Posted on 05/22/2021 5:29:23 PM PDT by DoodleBob
As vaccinations and relaxed health guidelines make returning to the office a reality for more companies, there seems to be a disconnect between managers and their workers over remote work.
A good example of this is a recent op-ed written by the CEO of a Washington, D.C., magazine that suggested workers could lose benefits like health care if they insist on continuing to work remotely as the COVID-19 pandemic recedes. The staff reacted by refusing to publish for a day.
While the CEO later apologized, she isn’t alone in appearing to bungle the transition back to the office after over a year in which tens of millions of employees were forced to work from home. A recent survey of full-time corporate or government employees found that two-thirds say their employers either have not communicated a post-pandemic office strategy or have only vaguely done so.
As workforce scholars, we are interested in teasing out how workers are dealing with this situation. Our recent research found that this failure to communicate clearly is hurting morale, culture and retention.
We first began investigating workers’ pandemic experiences in July 2020 as shelter-in-place orders shuttered offices and remote work was widespread. At the time, we wanted to know how workers were using their newfound freedom to potentially work virtually from anywhere.
We analyzed a dataset that a business and technology newsletter attained from surveying its 585,000 active readers. It asked them whether they planned to relocate during the next six months and to share their story about why and where from and to.
After a review, we had just under 3,000 responses, including 1,361 people who were planning to relocate or had recently done so. We systematically coded these responses to understand their motives and, based on distances moved, the degree of ongoing remote-work policy they would likely need.
We found that a segment of these employees would require a full remote-work arrangement based on the distance moved from their office, and another portion would face a longer commute. Woven throughout this was the explicit or implicit expectation of some degree of ongoing remote work among many of the workers who moved during the pandemic.
In other words, many of these workers were moving on the assumption – or promise – that they’d be able to keep working remotely at least some of the time after the pandemic ended. Or they seemed willing to quit if their employer didn’t oblige.
We wanted to see how these expectations were being met as the pandemic started to wind down in March 2021. So we searched online communities in Reddit to see what workers were saying. One forum proved particularly useful. A member asked, “Has your employer made remote work permanent yet or is it still in the air?” and went on to share his own experience. This post generated 101 responses with a good amount of detail on what their respective individual companies were doing.
While this qualitative data is only a small sample that is not necessarily representative of the U.S. population at large, these posts allowed us to delve into a richer understanding of how workers feel, which a simple stat can’t provide.
We found a disconnect between workers and management that starts with but goes beyond the issue of the remote-work policy itself. Broadly speaking, we found three recurring themes in these anonymous posts.
Others have also found that people are taking advantage of pandemic-related remote work to relocate to a city at a distance large enough that it would require partial or full-time remote work after people return to the office.
A recent survey by consulting firm PwC found that almost a quarter of workers were considering or planning to move more than 50 miles from one of their employer’s main offices. The survey also found 12% have already made such a move during the pandemic without getting a new job.
Our early findings suggested some workers would quit their current job rather than give up their new location if required by their employer, and we saw this actually start to occur in March.
One worker planned a move from Phoenix to Tulsa with her fiancé to get a bigger place with cheaper rent after her company went remote. She later had to leave her job for the move, even though “they told me they would allow me to work from home, then said never mind about it.”
Another worker indicated the promise to work remotely was only implicit, but he still had his hopes up when leaders “gassed us up for months saying we’d likely be able to keep working from home and come in occasionally” and then changed their minds and demanded employees return to the office once vaccinated.
Another constant refrain we read in the worker comments was disappointment in their company’s remote-work policy – or lack thereof.
Whether workers said they were staying remote for now, returning to the office or still unsure, we found that nearly a quarter of the people in our sample said their leaders were not giving them meaningful explanations of what was driving the policy. Even worse, the explanations sometimes felt confusing or insulting.
One worker complained that the manager “wanted butts in seats because we couldn’t be trusted to [work from home] even though we’d been doing it since last March,” adding: “I’m giving my notice on Monday.”
Another, whose company issued a two-week timeline for all to return to the office, griped: “Our leadership felt people weren’t as productive at home. While as a company we’ve hit most of our goals for the year. … Makes no sense.”
After a long period of office shutterings, it stands to reason workers would need time to readjust to office life, a point expressed in recent survey results. Employers that quickly flip the switch in calling workers back and do so with poor clarifying rationale risk appearing tone-deaf.
It suggests a lack of trust in productivity at a time when many workers report putting in more effort than ever and being strained by the increased digital intensity of their job – that is, the growing number of online meetings and chats.
And even when companies said they wouldn’t require a return to the office, workers still faulted them for their motives, which many employees described as financially motivated.
“We are going hybrid,” one worker wrote. “I personally don’t think the company is doing it for us. … I think they realized how efficient and how much money they are saving.”
Only a small minority of workers in our sample said their company asked for input on what employees actually want from a future remote work policy. Given that leaders are rightly concerned about company culture, we believe they are missing a key opportunity to engage with workers on the issue and show their policy rationales aren’t only about dollars and cents.
