Posted on 05/22/2021 5:29:23 PM PDT by DoodleBob
Bingo!
I told my boss that with only 4 years left until retirement, and my two only goals are to take great care of the client and minimize how much bullshit company admin crap I do.
I've been going in there once or twice every week for the past year and it's more than a little odd walking through that space with only a handful of others. Close to half of the employees have never even seen the office. Yet they have somehow acquired photos of it to use as their background on ZOOM meetings.
I get a kick out of calling them out when I'm actually in the office. I'll grab my laptop and walk into their office live and wave at them as they show the phony-baloney backgrounds of the office they are pretending to be in.
“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?”
A good manager knows that output is not necessarily proportional to hours spent warming a chair - and that by mindlessly pushing for more of the latter you may get less of the former.
No it’s not hard to keep track of hrs worked working from home, still have same clocking in and out procedures
“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.”
LOL! The pointy-haired boss is not fictional.
LOL. And I’m my own boss — and I did two things once the COVID fiasco began that have paid great dividends: (1) I relocated my home to another state (that had nothing to do with COVID; I was going to do it anyway); and (2) I am relocating my business into my home and keeping a virtual office in my original state.
I have been at my office the whole time, as have most of the bosses and staff. My company is small and never closed. We all have traditional offices or are sufficiently distanced from each other so whatever social distancing mandates went into place were observed without changing a thing. A few people worked remotely for a few months and then trickled back in last year. Some of that was caused by child care issues that had to get worked out.
P.S. — Anyone who has one of those fake backgrounds in Zoom comes across as a moron to me. LOL. One of my close friends who is self-employee and works out of his home has the most impressive setup I’ve seen. He doesn’t need a fake background because his home office looks like something I’d see in a modern suburban office building.
HR doesn’t do any productive work, for the most part.
Not real sure what they do besides insurance and compliance issues. No workplace, less need for most of them.
I read somewhere on FR (the actual words escape me so I'm putting this in my own language) that posters often mistake their job as being that of a orchestra conductor when it's actually that of a jazz musician. The best threads are the ones where the jazz cat starts the tune but backs off and watches things take off, while the conductors kill the spontaneity and thus the dialogue.
Ironically, many "conservatives" want to micromanage "their" thread like a central planner....or, like a manager demanding that remote workers log hours.
People should be happy to do that and finally go back to interacting with coworkers. No, interacting with coworkers is a large risk. You can be accused of anything and have no recourse. How the hell do you figure out someone's pronoun?
Your opportunities for promotion will be greater if you work in an office vs work from home. Things have changed since you started your office work 40 years ago. Your best chance of promotion today is a promotion to a different company, especially if you have something "in your file" from a mentally ill coworker with a grudge. (see risks comment above)
The other thing going on is that businesses will look for opportunities to cut benefits and costs. They know Biden will increase their taxes. So rough sledding ahead. Workers will be lucky to have a job. ...and those who can work remotely from a lower cost of living area, who don't require an office, and can never cost the company legal fees from a workplace "human resources" lawsuit will have a HUGE advantage over someone currently in the office.
Any job the bosses could have sent overseas, they already have years ago. The jobs that are still here are the ones that require people who actually know what they're doing.
Great replies here.
” The best threads are the ones where the jazz cat starts the tune but backs off and watches things take off, “
Well, yeah, OK,
But it’s a great thread.
Or threatened with termination.
That’s not the deciding factor in whether or not your job gets outsourced, it’s the nature of the work itself that matters. If the work you do is essentially a commodity, like writing computer code, then you should be worried no matter where your physical work location is. If, on the other hand, you do professional work that relies upon your unique expertise, knowledge, and judgment, then you’re far less likely to face outsourcing, again no matter where you work physically.
I respectfully disagree...and no I'm not in HR.
Over many years I've seen HR's "behind the scene" activities and have come to have great respect for them. You know that high-performing sales guy who's been looking down secretary's shirts for a while? They found a way to can his butt without severance AND without a lawsuit AND without the secretary quitting or suing the firm. They are the ones who successfully ease out despicable employees. They perform due diligence on prospects and find out (somehow) that the guy you want to hire is actually a narcissist with a wake of carnage behind him.
Don't f with HR. They're not all bad and they're kind of more frightening than the legal dept.
And that is the reason why we are all going back to the office. Your company is a lot like my company. Recently invested hundreds of millions of dollars into office space for employees. My company actually built a campus with a food court, a gym, Starbucks and etc.
What are they going to do with this multi million dollar investment?
See the last sentence in Item #2. Every one of these companies is going to send most of these employees back to work from home when their current leases expire.
I really haven’t worked for pay from home for over a decade. I still have an office at home with a desk and computers, two phones, 2 routers/modems and a printer w/a lap top computer to drive that printer. I do our genealogy and stuff for our church and family.
A couple of weeks ago, I got phone calls from my latest internet/phone provider. I don’t need anything else from them. However, discussions with their reps were interesting.
None of their corporate contact people/reps are working from their corporate offices. They are working from homes all over America like us, their customers. Their corporation is saving huge money even with some empty office spaces where they are still paying rent, re minimal upkeep, janitorial and security now versus a year of so ago.
As a manager, I’ve come to appreciate the HR department. I’m sure they’ve kept me out of court a number of times over the years!
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