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

washingtonpost.com

321–330 of 838 posts

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

#321
I couldn't care less about having a private office at work... That would even ruin any benefit of actually being there in person (e.g. spontaneously talk to a coworker, pick up knowledge from listening to coworkers talking about some problem...).

What would help is paid commute time (or at least reimburse my commute costs), and paid lunch. Literally going to the office costs me 20-30$ per day, which is almost 10% of the salary I earn that day.

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

#322

People who like WFH will never want to return to the office unless perhaps the office is a 5 minute walk from home (they may be forced to, but they won't want to). For many people the time and cost savings of avoiding a daily commute cannot be offset by a nicer office. Those who are happy to return to the office in general are those who do not like WFH and prefer more contacts and a change of scenery. A nicer office…

I'm not required to return to the office. Despite having a whole floor rented for us, I rarely go in. It's only 20 min via public transport so time is not a big deal for me. That minimal movement would be even healthy. My main issue is the dining in the area. Mostly office blocks and all options are rather poor in quality. Ordering is also something I don't want because I'm too cheap to pay the premium price.

So yeah, it's almost 6PM, I'm at home and starving still because I was lazy to cook.

I think the reason is my team is fully remote for me. Not having to worry about food would be nice :)

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

#323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yep, i don't care if they give me an entire palace. unless it's attached to my home, i am not going there. if my job requires me to be at the office, i will say "no" and then get another job.

> unless it's attached to my home, i am not going there Why on Earth would you accept an office attached to your home?! Seems like the worst of all options...

[deleted]

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

#324
post #219

Prior to COVID, I had made a reputation for myself as being quite difficult when it comes to Office space. Mostly this was because I felt that I wasn't as effective working in the Open Office. I was told time-and-time again how the open office is the standard, I figured the problem was me and looked inwardly at solutions (some of which I documented on my blog). I later discovered I had many markers of ADHD, meaning t…

For what it's worth, I discovered a baseball cap to block the obnoxious overhead lights and some Sony noise-canceling headphones were a godsend for focus.

Baseball cap is a good idea, I wrote on my blog that ANC headphones are not a panacea as they are known to cause fatigue.

Options where basically: Imagine that you have an office that surrounds you, try to feel like you really own your space. -- Also you can shift your working hours slightly so that there are fewer people around. (I recommended going early since there is a perception among managers that "early bird gets the worm" vs "oh he has to stay late because he didn't finish up everything").

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

#326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Epic Systems did as of 5 years ago

Epic systems basically has a company town set up. I don't think you ever really leave work when you work for epic.

Not to mention they've taken to straight up lying on their job descriptions saying they're based in Chicago while having "required to relocate to Madison" in fine print at the end of the ad.

Yucky company.

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

#327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>My vaguely populist take is that the pandemic, WFH/remote and hybrid gave the mass white collar class a taste of what the C-suite has had for years.. flexibility. Exactly. I've been working 100% from home since 2017 (3 years before covid). I'd rather take a 50% paycut than go back to the office. Don't get me wrong. I did enjoy my life when I lived 15 min walk /5 min on a bike, from my job in a city. Before I got tha…

" I'd rather take a 50% paycut than go back to the office." People should stop saying this. Otherwise it will soon be the standard to take a serious paycut for WFH. .

If they previously worked in some expensive city like San Fransisco and had in writing that their work from home arrangement was permanent they could move to a forest somewhere with negligible housing costs and still come out ahead.

Although most people don't work in San Francisco with inflated salaries so I'd still rather not make this the norm.

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

#328
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If all of this results in an office layout revolution that includes many individual offices opening into shared team spaces, I am 100% here for it.

It won't. The push for open-plan spaces was motivated by cost-cutting. Layouts with many closed offices would cost far more to build, and take up more square footage to host the same number of employees. At a time where savvy businesses have dropped their commercial leases / gone full remote, and the more conservative / less accepting of change ones are left holding the bag, I would not expect anyone to make big inve…

The one counter is that commercial real estate is way cheaper than it used to be. The potential savings of putting everyone in a full open floor plan aren't as high as they used to be.

(Still don't think it will happen - but that shift occurred when leases on commercial real estate were at all time high)

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

#329

People who like WFH will never want to return to the office unless perhaps the office is a 5 minute walk from home (they may be forced to, but they won't want to). For many people the time and cost savings of avoiding a daily commute cannot be offset by a nicer office. Those who are happy to return to the office in general are those who do not like WFH and prefer more contacts and a change of scenery. A nicer office…

For me a nicer office would change my mind and I have worked in that office before. Allow me to reminisce:

Was working in DC on Capitol Hill. Had a 30 minute bike ride to work right down the center of the national mall. Had a private office half the size of my apartment with a really comfy couch and a few well worn armchairs. Coworkers brought their dogs and one liked to sit on my feet under the desk. Office was chock full of interesting people, activists, authors, photographers, lawmakers wealthy folks, connected folks. After a few hours working on the databases and maybe getting roped into some tech support in the Capitol building, the CEO would grab a beer from the keg which was the signal for the rest of us that the afternoon had become wet. Then I would meet up with friends for some kickball on the Mall, then swing back through the office after a few hours at the bar for a nightcap. Very occasionally I slept over on the couch but there was a shower in the office and I kept a few changes of clothes there so it was all good.

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

#330
post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that a bad thing? Since we started WFH, I’ve heard a lot of stories of oncalls spending an hour on things that could have been handled in 5 seconds if the right person had gotten sucked in on the way back from coffee. “Oh, I recognize this bug from two years ago, here’s what you gotta do.” “That customer’s symptoms are impossible, ask for more details on how they’re doing suchandsuch because they must be leaving s…

Well, yes, until the stuff which has to be delivered by the people sucked in to do support stuff starts lagging and missing deadlines. Then, suddenly, lots of people start being really unhappy (usually at the expenses of the people who were helping). If the oncalls don't have the knowledge to solve the issues they encounter, they need to escalate them and somebody needs to put more time in developing a more comprehen…

Yes. Management wants to be all about the metrics & KPIs, but then throw in this "open office plan / RTO is needed for collaboration" fuzziness on top.

If you want to be metric driven, it's important that the processes be allowed to fail. Otherwise you are robbing Peter to pay Paul, and the KPI that looks BAD is not where the process is failing necessarily, but where the time got stolen from.

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