, analysts don’t need clairvoyance, they need clarity. The whole ‘cohesion through vibes’ argument is just management code for ‘I have no idea how to measure outcomes, so I rely on facial expressions to tell me if people are scared enough.
So you think you're the only person who can solve a problem, run a project, maybe build a global email system?
On your own?
I've done that (NOT on my own).
130,000 users worldwide. On a system I designed and built.
Newsflash - other people can have ideas you haven't thought of.
I'm pretty skilled but I'm not arrogant enough to think I know everything.
You get things done at that scale by building a team.
Co-Tech Leads, Devops, Infrastructure, Support, Project Manager (not me by the way, I found a lady way better at handling people).
3-monthly conferences between senior sysadmins on five continents. In person.
Anyway, I'm out on this thread.
For a tech service, 130k users is kinda small right now for all but an early startup.
Perhaps your foot in the 70's is holding you back from a far bigger market share?
There are engineers who group and collaborate very well remotely, pairing, forming online calls to get things done when needed. Newsflash - those who worked on largish server farms, or with multiple international developer pools, and then the cloud were often in different locations and doing this stuff in 2016 on the ropey tech we had there. WFH just meant we weren't finding that there weren't enough meeting rooms to cope or that the office network couldn't cope with the VPN connection needed to other sites.
"Watercooler" or coffee room discussions still happen among people online if they are collaborating and compiling and so on. The biggest hiccup was finding out that perhaps we needed better office chairs at home since the Argos cheapie we had for the few hours we spent at home was no longer adequate.
If you think "WFH" means working "On your own", you are deluded or really bad at collaborating when not co-located.
And you have utterly no clue about how shaking a senior bank executives hand, buying them a coffee and just talking to them face to face can make all the difference?
The CEO of a major UK bank always insisted that *I* sorted out any IT problems he had - because I just treated him like a regular guy.
Everyone else in the IT dept was shaking in their boots if he rang.
99.9% of WFO bank employees will never, ever have the opportunity to even say "hello" to the executives, let alone "buy them a coffee".
They sit in their cubes, talking to people via Teams/Zoom/Skype. The closest they'll ever get is watching a "keynote" speech.
That's probably why you felt they were happy to see you. This drone thought they were human - such fun!
Sounds to me like you were the unfortunate sod whose phone number got given to the C-level exec, so you're the guy who gets called when he can't work out how to turn his monitor on.
Everyone else in the room was probably shaking in relief that their day hadn't got interrupted by having to sort out an issue for someone whose ego was bigger than his ability.
But hey, you go ahead and schmooze the big-wigs if it makes you feel important, the rest of us have real work to do.
> And you have utterly no clue about how shaking a senior bank executives hand, buying them a coffee and just talking to them face to face can make all the difference?
Most companies hire expensive external consultants to do that…
The only issue I’ve had (as an employee) is with CEO’s who aren’t actually up to the job, their insecurity and lack of knowledge, means they see such an adult relationship as a threat and an attempt to undermine them. Needless to say I do my job and move on in the certain knowledge they will kill staff morale and the business.
Even as a consultant, these CEO’s don’t.like consultants who have been around longer than them, so their appointment usually means the end to a successful gig…
"The CEO of a major UK bank always insisted that *I* sorted out any IT problems he had"
Most bank employees work where the executive team doesn't. Being the go to person for the CEO is a dual edged sword depending on that CEO. You can be their favorite, but very quickly the most horrible unhelpful person in the world when you have to give them bad news. Do you get invited to their grandchildren's birthday parties and get asked to go on a quail shoot with them and some of the other execs? If you aren't treated like you are in the same social circles as their peers, don't read too much into their praise.
Naturally you are all using non-geographic numbers and it is easier to call them on your mobile than the phone on the desk (that’s if there is one), so no call cost savings. So the company in addition to office sq. footage costs is incurring additional costs for a lightly used phone system and sufficient internet capacity to support dozens or even hundreds of concurrent Zoom/Teams sessions…
Despite all the downvotes there are cases when you're absolutely right.
I participate on several international standards working groups. We have participants on four continents and in 7 or 8 time zones, We meet regularly, usually on a weekly basis via conference calls.
