Posted on 09/10/2022 6:09:02 PM PDT by MinorityRepublican
Last summer, a Michigan company decided all employees needed to return to their desks five days a week. A year later, the executive who made that call said he has no regrets.
“Not one second did I second-guess this decision. Not for one instance,” said Mat Ishbia, CEO of mortgage lender UWM UWMC 2.47%▲ Holdings Corp. The company employs more than 7,000 people in Pontiac, Mich., a suburb of Detroit. “Without question, it’s been worth it.”
The decision—made before many other companies asked workers to return—came at a cost. Roughly 500 employees quit United Wholesale Mortgage over the policy, Mr. Ishbia said. Those who did typically departed for other jobs six to 12 months after the mandate. Some of those employees indicated in exit interviews they left UWM because they wanted to work more from home, he said.
United Wholesale Mortgage welcomed its employees back in July 2021 with everything from ice cream carts and goody bags to team gatherings. During the pandemic the company added two new buildings, additional massage rooms and shuffleboard courts to a sprawling campus that also includes an arcade room, sand volleyball courts and an on-site hair salon.
Every week, Mr. Ishbia said he sees reminders that in-person work is speeding up decision making and helping employees quickly resolve problems. A technical team working on a new lending product, for example, avoided weeks of unnecessary work, Mr. Ishbia said, by sitting near a product group. The team was able to overhear a problem that needed to be addressed and make an adjustment to plans.
David Yeh, an IT product manager who returned in June 2021, said getting re-acclimated to a five-day-a-week schedule took some time. He now spends time with co-workers at a company sports center.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
Sounds like a sweatshop
In the last year their stock price has gone from 7.04 to 3.60. Big win for the shareholders.
I dunno. Seems like it’s working for them. The stock price going down is no shock; mortgage lending is a horrible business to be in under Biden.
What, they never heard of MS Teams?
.
Companies are obviously free to do what they want.
When my company well full telework, however, productivity went up. They decided it wasn’t such a bad idea after all.
From the article: "A technical team working on a new lending product, for example, avoided weeks of unnecessary work, Mr. Ishbia said, by sitting near a product group. The team was able to overhear a problem that needed to be addressed and make an adjustment to plans."
Yeah, this company is hiring amateurs who were lucky enough to be sitting near another team and overhear conversations. Poor plans, no specs up front, no internal reviews, etc.; sound just like the kind of company that's lost more than half their stock value. They're likely a case study in project management death marches.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_march_(project_management)
I've seen the opposite with remote work. Being geographically separated forces teams to implement real processes with QA/QC steps built into it instead of just half-assing it and running around in circles until something is delivered. We mapped out processes that should have been done two decades ago and implemented real tangible checks and handshakes throughout them. Processes that previously took four to six weeks prior to the remote work starting in 2020 now take three to four days with full visibility of where it could be delayed.
Our company has been divided since we allowed the office workers to go home and “stay safe”. while the warehouse, maintenance and truck drivers had to keep showing up.
Lost a lot of good people who didn’t think they were being treated fairly.
Roughly 500 employees quit United Wholesale Mortgage over the policy, Mr. Ishbia said.
—
Great timing, as non-bank mortgage companies are being wiped out as interest rates rise and refinancing drops off.
Whiney little pansy “knowledge worker” zoomers who fear going to office are free to go work somewhere else or start their own company.
The slackers left of their own free will. Even better
Any CEO who has had employees working from home productively for the last 30 months would be a fool to force them back to the office.
Think of all the costs of leasing and operating tens of thousands of square feet of office space. Now, think of how much money the company saves when employees willingly take on all those costs themselves.
Like I said … any CEO who doesn’t see the pragmatic wisdom of this should be fired.
My employer eliminated work from home July of last year. Too many slackers were taking advantage.
I’ve only done it for the week I was in “quarantine” with Winnie the Flu. I hated it - couldn’t wait to get back to real work.
My daughter just left her employer. Partially overbearing boss,partially because she couldn’t telework.
She’s a book editor. Her job is to manage the publishing process.
She changed to a 100% remote job at another publisher.
Incompetent sociopathic control-freak managers who contribute nothing are free to eat a bag of Richards.
Maybe a ‘three days in the office - two days remote’ compromise would work. Sometimes good ideas come from people bumping into each other - synergy.
The work at home people shouldn’t complain when their jobs are outsourced to cheaper labor in other countries. This will be next step that companies will take.
Or go work for your competitors as a large company I work with found out. They're desperately trying to replace staff but the workload they've been forced to shift on remaining employees (most working remotely again) is contributing to more of them exiting as well.
Entire teams have quit and taken their institutional knowledge with them. The company is offering ridiculous bonuses and salaries to any replacement they might be able to find (even with remote work restored) but those increases in salary and bonuses mean other employees aren't seeing raises, and more of them have quit.
Up until very recently I'd see a ratio where 5 people might be covering for 3 vacancies or 3 people might be covering for 1 vacancy but now I'm seeing 3 people covering for 4 vacancies, and worse, expected to train someone severely inexperienced and under-skilled.
New hire candidates aren't much interested in working in such a dysfunctional environment. The company is screwed because they can't hire enough people all at once to fill the gaps and no newcomers want to be the first to have to pick it all up. They reached out to staffing agencies but the temps wouldn't stick around more than two weeks.
The few hires they have made are people now working waaay above their pay grade and the other coworkers want no part of their incompetence, so it only makes it worse.
One thing that remote work for COVID did was expose who could actually do their jobs and their productivity went way up. It removed all the BS and let them focus on what needed to be done. Forcing them back into the Cabbage Patch isn't the answer.
American workers are quite aware that if their jobs could be outsourced overseas they already would have been decades ago.
People come up with all kinds of excuses not to have to sit in an office. Going to work is only for the little guy
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