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Enough, Bosses Say: This Fall, It Really Is Time to Get Back to the Office*; After more than two years, corporate leaders say time is up on avoiding in-person work.
Wall Street Journal ^ | September 3, 2022 | Chip Cutter, Katherine Bindley

Posted on 09/03/2022 6:17:41 AM PDT by DoodleBob

Labor Day marks the line in the corporate sand.

Many company leaders say the end-of-summer holiday represents the best chance to finally lean on workers to return to the office this year.

After months of encouraging white-collar employees to return, or attempting to coax them back with free pizza, warm cookies and catered lunches, many executives now say they feel emboldened to take a tougher stance. No longer can workers merely come to the office if they so choose; this fall, executives say, attendance is expected and the office resisters will be put on notice.

...

...After Spotify offered most employees a choice on their work setup, about 60% chose to work from an office a majority of the time, while roughly 40% decided to remain largely at home.

“Psychology comes into play on this,” Ms. Berg said. “Nobody is telling me that I need to come in. It’s just my choice. And I think that is very important for you as a human being, too. I’m smart; I know how I want to do my job, when I want to do my job.”

She added: “If you recruit grown-ups and then you treat them as kids, it’s going to backfire.”

...

Some hiring managers say they have been able to attract talent by telling prospective candidates they can work from anywhere. But the number of remote jobs has started to fall, even as demand for remote roles remains high. Around 17% of paid job postings in the U.S. on the professional-networking site LinkedIn offered remote work in July of this year, down from a high of around 20% in March. In July, paid remote jobs attracted the majority of applications, at around 54%.

(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Society
KEYWORDS: backtooffice; covid; labor; remotework
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To: ealgeone

Face to face collaborations are important and so are chance encounters that generate new ideas and cross-pollinate thinking in the work place. On the other hand more in office time means more time for the useless bureaucrats to load up the schedule with more useless meetings about garbage stuff. There is no positive benefit from in person attendance at DEI or CRT training.

The real enemy is the modern science of “managerialism.”


61 posted on 09/03/2022 7:34:16 AM PDT by AndyJackson
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To: EEGator

As long as it’s a job seekers market, maybe.

But the pendulum always swings back.


62 posted on 09/03/2022 7:35:22 AM PDT by skeeter
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To: DoodleBob

Most of the people I work with are not in the office I used to work in. They’re in Europe and Asia. There is zero reason for me to be in the office on a daily basis anymore, therefore I’ve sold my house in Silicon Valley and am house-hunting out of state.


63 posted on 09/03/2022 7:35:41 AM PDT by AnotherUnixGeek
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To: rlmorel
I disagree with the need to be in the office. The team I'm on is spread out over 15 states. You couldn't get us to the office for a simple meeting.

With video chat I can be in touch with anyone in the company no matter where they are.

I get things done in the same amount of time. In some cases faster. If it's a huge data run I can start it at night and it's ready for me in the morning.

WITO only works if the entire team is in one location.

But then there's the wasted time in commuting.

WFH is the only good thing to come out of the pandemic.

It's been a game changer in the white collar world....almost as big as business casual.

64 posted on 09/03/2022 7:37:15 AM PDT by ealgeone
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To: AnotherUnixGeek

That’s a huge raise.


65 posted on 09/03/2022 7:37:52 AM PDT by EEGator
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To: TheWriterTX
I work better, for sure, and I find I take way less PTO. I just had to schedule just over two weeks or I was going to lose it.

All my sick time (which does roll over) sans maybe one day rolls over.

66 posted on 09/03/2022 7:40:30 AM PDT by riri (There can be no unity with the wicked, their servants, or their slaves.-Vox Day)
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To: DoodleBob

I get more done at home. Too many people chatting and other distractions at an office. We went remote because a tornado destroyed our building and corporate didn’t want to get a new building. So been doing it long before covid.


67 posted on 09/03/2022 7:41:12 AM PDT by pas
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To: CodeToad

Because they are finding out how useless most layers of management really are?


68 posted on 09/03/2022 7:42:25 AM PDT by pas
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To: DoodleBob

There’s only one reason I can think of for the efficacy of bosses calling people back into the office to deal with knuckleheads, risk sexual harassment complaints, etc. and that is, some of the remote workers have actually been farming out their jobs to foreign actors, including Red Chinese nationals.