Management gurus such as Peter Drucker and other scholars have found that corporate culture is very important to binding together workers in an organization, especially in times of stress.
A company’s culture is essentially its values and beliefs shared among its members. That’s harder to foster when everyone is working remotely.
That’s likely why corporate human resource executives rank maintaining organizational culture as their top workforce priority for 2021.
But many of the forum posts we reviewed suggested that employer efforts to do that during the pandemic by orchestrating team outings and other get-togethers were actually pushing workers away, and that this type of “culture building” was not welcome.
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One worker’s company “had everyone come into the office for an outdoor luncheon a week ago,” according to a post, adding: “Idiots.”
Surveys have found that what workers want most from management, on the issue of corporate culture, are more remote-work resources, updated policies on flexibility and more communication from leadership.
As another worker put it, “I can tell you, most people really don’t give 2 flips about ‘company culture’ and think it’s BS.”
I agree. I save money on fuel. It saves me time not having to commute. I’ve lost 30 lbs and lowered my blood sugar because I have more time to exercise in the evening. I get more work done.
I would tend to agree with that. And bringing them back to work now is not so much that they don't want to waste their current leases - that's a sunken cost. I think they are doing this to weed out some employees before they go remote for good. So as for those who are threatening to quit if forced back to the office, well, sayonara!
“corporate human resource executives rank maintaining organizational culture as their top workforce priority for 2021.”
The only employers I’ve had that talked about ‘culture’ thought it meant putting up posters about their ‘values.’ Real values and culture are modeled and incentivized.
As a factory maintenance guy I’d have been all for managers working from home.
They’d have been less likely to screw the machines up...
People are also going to start to resent being lectured constantly on woke issues at these so called corporate culture events. I notice the article referenced human resource executives and their priority of maintaining organizational culture. HR managers at most big corporations are usually female and very leftist. In other words, they're the very ones you don't want determining organizational culture. Mandatory fun events where employees are prodded with woke mandates from every direction are going to be counterproductive, they're just going to result in pissed off employees that quickly tire of being lectured to.
I’ve been working remotely from home for the last 12 months. I loved every minute of it. But on June 2 I must go back to my office.
As I read this article I’m not understanding why so many people are getting butt hurt about going back to the office. If everyone wants everything to get back to normal, they have to also accept getting back to a business as usual routine in the office.
Conversely if The Agenda is to push the jab, shaming and discomfort are just what the lords of woke ordered.
“And it is very hard to keep track of hours spent working when at home.”
So what? A properly managed business looks at output not activities.
Yeah that doesnt work on me, guilt shaming and blame shifting is just a form of manipulation. Once you figure ut its done for their benenfit, not yours, it ceases to be effective on you.
Try it its wonderful. Women will have zero power over you, its excellent.
I read about people saving a fortune on day care center costs.
makes sense!
I would rather be in the office. WFM meant there were no boundaries. I work from 6:30AM to 6PM. I take breaks during the day but people expect everyone to work from home when they are home. I missed the whole gas shortage because I never left the house. People called meetings during lunch and after 5.
I moved 30 minutes away but I would have done it anyway. I love the commute on a 4 lane highway through the Appalachian hills. It’s beautiful.
Agreed!
But a good manager would also think up that if I get this amount of production for 4 hours work at “X” cost, how much more production can I get for the same labor cost? Don’t get me wrong, but a manager is supposed to get maximum production from an asset for the least cost. Just as the “asset” wants the highest pay for their efforts. Neither side wants to be worked to death or cheated in modern society. It is bad for the long term bottom line.
Personally, I’m an engineer and I could have worked from home about 15% of the time, after years of mentoring and education. Newer guys, no, Zoom doesn’t get you the “hey”
that won’t work, try this,in a face to face meeting.
I know someone whose bosses were worried about lower productivity when workers worked at home but it increased. Now they are now trying to figure out how to retain the increased productivity while requiring the workers to come in the office.
100%.
It's not how hard you work but how much you get done.
“Real values and culture are modeled and incentivized.”
We will see how quotas by multiple categories work out on the bottom line.
I think the “psychology of an empty office” comes into play here. My old company has an office built out for 150 staff that has maybe 10 people working their on any given day. They’re not pushing anyone else to get back because the employees have all the leverage in that STEM field, but I know the executives just don’t like the impact of a mostly-empty office on employee morale.
My office is reopening but is still mostly requiring masks despite the fact they are no longer required by the State or City. We’re managed by a bunch of Karens.
One guy I know maxed out his political contributions last year with the money he saved in commuting costs by working from home.
Great stuff on this thread!
Some of us have roles that don’t require to be “in the office”.
Between spreadsheets, sales proposals, political ground-breakings, ribbon-cuttings, photo-ops with shyster Mayors, and a speech here and there - I hope I don’t have to show up to the office ever again.
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