Posted on 11/29/2022 5:40:50 PM PST by MinorityRepublican
We’re never going back to the office – at least not five days a week.
That’s the contention of Anne Helen Petersen, the author of “Out of Office: Unlocking the Power and Potential of Hybrid Work.”
“You can either try to figure out flex arrangements now or you can battle your employees for the next 5 to 10 years and then pay a consultant a lot of money to help you figure out what you should have started figuring out five to 10 years ago,” she told me in the latest episode of my podcast “Downside Up.”
Petersen believes that the Covid-19 pandemic fundamentally reoriented our relationship with work in ways that companies are only now starting to grasp in full.
“[People] don’t wanna be forced to go back into the office for two days a week and have that not be a time when their coworkers are there. And so they’re just going back into this ghost office and it feels totally arbitrary to be answering emails from an office instead of answering emails from the comfort of your home,” she told me.
Though it feels like the five-day, 40-hour work week has always been with us, it’s actually a relatively new invention.
By 20th century, for example, it was considered normal to work on Saturdays – in addition to the usual five days a week. (The Massachusetts Bay Colony had a 10-hour minimum work day!)
As far back as 1866, Congress considered mandating a 40-hour work week, but the legislation stalled. In 1926, Henry Ford instituted a 40-hour work week for his employees, believing that was the optimal amount of time for someone to work in a week. Congress eventually mandated that employers pay workers overtime if they put in more than 44 hours a week in 1938.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Trump’s fault.
Just some dingbat selling her book.
they must not realize there's this thing called the internet. al gore invented it. it was in all the former papers.
Bingo.
People should work under MBO rules until they require PIP.
Sounds like the world’s most useless book.
Workers need to go to work every weekday. They should also be forced to engage in daily calisthenics and be force-fed broccoli for their own good.
I had read somewhere or other, perhaps from Desmond Morris, that back in caveman days, the average guy ‘worked’ a 20-hour week feeding and caring for family and home. The rest of the time was leisure.
It depends on one’s job and industry, but for me the only people that want employees in the office are middle managers.
Remote work shows how useless micromanaging middle managers are.
Apparently this author is completely unaware that most workers do not have office jobs.
What most employers are finding out is who their least productive employees are.
Don’t forget the Two Minutes of Hate.
Try running an auto plant with the workers phoning it in.
I was born too soon. 64 years of full-time 9-5 work. LOL!
Gonna be hard dismantling cars remotely but I’d like to see someone try
The last office job i had was defense hardware related, and sometimes nothing could beat an in person brainstorming session. There were times when I worked from home, but it was during big pushes when extra hours were need and it was computer design work.
This sound like a one size fits all, which is not how the real world works.
Men and women who work on merchant ships (me at one time) work eight hours a day seven days a week. It is not practical to shut down operations for three days a week when out on the oceans, rivers, or lakes. Although we work those hours, crews rotate off ships-perhaps two months on two months off etc.
Just another academic with no real world experience. But then most college professors work 24/7. 24 hours a week, seven months a year.
Yep. I lost my job because I moved to Florida — away from Commie Maryland and DC — while we worked out of the office due to COVID.
Then the government called us back in. My own company made a case why the team I was on (all contractors) should continue to work remotely, but it didn’t sell. Since I couldn’t do an 1800-mile round trip commute, I had to go.
But it was their circus and their monkeys. I will soon be a tax preparer at H&R Block, ensuring that the same government that got me canned gets less of our money. :-)
With a bunch of office jobs, I don't see why we can't move them to India. At least we won't have to put up with their woke BS.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.