And usually we get together physically once, or if very lucky, twice a year for a day, possibly two.
What we get done in those physical meetings far surpasses anything that we do via conferencing.
But of course it is a special event - not RTO - and there is a different level of motivation.
Meeting in person once, twice, maybe four times a year is indeed very valuable - but only because it's a special event.
People take time to prepare beforehand, and pay special attention to everything said. There's usually decent catering, everyone has cleared their calendars and are concentrating on the specific purpose of the meeting.
The notes taken (written and mental) generally help direct work for a long time.
But - the more often it happens, the less useful it becomes. When it's mundane, it very quickly becomes meaningless.
@CorwinX
When I worked on a big IT project (£10 million spend) we worked with people from several parts of the UK, France, The Netherlands, Italy, Romania, Spain and the USA.
Pretty sure we didn't all commute to the same office 4 days a week. In fact I never even met the Italians and Spanish once
Yet, despite it being a horrendously complex project taking 3 years from start to finish, there wasn't a single time we felt that everyone had to be in the same place.
"Yet, despite it being a horrendously complex project taking 3 years from start to finish, there wasn't a single time we felt that everyone had to be in the same place."
Maybe not, but it would be a nice little break and social outing on the company dime. Maybe it's just for the kick off, a catch up in the middle and a meeting near the end to make sure everything is tied up in bows and ready to hand to the customer. It will depend on the project, but a kick off meeting is often a good idea.
I'm not a big believer in having everybody together all of the time leads to a good company culture or sharing of ideas. I'm going to be biased due to my own work and experience. Obviously, when I was a roadie way back when, everybody needed to be in the same place at the same time. If I worked at a company that designed and installed permanent sound/lighting systems, I'd be able to do a lot of that from home today (not back then). Similar businesses and sometimes under the same roof, but different jobs.
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No, workers absolutely do not think rto is a good idea.
The whole lockdown thing took so much pressure of physical infrastructure it could have saved trillions in maintenance costs and upgrades. This money could have been used to give digital infrastructure a massive boost, but now we're basically back to struggling in congestion for large parts of the day.
Working from home has made me realize how little time actually needs to be dedicated to work. How much work do we actually do in a day? I think I crunch two hours in the morning, mop stuff up after lunch, and then field calls until it's Miller time, and my performance reviews are fantastic. At least working from home I can clean my house, sleep in a little, and eat something other than a pint of tuna salad from the deli.
There's no way I could return to office, it feels like a misguided attempt at control by upper management. Execs want to feel like they're getting their money's worth out of me, but I think we need to reframe the conversation from them buying eight hours of my time, to them paying me a living wage in exchange for me completing set tasks for them
On the one hand, WFH is very pleasant, insofar as I have a lot more flexibility to take care of personal business and can be in an environment I've customized to my own desires. On the other hand, when I meet my coworkers in person, there's a lot more sharing of information and basic human bonding. For most teams, I would think there's a gradient effect where it makes sense to get the team into the office together on some regular frequency for group bonding and improved collaboration, with the frequency depending on the nature of the team and the work that the people on it are doing. Unfortunately, it's the nature of humans to see it as being unfair that particular individuals or teams are required to come in less frequently, so the same policy has to be applied across all team members equally.
And yes, I know that you personally are an antisocial shut-in and borderline sociopath who would be much happier if you didn't have to interact with other humans personally at all and, indeed, would be entirely satisfied if the rest of humanity ceased to exist, so the above paragraph does not apply to you.
And yes, I know that you personally are an antisocial shut-in and borderline sociopath who would be much happier if you didn't have to interact with other humans personally at all and, indeed, would be entirely satisfied if the rest of humanity ceased to exist, so the above paragraph does not apply to you.
People who spout this sort of thing are exactly why I find it a chore to deal with other humans, especially those who seem to have a pathological desire to sit in a big room with loads of other people all yattering away all day, or who like to strut up and down pretending to be important to stroke their own egos. Quite apart from anything else, it belies a remarkable lack of understanding of neurodiversity with the whole "me right, you wrong" attitude.
tl;dr: what you see as "group bonding" and "improved collaboration" is, to many people, absolutely horrific. Characterising those people as sociopathic seems a lot like projection on your part.
