I completely agree that it it works, and a sober analysis is done, that there are many jobs that could done remotely and a company will benefit from it.
In my particular industry, they had been looking at a partial work from home option about a year before COVID landed, and we were well positioned from technical planning, budgeting, and workflow perspectives to begin and expand it.
It was done because the specialties primarily under consideration COULD do a degree of remote work, and it was being looked at as a recruitment tool and life balance improvement.
The point is, my employer had been looking at it from early on as something that could benefit both the employer and employee, analyzed and implemented it with that in mind, rather than having a figurative gun pointed at their heads by employee demands.
In our case, it was a win-win scenario for all involved and had nothing to do with being forced to do so. But circumstances, workflows and conditions are different not only within our industry, but across industries.
Yep. My company started the partial work-from-home option in 2017. I always worked in the office then unless there was crazy weather, but I managed a team of buyers who asked if they could WFH some days. The work got done, they were always available during work hours for question and such and they dialed in to all required meetings, so it worked out very well.
All of them wanted to WFH on Fridays, so those tended to be quiet and peaceful days for me and I could catch up on “grunt work.”