Thanks to ShadowAce for the ping!
Posted on 08/29/2024 11:24:08 AM PDT by ShadowAce
I am retired—but before I retired there were some departments that were all in the office and others that were all work at home.
My company probably cheated—but they had the smartest and best managers managing the work at home employees—and productivity was great.
That is probably why I view it as a supervisory/management issue.
Managers need to get smarter and then they can handle it.
Why? lol. I manage a Toyota parts dept. I was “essential” I didnt miss a day through covid. Folks had their choice to work from home or not during the shut down.... I could not force them. I had folks that worked in person and those that didnt. The amount and quality of work done in house is unquestionably better...period.
Most of the people I worked with did not have jobs that could be done from home - they had to be in the labs and facilities. Only a few of us could telework.
I retired before I would have had to go back into the office; but I probably wouldn’t have minded. Still, I know I was personally more productive working from home. And telework didn’t change much anyway - I had always received most requests and orders by phone or email anyway.
If you have a good staff, simply flipping a switch and changing the current status-quo can hurt your organization it a few different ways, so that desire to get where you want to be probably would be better achieved by a slow approach that encourages them back to the office, at least those who are amenable to this “change”. Then, for the holdouts, you have to be careful how to deal with those situations in order not to either lose your talent, or alienate those who have come back to the office and wonder why everyone isn't back.
Sounds like you have already covered this ground to me.
I am more productive when I hire three people from a third world country to do my work when I am allowed to work from home.
I worked for a top United States corporation. We had a huge outdoor campus in California with large grassy areas in between the buildings.
The company built a basketball court, two beach volleyball courts, an exercise track that ran the entire perimeter of the grounds, and we even had a lunchtime croquet club that played twice a week!
And this was in the 1980s!
The company was also very dynastic; we had parents and children work there, brothers and sisters, people paired up and got married, and worked their whole careers there.
I'm not talking about a family business, either. This was a Fortune 15 corporation. Stock plans, 401(k), pensions, all of it. Health club, too.
All in all, a great place to work.
-PJ
As an IT person, whose responsibilities are primarily to maintain the company’s presence in a data center many miles away from the “office”, working from home is essentially the same as working from the office, with one important exception: I don’t lose 2 hours every day preparing, traveling, parking, and then traveling back home later. So I’m more inclined to work past the required 8 hours and my company benefits. In addition, I can assist my disabled wife, otherwise I’d have to hire outside help at cost and hassle. I’m all for it.
Thanks to ShadowAce for the ping!
What are they actually producing that cannot be out sourced?
I predict the "Work from Home" crew will be the first layer of business crushed by Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Industrial production will be the second layer.
It can work for people who are only paid based on how much they buy and sell. Therefore, you can quantitatively determine the result. Kind of like people who get paid on piece work. Basically, if you are not self motivated, it does not work.
I have a ton of credibility with this group because the other board members remember that I was also the ONE board member who was adamantly opposed to the lockdowns and the “temporary” WFH arrangement back in 2020 — because I warned everyone that it would not be temporary.
The most likely scenario will be that the company will eventually migrate back to a full on-site operation over the course of 5-10 years … and it will be done through attrition as the holdouts move on or retire.
Again, nobody has ever suggested that every job can be done remotely. And working remotely isn’t ‘phoning it in’ unless one is a total slacker and would be so at home OR in the office.
When the Covid pandemic hit, and my organization was given the option to work from home, of course almost everyone hopped on the bandwagon, myself included. My situation was unique, however, in that I lived only 1.5 miles from the office, and if it wasn't for a fence being in the way (I worked at a military base), I could literally see my home from my office. I can still can!
What I did was that I went into the office every morning Mon-Thur for 2-3 hours, sometimes 4. I would then go home for the rest of the day. I had my IT set up at work of course, but I had an almost duplicate set up at home using some of my own gear. I could go home, log in, and continue working. It was great, and all my supervisor required of me wasa 8 hours in the office each week. He knew I would get the job done, and if that meant going back to the office I would. There are just some things you can't do remotely and I liked to actually talk to folks in person if possible.
When I contracted Covid, then developed Long Covid, that ability was even more useful because I had to spend more time at home because I didn't have the strength to work as I did before. Again, my supervisor was confident that I would get the job done no matter what time of the day or night I did it. I'm not bragging or boasting, just speaking fact. To this day they all wish I would come back to work. LOL
My point in all, is that people are committed to doing their job well, and not treat it as a "9-5" job that they really didn't like doing, then those kind of folks can be counted upon to do their work and do it well. The ones that don't, well, I feel those are the ones who could be squawking about coming back into the office.
Again, from experience, I saw many who abused the privilege of working from home. They instead were doing anything but working. I know of someone who worked on his rental properties instead of performing his duties as he was supposed to.
So, again, that's my two cents.
The "Lumberghs" of the world are pissed.
-PJ
That's it!
These companies need to tell their prospective employees that the work place is a great place to socialize and meet girlfriends, wives and others to have affairs with! And on their job ads, they can post pics of women in bikinis!
You better believe it!
You bet, it makes commuting 2 hours per day dead time, and $20,000 per year for the whole commuting thing, worth it!
Throw in a ping pong table in the breakroom and no one will ever want to go back home.
Work from home works out for some private sector jobs and companies where the techie or programmer works from home. Where there is discipline and accountability for your productivity.
HOWEVER, in most levels of Government (county, state, Federal) work from home is 70-100% scam/ Where there is little work done/ From what I can tell, Federal “workers” in Washington DC and the greater DC region are the biggest scammers. They sit on arse in DC suburbs most of the time, and get outrageous pay and pensions. Make useless Zoom meetings. Fire up their home printer occasionally, make a few phone calls, get Thai or Mexican takeout for lunch. Read and respond to some useless emails, too.
One excuse is that reporting to work in a Washington, DC Federal office building is too dangerous. Because commuting (from Virginia, for example) via the Washington DC Metro system is too dangerous. The shirkers do have a valid point there.
-PJ
The problem with WFH, as far as I can tell, is for every story of enhanced productivity, there seem to be two of people slacking off, faking work, even doing business with adversarial countries from home. If that is really the case, then WFH overall is a failure.
I say that as somebody who does WFH, so that is a sad thing to contemplate.
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