"And yes, I know that you personally are an antisocial shut-in and borderline sociopath"
It's not that, it's just that 98% of the people I work with I don't need to be in the same building with 99.99% of the time.
The handful of colleages I do work with on a regular basis...my team if you will...I'd rather meet up somewhere equidistant from us all for a 1-2hr casual catch up every now and then. Which is what takes place now.
Nobody ever talks about the positives of WFH...and I've never seen any published figures on how WFH has affected worked based sexual harassment etc...I'm not sure why someone isn't studying this, because I would imagine that sexual harassment in the workplace is probably on the decline with WFH becoming more common...I can't say for sure though, because bosses are too busy trying to lure people back into commuting to a shit hole 5 days of the week.
"it's the nature of humans to see it as being unfair"
Most people need to learn that there isn't any such thing as "fair" in the real world for most things. If you aren't in the group that works the most out of the office, do what you need to do so you can get a position that lets you work on those teams. If what you do doesn't lend itself to WFH, oh well, dems da brakes.
There is nothing unfair about WFH...people can still choose to show up somewhere if they really want to. What is unfair is the minority of property stakeholders trying to force a massive workforce to return to their shitty business unit 1.5 hours away to ensure that it doesn't become worthless.
Flatten the business units, build fucking houses.
I get that some businesses require you to be there, but if you have that kind of job, you probably live locally to it.
Commuting to a sweatshop en masse is a relatively new thing...I can remember when I was a kid, and my old man (who regularly needed to interact with his colleagues) rarely went to an office. He went to the office if he needed to send a fax, pick up some mail or print something. Otherwise, he was meeting people at pubs. He would go to a pub near them to speak to them in person if needed...that's how business was conducted for centuries.
He has been retired now for essentially 20 years...if he rejoined the workforce as it was 5 years ago, it would be completely alien to him...he wouldn't take the job if you offered it to him. There is no chance on Earth you'd get him to commute to an office everyday. The money and people are out there, that's where the business is...the business is not in Unit 8, Wankington Estate, Milton Keynes.
Centralising the workforce was a failed experiment. All it did was reduce housing, increase business units and line the pockets of landowners...that's all it did.
I work from home exclusively and I have done for over a decade...even before the pandemic...I don't actively avoid people, if I need to see them I go and see them. If I need to go onsite somewhere to physically fix something, I go onsite to physically fix it...I'm not a shut in, I'm not anti-social...I just don't need or want to pay (every day) to go and sit somewhere else to get something done that is less equipped than I am at home, that is more hostile than my home (I have a full fridge of food at home and somewhere comfy to sit and eat) and I can choose my own tea and coffee. I don't have to deal with the people that are socially awkward (you know them, the ones that have no social life outside of work that hang around your fucking desk all the time), I don't have to join colleagues for awkward lunches in somewhere that is the least objectionable amongst the team, I can go for lunch exactly where I want and spend exactly what I like...I don't have to sit on the fucking motorway commuting in, I don't need to deal with train cancellations, I don't have to buy a stupid fucking heavy jacket in case I get stuck at a station in the fucking rain...I don't need a waterproof rucksack to carry a heavy fucking laptop and a load of other bullshit.
If you want to see me, I'll leave in 20 minutes, I'll be there at my own convenience...if I'm late, Mr Boss, it's on you because you know how shitty the commute is, you know how crap the trains are and you know that the business unit you've rented was chosen based on budget and proximity to your own house, not based on convenience, location and with employee commutes in mind.
The only people that want to work in offices are people that cannot demonstrate any value beyond presenteeism. Those folks that have managed to cruise on simply being in the office for 11 hours a day. Without the office, these people are fundamentally worthless because they can't just shove their face in all over the place and be vaguely remembered for taking part. They actually have to produce something, demonstrate something, have some fucking skills...I get that people that rely on the fact they are just there to make up for lack of value elsewhere might be worried...but for christ sake, the free ride is over...sort yourself out.
I think a lot of the RTO push is from managers who are unable to classify and quantify the productivity output of their staff.
WFH should have a been a good way for the bosses to differentiate the performers from the actors...if they actually knew what their staff did on a daily basis.
