I agree. I am close to retirement. But I have found that there is no efficient substitute for face to face collaboration.
None.
I appreciate the collaborative tools, the ability to have a video interaction, share screens, all that stuff. It is great.
But working from home makes me less efficient, and I know I am not alone in this. Getting things done takes far longer. Contacting people takes longer. Everything takes longer, and I am not the only one who has noticed this.
As for collaboration, sure, video conferences are useful. But for hammering out things while using a whiteboard in front of a group of people, there is no adequate replacement for both the fluidity of it, and the innate feedback of watching the faces for comprehension or ideas, soliciting feedback, that kind of thing. Whiteboards that can be used in a video conference don’t cut it. I’ve tried variants, and they are insufficient.
The Left has done all they can to destroy American productivity and interaction between individuals via their COVID bullsh*t lockdowns and isolations.
And this destruction of efficiency is going to destroy one of the hallmarks of American industry that made us so wealthy-our Productivity.
They have worked hard to put our productivity on par with the Europeans, and they aren’t close to being done.
And I should say-I was forced to work from home for several months, had all the right equipment to do so effectively, and work at the kind of job where I could work remotely.
Not everyone falls into that category, and I fully recognize that. And I also recognize there are many non-collaborative types of jobs that could be handled completely remotely without much decrease in productivity while increasing the worker satisfaction. I am all for that.
I just think that overall, it is more negative than positive as a whole.
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.
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.