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The damaging results of mandated return to office

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Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#321

Post by suprjami »

deathanatos wrote: post #290
suprjami wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get your employer to buy you an ergo keyboard. If you need a medical certificate then doctor shop until you get one. Then again if your employer doesn't even have monitors at hotdesks then maybe it's time to look for greener pastures.

> Get your employer to buy you an ergo keyboard. … if only it were so simple! Employers are incredibly stingy¹. But what I was trying to convey in the previous comment is that I already have an ergo keyboard. (So do many of my coworkers. It is also mine, purchased with my own money, because of the above.) The point is not really obtaining the keyboard … it's transiting it to-and-fro the office, day-in, day-out, in th…

I mean an ergo keyboard for the office. I'd never carry a keyboard daily.

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#322

Post by marssaxman »

sanderjd wrote: post #295
hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To each their own. That's exactly my point! I find it ridiculous that CEO's think they somehow have to create the same policy for everyone, as if giving people a choice was somehow a taboo. We've come a long way realizing self-organizing teams work better than micromanaged ones etc., I wonder how long it will take PHBs to understand that giving people a choice is not just good for them but it's overly beneficial to…

I agree, but there are very real costs to having teams (at different levels) doing different things. A team with 8 people in-office and 2 people WFH is pretty crappy. The in-office people end up feeling put-upon to have to go out of the way to include the WFH people in things, and the WFH people inevitably end up feeling left out of a lot of things, because they are. At the very lowest level, it works best to have a…

> A team with 8 people in-office and 2 people WFH is pretty crappy.

It doesn't have to be crappy; I spent several years as one of the remote participants in a team like that, and it was one of the high points of my career. We made heavy use of instant messaging, and we met up in person for a week every quarter. People kept in touch well enough.

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#323

Post by MattPalmer1086 »

getmeinrn wrote: post #6

>Employees, having tasted the fruits of flexible work, felt averse to relinquishing these newfound freedoms. Translation for sociopathic leaders: never let your workers taste something good. It only took a global pandemic that forced people home in order for us to experiment with something that a huge portion of the population sees as beneficial to their well-being. Where were the small scale experiments before the p…

I was working at home on and off for many years before the pandemic. It wasn't that unusual. Which is why so many companies could switch over to it fairly easily when the need arose.

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#324

Post by di456 »

ShadowBanThis01 wrote: post #317
di456 wrote: post #87

I am grateful for a remote job. Sometimes being at home for too long I get stir crazy and if I plan my day well I can schedule in time for breaks and walks and feel better. If I had a 45+ minute commute each way again I'd be stir crazy in traffic. No thanks. The hardest part for me is balancing slack and video conferences. Slack can be useful but it's hard to have more nuanced conversations and make complex decisions…

"Any company claiming to be climate friendly and forcing people to commute is hypocritical (cough cough Amazon)." But on the other hand it's Amazon and its ilk that allow people to be at home all the time, not out running errands. Don't get me wrong: I'm no fan of Amazon. But on one hand you have a lot of self-proclaimed car-haters pretending that nobody needs a car, but then wanting to take away the street capacity…

I've started enjoying in-person shopping more lately. It's a way to get out of my WFH bubble and feel that I can get in and out of the stores in about the same time as shopping online with Amazon.

I'd argue that Amazon is benefiting from more people working remotely and is not as much enabling people to be home more. Even without online shopping I'd still prefer remote work.

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#325

Post by najarvg »

ddevault wrote: post #205
querez wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To each their own. I find that WFH makes me incredibly unproductive, I'm glad I'm able to return to to the office. I think there are a lot of factors that affect this (e.g. I have a family with small children at home, and my commute is <15 minutes by bike).

Really done with this take. Show some solidarity for your peers. So you like working from the office -- good for you! Do that! But also stand up for your colleagues who don't want that. When your colleagues have fewer choices, when things like this are imposed on them, well, your preferences are not far behind from being managed themselves.

Well said! I'm a manager that strongly prefers to work from the office but fought hard for my team to WFH if they preferred to do so. So now about 20% of my team comes into the office (by choice) while the others WFH. Was lucky to have a boss that supported this and allowed me to craft our role definitions to support this with the global HR but was filling to fight as long as I could for this..