For example: Fred who is always in the bosses office chatting him up telling him how much work he does or Barney who didn't have time to do so because he was grinding away at his tasks (and maybe Fred's too)
"their employers' point of view" Alan Sugar has lobbied them that its "The right think to do", ignoring Alan Sugar works from home, from Florida, himself and ONLY wants people back into the office because most of his money now is from all the office buildings he owns and he wants companies to keep paying their rent. If they decide they no longer need the builds and want to leave, he's a bit fucked.
I went and started to read the Owl study and found out to my surprise it's actually quite interesting, and the Reg article is rather misleading. Headlines that stand out include :
It's not that 'employees understand the company's point of view' - that's putting words in their mouth. It's why employees think the RTO mandate is being enacted.
It's notable that 'quiet quitting' is far more prevalent among in office workers, and especially amongst managers.
Also that remote work tech, including video conferencing, works for the vast majority of people
As far as I can see in the main the study *supports* remote working.
I'm still on practically 100% remote working, and it would be utterly pointless to order me to RTO given the remainder of my team are in different countries, a different hemisphere, and in the near future offshoring some functions 5,000 miles away. The tech works absolutely fine, when collaboration falls down it's due to trying to repeatedly half arse organisation and documentation, and instead rely on grabbing people either online or in person.
In person has some very minor benefits if you can physically accost a person when they're not answering electronic communication, but the correct response is to get them to respond to their electronic prompts over email, Teams, or other internal systems.
The top things work, and many other businesses, could do to improve productivity would be to reduce expenditure on offices and instead spend the saving on new employees to slash bureaucracy to the absolute minimum, and professionally write, organise, and otherwise curate documentation and training.
Workers are very good at knowing when 'Return to Office is necessary' is just 'our managers and execs are starting to pout because they can't micromanage and pretend they're doing anything useful by walking around and destroying productivity directly.'
There are absolutely times when coming into the office is necessary, like when I have to get hands on with lab equipment or the test stand. Otherwise I can save myself an hour of commuting a day and get way more work done and have much better job satisfaction. If you try to insist on me coming in just because you need someone to bother, I will (and I have!) quit and work for smarter companies.
Related, it's infuriating that they're replacing people doing actual work with AI when replacing managers and especially execs with AI would have far better return on value.
If the company can't do company culture or leadership oversight and vision remotely, that's a management issue - it makes no sense to take it out on employees. Tons of studies show that remote productivity is HIGHER than in-office so that's another non-reason. In my (long) experience, in office or not has exactly zero effect on "connection to company mission/purpose". Some people may want an "attractive office" but I 10000x prefer my home-office. Maybe it's just me and the people I've worked with but I have noticed zero impact on office friendships from remote work.
I think the real reasons come down to poor management and/or a need to get people in the real-estate (at least in the US - not sure if the same tax implications apply in UK/Europe)...
I will never take another job that is in-office or typical hybrid (at absolute most, 1 day per week).
In a romantic relationship insisting someone stays at home is coercive control, yet in a working relationship no justification needs to be given for an RTO order.
Employers forget that they employ humans and to make them want to return to office the office environment needs to be appealing and necessary, COVID years showed many how unnecessary it is.
The business I worked for lost no revenue or profit during that time, and retained flexible working afterwards, making targets all goal and performance based and allowing people who's jobs were not time or location based to work when and where they want.
Staff became more appreciative and happy, worked better and smarter and produced better results. Office space was available for thos who wanted it, growth became less expensive as we didn't need to upgrade infrastructure and property to expand the business.
Too many bosses looking at the past and thinking control rather than leadership is the key to success.
"and allowing people who's jobs were not time or location based to work when and where they want."
That is a good way to retain people in their family years when they'd like to be around for their kids. Very young kids will sleep a lot, but not on a schedule. A parent with school age kids may want to take time off in the afternoon to pick them up from school and make sure they're doing assignments, etc and will then have more time in the evening to dedicate to work. Older kids give more flexibilty but I've seen outrage from people that hear about a 13 year old at home alone. Good grief, I was on tour with a couple of jazz bands when I was 14 for the summer. That's a bit off-nominal, but I still got good grades in school and graduated with my class in high school where I had spent half my senior year at the local Jr College. The point is that it depends on the kids which will depend heavily how they've been raised to that point. If parents have been around to raise their children well, any distractions from them will often be less than what's likely in an office. Instead of somebody leaving the workforce to raise a family, they are still available. Since it's women that will benefit the most, there ya go.
