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Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

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Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#41

Post by halgir »

nkozyra wrote: post #17
Zetice wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Won’t work? How will these non-workers pay for things? They’ll have no choice but to work.

Depends on the timeline. Things are changing very rapidly. Automation seems to be coming at us at an exponential rate. The expectation that it's going to be business as usual is just as short sighted and archaic with regard going into an office as it is with the idea of work in general.

Oh boy, I'm excited for the massive wealth creation of this exponential growth to trickle down to workers.

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#44

Post by [deleted] »

AvAn12 wrote: post #9

Joel Spolesky has made this very point many times in the past: "Private offices with doors that close were absolutely required and not open to negotiation." I work on a Data Sci team that moved to an open floor plan in 2018. What happened? Anyone who needed to work intensively on a project would work from home instead of in the office.

[deleted]

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#45

Post by rhaway84773 »

harshaw wrote: post #10

I think its fair to say that RTO is not about data, or studies, or about anything really. Leaders across all industries have decided people are coming back. Perhaps there is a secret cabal of commercial office space lenders who are putting pressure as share holders, or some other conspiracy theory. But it's happening - no one can do anything about it (except vote with your feet), and no one is going to get better acc…

> I think its fair to say that RTO is not about data, or studies, or about anything really.

How is this fair to say at all? It may be true, but there’s no evidence that this is the case.

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#46

Post by Veliladon »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #16
1970-01-01 wrote: post #3

At home, the benefits are extreme. Full office, private bath, private bed, private kitchen, garaged parking, asset security, and a 30 second commute. The next wave of office workers will want it better than this, or it simply won't work.

The idea that employers need to give you everything you want is strange. They give you the least they can possibly get away with. Sure - some small subset of employers competing for the best employees will do this. But the average employer? I'm skeptical.

Not only will those employers competing for the best get the best, they'll get it at a discount rate because remote workers are on average willing to accept an 18% pay cut to remain fully remote.

Employees are literally willing to pay employers to stay at home. The middle manager who is awful at their job and so insecure they need to "see employees working" is costing the business not just in talent acquisition but when pulling in the dregs they're paying a premium for it. The center cannot hold.

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#47

Post by tfandango »

enahs-sf wrote: post #15

I’m old enough to remember high wall cubicals.

Me too. I honestly didn't mind it as much as I thought I would. I much preferred it to the open office I ended up in for 15 years. I had some bookshelves, a whiteboard, some semblance of silence.

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#48

Post by slily »

My #1 reason for working remotely today has nothing to do with office layouts or benefits, it's that housing costs in large-city tech hubs are insane. Chances are I'd pay at least twice my mortgage in rent for a crappy apartment if I moved back now.

The open office plan just might be #2 though. ;)

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#49

Post by btilly »

lolinder wrote: post #11

> If you want to watch your employees work, build glass walls. I hope this is dark humor and not meant to be taken seriously. For me, about half the reason I prefer my home office is that I don't feel like I have to look productive. I can get my stuff done in my way, and as long as my boss is happy with the result it doesn't matter if my way "looked" right.

I worked in a company that had meeting rooms with glass walls.

It was great. You could write on the glass like it was a whiteboard. And the knowledge that everyone else could see you were in a meeting was an incentive to only be in meetings when you had a real reason to be.

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#50

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

gedy wrote: post #26

Even with that, no company has paid me enough in 20 years to live near the office that is safe and family friendly. Sorry not sorry. BTW I keep hearing benefits of "RTO" - but I've never worked for a company that only has a single office, so we end up on video calls with other teams and team members anyways even when the company didn't allow WFH.

Even during our one day a month "mandatory" in office day we for some reason still have a teams call set up with people on the line.
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