So in other words, the BUMS are the reason we’re all going to be forced to endure or go on welfare.


69 posted on 09/03/2022 7:42:46 AM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks (FBI out of Florida!)
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To: ealgeone
Those execs who want their people back in the office are the control freaks with the egos that have to be stroked.

Or they have lease agreements to honor. They're paying a bunch for office space and it's not being used.

70 posted on 09/03/2022 7:44:33 AM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks (FBI out of Florida!)
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks

“ome of the remote workers have actually been farming out their jobs to foreign actors, including Red Chinese nationals.”

I guess companies hate the competition?


71 posted on 09/03/2022 7:44:53 AM PDT by CodeToad (No Arm up! They have!)
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To: poinq

I’m currently between jobs, but in my next job, I would not have a problem spending up to a few months in the office for starters, wherever in the country the company might be, and then coming in from time to time. It’s actually unfair, IMO, not to give the other people a chance to meet you face to face and get you up to speed, while you get the lay of the land, as they say. As long as in the end, I’m ultimately working from my house in Pensacola.


72 posted on 09/03/2022 7:48:58 AM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks (FBI out of Florida!)
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To: ealgeone
Those execs who want their people back in the office are the control freaks with the egos that have to be stroked.

I’ve been saying for months that there is no damn good reason why a company that has been operating efficiently for the last two and a half years with its staff working from home needs them to come back to the office.

I suspect most of the executives pushing this now are those who are spending enormous sums of money on office space and simply do t want to be seen as wasting it.

73 posted on 09/03/2022 7:54:00 AM PDT by Alberta's Child ("It's midnight in Manhattan. This is no time to get cute; it's a mad dog's promenade.")
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To: cyclotic

People leave bad bosses, not bad companies.


74 posted on 09/03/2022 7:54:28 AM PDT by RinaseaofDs
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To: DoodleBob

Pointy hairs can work from home.

Folks who actually make things, grow things, deliver things, fix things have been going in all along.

For them WFH was never an option.

And I don’t know any who whined about it.

Here’s a thought: If your boss tells you to come in, get your butt in.


75 posted on 09/03/2022 7:56:08 AM PDT by mewzilla (We need to repeal RCV wherever it's in use and go back to dumb voting machines.)
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To: teevolt
Firing should be more efficient with work at home. Just cut them off, no desk clean out or anything like that.

That's pretty much what happened to me in late July. All I had to do was to send my CAC card back to my boss via certified mail and the work lap top back to Maryland via UPS. No cleaning of any desks necessary.

76 posted on 09/03/2022 7:57:39 AM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks (FBI out of Florida!)
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To: RinaseaofDs

That was absolutely her case.


77 posted on 09/03/2022 7:58:25 AM PDT by cyclotic (Follow 1776Restorationmovement.com fighting for our Constitution. @1776RM on Truth)
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To: cgbg

I work for a company that has no office. Everyone works remote. I deal with sales people and customers via phone/text all day. The downside is my phone is going off at 7am and 9 pm sometimes. But it still beats going into an office.


78 posted on 09/03/2022 7:58:43 AM PDT by sheana
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To: rlmorel

I must have been in one of the few jobs in which my performance stayed the same or actually improved while working from home. Of course, the job I was one wasn’t really a “teamwork” job with a bunch of people working at the same time. It was rotating shift work, and we all did it well. Towards the end, I was down here in Pensacola, doing my shifts across a time zone difference - job was based in Maryland - and attending meetings, etc. across that same one-hour difference.

I’m guessing the people in your line of work who really need the office — and I’m not saying that’s unimportant — are younger folks, given the deterioration of our education system and society in general.


79 posted on 09/03/2022 8:02:06 AM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks (FBI out of Florida!)
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To: EC Washington
If the warehouse and docks are open - ALL employees need to be at work.

Your relationship with your employer is between you and your employer, and nobody else.

If your employer can land a stellar marketing employee that can boost sales, let's hope he's not hung up on a grammar school attitude by his forklift driver who insists that all of the marketing team has to be in the office "because he has to". Fortunately, the employer is usually smart enough to know where his compensation comes from.

80 posted on 09/03/2022 8:02:09 AM PDT by Captain Walker ("Evil people always support each other; that is their chief strength." - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn)
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