Posted on 07/04/2024 6:27:42 AM PDT by ChicagoConservative27
It seems to be the controversial topic of the ages...only it has worsened since post-pandemic.
It's the great remote work divide...also dubbed "The Great Return" and "The Great Office Return" by others.
Although in theory, remote work has essentially been in existence for decades, it has only become a hot topic of late, and become aggravated even more, with the recent headline-grabbing strides of big-name employers who dared to mandate employees to return to office-based work (affectionately known as RTO)—or risk losing their jobs.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Before I retired my boss was two states away.
Going to the local office accomplished nothing for either of us.
I don’t deny for many jobs, that’s true. Just not for all of them. All it took was spending almost all of my 20s in school, foregoing income and going heavily into debt at the time then working for the next 20+ years to put myself in this position. Others are welcome to go down the same path.
You are perhaps an exception.
And so bravo for you.
But the majority of remote workers are just remote paycheck collectors.
Perhaps if they paid people by the job it would work out better.
Don't care how long you worked, you get paid when the project is done and approved.
Of course then people would scream, and probably with justification, that they not being paid because the company was holding up approval so as not to pay them and companies would scream, and probably with justification, that a project is not "done" unless it is not likely to kill it's users.
Monitoring remote work requires competent managers.
Dumb managers can’t do it.
If the employees are not productive at home that is a clue that the managers in the organization need to be fired.
Yup. Incorrect.
You are perhaps an exception.
Then my entire team of 10 people is an exception.
Too many are logged in but really are AFK.
“Being in the office means listening to LaQuisha and Takwanda squawking on the phone three cubicles away.”
Infuriating. We had a receptionist in our office who jibber-jabbered and clicked in Tagalog. She was on the phone all day with other Filipino/a people, and verbally abusing her poor husband (the “tone” was the tell).
I was technically her supervisor, but when I asked her to speak English when others were around... Oh yeah ... And DO HER JOB ... I got into trouble! She’s protected, don’tcha know.
Working from home would’ve been Heavenly.
The elephant in the room is communication skills. Not yakking on the phone, but the ability to describe an issue in concise, carefully-defined English suitable for print.
To quote a certain world leader: “You know ... the thing.”
Exactly.
I know a dispatcher who works from home covering a rather large area. It works because he works. The line will be answered and what ever service you need will be dispatched.
The person before.... not so much.
I am not against remote work, used to do it myself long before there were even half the stuff there was now to make it easier.
The square root of the people in any office do over half the work. And that is with the boss looking over their shoulder. With the entire office working remotely it is closer to 80% of the work. And that just does not work.
If production of work from home was good there would be no need to change.
Managing remote work is a skill.
If organizations are ready to provide the systems and training for their managers to make it work, they can do so.
Unproductive remote workers is a huge tell that the organization is in disarray.
All this discussion about work from home it really depends how your job is structured.
Not all jobs are structured , so that all you do is sit at a computer screen, and send emails back and forth , and revise documents online, and attend Zoom meetings. Some office jobs are like that, but a lot of jobs actually require you to actually interact with actual human beings in person.
My sample has about 100% correlation with productivity, so I'll have to see your sample.
Yup. Hubby did it for 40 years. Only time he ever worked from home on a daily basis was during the lockdown.
He hated it.
And not just because of the cat.
Perhaps we should put these people all together in one area so one manager can get them off the dime. Like a big building where they all have to sit in the same room so it is easy to see who is working and who is just occasionally nudging their desk while they watch porn.
We could call this place, an office.
Where I worked we had teams with members all over the country.
We physically met once a quarter—in mostly social settings like industry conventions.
We were able to recruit skilled subject matter experts from all over the country for our teams—huge advantage over being limited to a local market.
People can look busy in an office.
If management is unable to measure productivity properly that means nothing.
If management can measure productivity properly then there is no need for the office.
Remote work—in good organizations—forces management to fully understand the work that is needed—and measure it.
If you can do that and people do not notice.... you are not producing anything of value.
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