Are you in upper managment? Just asking!
Most people are pretty consciencous, they will put in the hours, making up the time if they have been "skiving off". My mate and I often log in an hour early and then stay for 30-45 mins or longer if needed to get work done. With RTO we simply said, "Stuff that!".
If they want us to waste 3 hours a day on the train then they get their contracted 7 hours and that's it, they could have had more work out of us but they made their choice to drag everyone back in 4 days a week so it's back to clock watching as they pay us for 7 hours and so they're getting 7 hours.
"Why work if you can laze at home and still get paid?"
If a company isn't smart enough to figure out that you are skiving off, why would they be a company worth working for. Plenty of people have learned how to not work in an office and if you do work, you are just covering for them.
Title says it all. When I asked if I could WFH in 2005 the wife was recovering from a major operation, they couldn't say no as the development team were already WFH (unofficially).
I'd really like to get hold of the bosses who demand staff into work to pin them down on the real reasons which will come down to empty seats and building costs.
The mockery is demanding staff back into the office them making thousands redundant, so nice cost saving and still no bums on seats.
And here is something everybody over looks in our rush to be cleaner and greener. Companies claiming Zero Carbon emissions and forcing employees to travel? For my money any carbon emissions employees create in travelling to and from work is on the companies tab. Not convinced by 99% of company saying they are Carbon Free anyway to be honest.
This is why I'm retiring at 55 next year! Love the work, love the IT biz even after 45 years of coding, but I've had enough of the workplace bullshit and stress, the constant pressure of underfunded, under staffed projects all to save a few grand. Cutting back on security kit, making hardware last to the point where it starts smoking, meanwhile 90% of the C-suite are jetting off around the world every couple of weeks.
The last 5 years I've put in around 1-2 hours extra a day from home but company has demanded 3-4 days a week minimum in the office from now on, and my time too precious to waste any more of it on working bullshit jobs. I'm off to go get a job as a TESCO or Amazon driver, do my 9-5 and done each day.
While the commentors here all seem to favour WFH, there is a significant minority who prefer work in office. Especially the younger generation where office provides social interaction with people their own age group. My son goes into the office even thought they offer hybrid working. And other were WFH is very isolating or they don't have the option of dedicated workspace. Also being in the office 4 days a week I find there is plenty of interaction that just won't have happened working remotely and no amount of collab tools is going to beat face 2 face interaction.
The key takeaway is that there is no one size fits all and people should have a choice and management should have the ability to measure performance support that choice.
Ah, that old and oft proven wrong chestnut... As many companies have learned, sometimes to their cost, over the decades, just because a given position can be filled by someone not located at the office, it doesn't mean it can be filled by *anyone* *anywhere* - all of the enforced WFH we went through during the pandemic only proved that the people *already employed in those positions* were able to successfully transition into remote working and keeping their respective employers up and running regardless of all the problems placed in their ways. Anyone treating it as proof that *someone else* could take over those positions and still perform as well whilst costing the company less, is being a little foolish/short-sighted/naive.
Not saying that offshoring isn't therefore a threat at all, but that's been the case since long before the pandemic forced the hands of employers into offering WFH, so it's far from being a simple case of "if you work remotely, you ARE at risk of being offshored", and more a case of "if your personal contribution to the company isn't sufficient to justify paying you to remain in the role vs paying someone on the other side of the planet to replace you, then you're at risk of being offshored". And in that latter interpretation of the risk, *where* you work is less relevant than *how* you work/what *you* bring to the position that someone else might not...
If the management cares less about my performance than about which desk I sit at, then I will leave for the simple reason I dont work for complete morons
As to the rest of this story, if people want to adjust working hours, that is fine if you have a fnctioning adult as a boss
2 people produce th same results, one takes twice as long, fine. Pay them the same
Someone else only works part time & produces half the work, fine, pay them half as much
Obviously doesnt work for every industry, but for those where it does, grow up & treat people like adults
Or go bust.