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#326

Post by davidbanham »

querez wrote: post #196
NKosmatos wrote: post #103

Once you’ve tasted the fruits of WFH and you like the taste, you’ll never go back. It’s like going from a black and white TV to a color one, from a dummy phone to a smartphone, from dialup internet to fiber to the home. You never go the other way round, unless there is a very strong reason and personal decision. People like to improve their lives in whatever way is best for them and will strongly object to a “downgra…

To each their own. I find that WFH makes me incredibly unproductive, I'm glad I'm able to return to to the office. I think there are a lot of factors that affect this (e.g. I have a family with small children at home, and my commute is <15 minutes by bike).

That’s totally legitimate, and working from “the office” is a potential solution. An alternate is to work from “an office”. That doesn’t need to be the right solution for you specifically, but I hope it becomes part of the evoked set in general.

If you or some subset of your workforce has a suboptimal home situation, look at arranging individual coworking spaces. Everyone can shorten their commute by picking whichever space is conveniently located. You also sidestep the challenges of having some team members collocates while others are remote.

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#327

Post by ShadowBanThis01 »

di456 wrote: post #324
ShadowBanThis01 wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Any company claiming to be climate friendly and forcing people to commute is hypocritical (cough cough Amazon)." But on the other hand it's Amazon and its ilk that allow people to be at home all the time, not out running errands. Don't get me wrong: I'm no fan of Amazon. But on one hand you have a lot of self-proclaimed car-haters pretending that nobody needs a car, but then wanting to take away the street capacity…

I've started enjoying in-person shopping more lately. It's a way to get out of my WFH bubble and feel that I can get in and out of the stores in about the same time as shopping online with Amazon. I'd argue that Amazon is benefiting from more people working remotely and is not as much enabling people to be home more. Even without online shopping I'd still prefer remote work.

I frequently prefer in-person shopping too, but inventory control gets ever worse. At this point, I'm shocked if I find anything in stock anywhere... even staple items. I do prefer to support brick-&-mortar businesses, and will pay a bit extra to do so.

"I'd argue that Amazon is benefiting from more people working remotely and is not as much enabling people to be home more"

Not sure what the point is there.

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#328

Post by lo_zamoyski »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #112
simonw wrote: post #2

"Unispace finds that nearly half (42%) of companies that mandated office returns witnessed a higher level of employee attrition than they had anticipated." My guess is that you're also more likely to lose your best performers - since they will have higher confidence in being able to find a remote-friendly job somewhere else.

I’ve noticed companies give special dispensation to their top workers to work however they like. So much for an egalitarian workplace.

Egalitarianism is not a good thing.

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#329

Post by sanderjd »

hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #318
sanderjd wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but there are very real costs to having teams (at different levels) doing different things. A team with 8 people in-office and 2 people WFH is pretty crappy. The in-office people end up feeling put-upon to have to go out of the way to include the WFH people in things, and the WFH people inevitably end up feeling left out of a lot of things, because they are. At the very lowest level, it works best to have a…

While I agree, it all depends on the methods of communication. In a more or less standard scenario, with a daily sync with video and then async like Slack, it doesn't matter that much who's in the office. I tend to message my colleagues on Slack even if they are sitting next to me, for the same reason that public channels are recommended over private ones - nobody is excluded and it's easy to find information that wo…

> with a daily sync with video and then async like Slack, it doesn't matter that much who's in the office

Unfortunately I think this is kind of a cope the remote people on the team use to feel ok about it (I've been that person quite a bit). But the people having coffee and lunch together more regularly just do form closer bonds and that matters. I don't think it matters as much as a lot of executives want everyone to believe it does, and I think remote work has giant benefits that aren't obviously or always or even usually overcome by "face time", but it's not not a real thing.

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#330

Post by di456 »

ShadowBanThis01 wrote: post #327
di456 wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've started enjoying in-person shopping more lately. It's a way to get out of my WFH bubble and feel that I can get in and out of the stores in about the same time as shopping online with Amazon. I'd argue that Amazon is benefiting from more people working remotely and is not as much enabling people to be home more. Even without online shopping I'd still prefer remote work.

I frequently prefer in-person shopping too, but inventory control gets ever worse. At this point, I'm shocked if I find anything in stock anywhere... even staple items. I do prefer to support brick-&-mortar businesses, and will pay a bit extra to do so. "I'd argue that Amazon is benefiting from more people working remotely and is not as much enabling people to be home more" Not sure what the point is there.

> Not sure what the point is there.

> it's Amazon and its ilk that allow people to be at home all the time, not out running errands.

I was addressing that line

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