"If the management cares less about my performance than about which desk I sit at, then I will leave for the simple reason I dont work for complete morons"
I don't think that most people will ever get it. They have boxed themselves in with numerous subscriptions, loads of student loan debt and their parents have given them the boot so they leased an expensive flat nearby. There's also the expensive take away coffee each morning, a take away lunch and a Door Dash dinner. They're working to break even. To move takes money. To look for a new job will likely take some money since there may be a need to take time off to interview while keeping that from the current employer.
It's sad that many of the important life lessons that apply to work are things I learned much later in life. They should have been taught in the last couple of years of school. I'd be so much further ahead if I knew then....
I'm one of those weirdos whom actually prefers being in the office the majority of the time. Doesn't matter if my colleagues are there or not (this varies) but it puts me in a better headspace and it actually feels like work. I do not get that at home and I am definitely less productive or settled. I am also usually too busy to do my chores at lunchtime and so on.
If my employer went fully remote, at the very least I'd have to look into some kind of office space outside of the home. Most of the happy WFHers I know all have a big comfortable house, partners and families, pets, etc. but I don't.
I helps a lot at home if you have a dedicated space for working that is properly kitted out , so decent desk size, multiple monitor(s), real keyboard, mouse etc. Oh and dress reasonably
And no TV or other distractions, and if you need a break go somewhere away from your desk - same for lunch.
All this helped me get in the right head space. I was far less productive in the office with all the background noise and constant distractions, but we did have some very good conversations on the current topics of the day...usually last nights football, impending WW3 etc
A lot of the time, the reason someone doesn't have a big comfortable house, partners and families, pets, etc, is because they are required to constantly attend a central office.
If you're required to commute into somewhere like New York City, LA, or central London every day, then you have to live in a tiny box nearby with no space for pets or visitors, and spend three to four hours a day travelling.
If you aren't, then you could live outside the city in a big comfortable house for less money, and spend those three to four hours a day meeting people socially.
"and spend those three to four hours a day meeting people socially."
It can even leave time for a side hustle or school. Being able to add professional qualifications can let you earn more money or shift jobs. If you only had a couple of hours in the evening to dedicate to it. Maybe that's what has execs nervous.
In the early 1980s I worked with someone-e whose WFH office was a room above the shop next door. It satisfied his requirements of being able to walk out of his front door and go to the office. At the end of work he could lock the office and walk home, leaving work matters at work.
As an itinerant consultant often working out of hotel rooms, I found the black screen of the TV distracting, so would plug in the laptop and have it show pictures and play music from my curated collection.
To me WFH means making arrangements that enable you to deliver.
"If my employer went fully remote, at the very least I'd have to look into some kind of office space outside of the home. Most of the happy WFHers I know all have a big comfortable house, partners and families, pets, etc. but I don't."
I don't think WFO will go away in the near future so there will always be businesses that maintain workers in offices. I have a couple of books on being self-employed that would be appropriate for remote workers as well. They do have a section about evaluating whether you can stay on task on your own or if you need an outside supervisor. Plenty of people won't live somewhere they can work from home. Living with an extended family can be one such situation if there is no way to carve out some dedicated workspace away from everybody.
We are expected in the office three days per week. Not horrible to be sure. That being said, my team is spread across 6 locations. My dev team is offshore. My project teams are mostly offshore or spread out across NA.
I spend most days in back to back meetings. Have skipped lunch or breaks for months on end to accommodate said meetings. Which are all teams calls by the way. As I have zero gaps to go out and get something as simple as a decent coffee. And for what? I get to sit in my office with the door closed so I can take calls all day. Not exactly face to face interaction.
I have taken to going in to the office as needed but now WFH home on those days where I will have zero breaks. At least I grab a coffee from my kitchen off camera.
RTO - Repeatedly Tripping Over
My company was about to get a lease on a larger office than the one we had, which was already huge, then covid hit.
After that, they went the other way and downsized the office to accommodate around 10% of the staff and are saving hundreds of thousands.
The only time the office is used is if people can't work from home undistracted or if a whole team has to come in for a whiteboarding session, in which cases they book in advance and get free reserved parking etc, all whilst still being a massive cost saving for the company that keeps everyone happy
also widens the catchment area for hiring devs from commutable-to-office to the entire UK
Or "being forced to block out time in your calendar to get on with your damn job without being stuck in endless pointless meetings about it". Funny how companies/management create a problem (endless redundant meetings) and then apply a pejorative label to reasonable attempts to work around it.
COVID proved that Government still worked when MP's were 'WFH'. I use the quotes because I wonder what the likes of F.A.Rage actually do for their constituencies, especially when one manages to bugger off to the US when Tzump makes the call, but I digress.
What I am seriously interested in is why did it stop for politicians? There is no need for them all to be in London for that shambles of a shouting session that is PMQ's. There is sufficient technology available for issue voting to be done online and it would rid the taxpayer of the need to buy each of these shits a bloody house in/near London that they get to punt on and keep the damn proceeds. Anyone else who got a house given by their employer would have His Majesties Recovery Company on them like ebola.
Of course, I guess the bung opportunities are less, WFH, but who knows, it might even increase.
I know it won't happen, because well, politician pockets and their contents are far more important than taxpayer value for money.
Up-vote/down-vote knock yourselves out.
Funny how when they want total control, its EVERYONE IN THE OFFICE.
But as soon as they see a chance to do it cheaper, it is, TRAIN YOUR REPLACEMENT FROM "insert LCC du jour" follwed by K THX BYE. Suddenly, they don't need your arse in the seat, nor your replacements.
Nevermind that there are now 10x as many doing a 10x worse job. Don't mind the quality, feel the width.
That workers understand the senior managment drive for RTO does not mean that workers agree with it.
My own employer has made an empassioned drive for RTO however the employee base has taken one look at the arguments and largely dismissed them as utter nonsense.
We have downsized offices since before covid by over 90%. The majority of employees do not support clients in their geographic areas.
Which means the drive to RTO 60% will result in about 5 butts to each chair still making video calls but on equiment and in environments which are less suitable than at home.
The business also seems to avoid mentioning commuting in it's often advertised environmental / net zero CO2 credentials.
The threat we get is that profit share bonuses will be cut from those not RTO. However the business has plead poverty in order to cut those bonuses so often that any residual bonus now is an order of magnatude less than the savings from not commuting. Or promotions will be prioritised to office retunees, well a promotion now seems to be a route to more work for no money so most people with any sense are saying no anyway.
The ultimate killer being clients don't want it or at best don't care. They don't need to see us face to face they just want the problem fixed quickly, the solution provided cheaply etc etc.
There is a class distinction here that can't be ignored. Those of us who just type and click on a mouse can work anywhere, but there are millions of people doing jobs that can't be "phoned in".
Your roads, buildings, water and even your fast pipes of data need people to actually show up at their job site. Leaving family, pets and all those important errands for later.
And? This is basically the same argument as "that person gets paid a bazillion currency units for doing their job, why can't I earn that much?" - being able to WFH, or being able to wear your own clothes rather than a uniform, or being able to listen to music, etc. etc. is as much a part of the overall benefits package someone earns in exchange for their ability to do a given job, as the more obvious financial benefits.
The point is that since the industrial revolution created all of these new jobs that got people out of the fields, or their home workshops, or wherever else they'd have earned a living back then, and required them to all dutifully traipse into a central location because that's where the new work needed to be done, WFH wasn't an option at all for most of us for the next few centuries - the nature of these new jobs simply didn't facilitate it, and so workers had no choice.
But just as the industrial revolution brought change compared to what there was before, the IT revolution means now an increasing number of jobs *can* once again be done out of a back room at home rather than at that big central company-owned premises. WFH is therefore nothing more than part of the constantly changing nature of work, and anyone who thinks we need to go back to WFO because that's the "norm" has a relatively short-sighted perspective compared to the entire history of employment, and is trying to cling onto one particular implementation of working life despite the ongoing changes all around them. It might be possible to do so for a while, but sooner or later they'll have to admit defeat, and might then wish they'd just accepted those changes sooner when they were easier to get used to.
So absolutely, some jobs still require attendance at a specific location, and any WFH supporter claiming otherwise is going to be in a very tiny minority - most of us are fully aware that WFH isn't something open to all - but that's not reason enough to deny WFH from anyone who is able to do so effectively. Besides, those who can't WFH and therefore think no-one else ought to, might need to be careful what they wish for - e.g. if everyone went back to commuting full time, how much more hellish would that make the commute for those who *have* to endure it every day...
@ChrisC
WFH was a thing a long time ago - Framework knitters would often have a frame in their home if they had space - it was a classic "cottage industry".
More industrial advances replaced (though few factories keep some going for luxury goods) them with more automated (& less operator skill needed in many cases) machinery (& work in factories rather than at home).
So, going a bit full circle in terms of WFH (for those in jobs that can be done remotely) in many ways.
Does anyone feel like they've had this conversation with management endlessly since the pandemic "ended"? I agree--especially in smaller companies/teams--that there are massive social benefits to existing in the same office as your fellow coworkers, to water-cooler conversations, and meetings where you're face-to-face. In my line of work, it's always been well known that if you need to have a tough conversation with a client, you do it on the phone rather than via email--because hearing each other as human beings can change a conversation and text is too easy to misinterpret. The same applies to company culture. It is easier to exercise empathy when you get out from behind your desk.
BUT--while I value those elements of working in a (good, non-toxic) office, I don't find them worth the tradeoff of commuting to work. A good, non-toxic team should be able to find effective ways to work collaboratively and with empathy, and to foster good will with each other, even in a remote environment.
Would my feelings differ if I lived 5-minutes from the office? Sure. I appreciate having a second place to work. I'm not blessed with a home office, just a bedroom with a desk, in a noisy household. But I, unfortunately, live a good hour away in a high cost-of-living city and I don't expect that to change any time soon.
Every time I'm in the office I can't get anything done. Not only do I need to fight for one of the hot desks, but everyone is just chatting. Its an open plan office so its noisy as bleep. There are limited meeting rooms which the execs either have constantly booked or have just taken over as their own office. The server/desktop guys have it easy they can hide in the server room or the workshops.
My usual day is 1.5 hour commute in, spend 30 mins fighting for a desk, 15 mins+ setting up (not all of use can just open up a laptop with a browser and Word to start work). Then the numerous cooler breaks, long lunch and finally packing up early to try to beat the rush home means I'm defo not putting in the time I do when I wfh. The execs can't really say anything coz I see them doing the same thing too (apart from squatting in the meeting rooms and taking even longer lunches).
Sweet. "Work to rule" == do what is in your job description.
If my employer wants me to do more, he should ... pay me more, I guess?
If *I* hire somebody, I expect him/her to do what I'm paying for, no more, no less.
It's pretty hilarious to me that employers expect their employees to go above and beyond what they're paid for just ... to earn gratitude, I guess? Which won't pay the bills (and won't keep your ass from getting fired!).
Just my 2 cents.
>” If *I* hire somebody, I expect him/her to do what I'm paying for, no more, no less.”
But what are you paying them for? 40 hours of time or to deliver against targets.
I suspect one of the issues is most office jobs don’t and can;t fully utilise someone for 40 hours, so there is other stuff that gets done between the real job to fill the contracted hours.
I have a job where we currently have the rule minimum 1 day a week in the office. Lunch is free when in the company. Coffee machines are luxurieus.
Most people go for less than every day a week option, but there is a group coming daily as well, but the average comes out around the 50/50 percent, 2 to 3 days a week in the office.
Any new starters are obliged in their first months to be full-time in the office to learn the company, culture, colleagues.
For the company we have some advantages. We can hire people living farther away. Staff is willing to travel longer distance when having to travel less time. We also can reduce on rent of office space, save on travel costs, etc.
Technically, after Covid even the office is setup like working from home. There is a desk and an internet connection, so from that perspective it does not matter.
Every time a job hunter comes knocking with an opportunity, I ask about the options. They push to come at least 4 days a week to the office, and then i end the conversation. If I would be unemployed and it was the only option, I would probably take it. But I have the better option right now.
> Any new starters are obliged in their first months to be full-time in the office to learn the company, culture, colleagues.
I’ve also assigned them a mentor, someone established in the company, who is not their line manager but works in a similar area.
Having also mentored new starters this can be a pain, as you are also expected to be in the office and/or visit the new starter on their first few assignments.
