I would be happy with a desk even.
I've worked not even with a decent chair.
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
#62Nope. My previous employer tried this in ~2021 with the intention of demanding a full RTO as soon as they possibly could after decades of being a cubicle farm. I immediately left for a company that adapted to remote-first and never looked back
My commute time has turned into workout and cooking time, (as expected I'm in the best shape of my life,) my only coworker is my spouse and best friend, I get to live closer to my family than ever before in a quiet, LCOL town, and the impact on my career and for the company has never been greater
You'll have to do a LOT better than my own closet to convince me that wasting my time commuting every day, from a place I don't want to live, to spend time in close proximity to people I might not care for would be a better proposition than the one I have now
Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office
#63Joel 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.
Alternatively come in early or stay late. Joel did get it right. Open spaces are fine for light tasks but a huge drain on deep thinking.
Don't even suggest that. Someone might see this.
Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office
#64I 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…
My theory is that RTO is a way to reduce headcount without having proper layoffs and severance.
Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office
#65At 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.
I don't think that it needs to be better than home. However, offices have been actively unpleasant places that are difficult to work in for a very, very long time. Now that everyone is reminded (or made aware, for younger workers) of that, people rightfully expect better. That much really does need to change.
Everyone getting an office with a door -- even a small one -- would go a long way toward making the office a good place to work.
Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office
#66People need to stop trying to make things return to the original office model.
Employees have realised we are equally as effective working from home and simply do not want to waste 2+ UNPAID hours of every day travelling to a corporate building for the sake of it.
Nor do people want to spend £10+ a day on food and drinks which they have in their fridge, at home.
Then there is also the social pressure of having to go for after work socials at the local boozer/cafe/restaurant, or be seen as the person who never joins the team for social stuff.
There are so many benefits to working from home which reach beyond personal and into society/the environment but very few benefits to going into an office. The one reason which supporters of the original office model tout is ‘collaboration’ but I call BS.
With today’s tech we can literally be collaborating in real-time with people from any corner of the planet from the comfort of our home office. How would that change in office?
Then you have the whole “oh, but, learning” as if it is simply impossible to part with knowledge via any medium other than a coworker’s breath hitting another’s eardrum.
Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office
#67Nah, I had a personal office and still quit in order to leave the Bay Area because commuting >30 minutes to mostly work with people in offices hours away when I don't love where I am doesn't make sense. Middle management at large companies spent years building distributed teams without the executives noticing, and now they're learning about it too late. Having hour long commutes to sit on video calls all day in one of the most expensive real estate markets in the country isn't a life.
Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office
#68Honestly, I'd even take a cube farm. I've only ever worked at tech companies with fully open offices, or, at best, some cubicle walls up around groups of 10-15 desks.
When I worked for eBay they had a hexagonal version of a cube farm.
I thought it was brilliant. Pack more people into a space, and make your distance to your nearest neighbor farther. Plus you naturally had a comfortable place to sit, 2 filing cabinets, and 2 spots for bookshelf, whiteboard, or whatever. And a lot more desk space than you'd expect.
I was always puzzled that nobody else ever tried that design.
Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office
#69People 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…
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.
Sure, these guys might go into the office but they do so from their pied-a-terre / 3rd home / whatever within a 5 minute chauffeured drive. They do this while maintaining a nearby suburban/exurban estate and maybe a lake/beach/ski houses where they spend the majority of their actual hours.
I was listening to a podcast and they observed that US commuters might have had a boiled frog scenario where you slowly just get used to having a worse & worse commute as you age.. and COVID snapped everyone out of it cold turkey. Now attempting to go back to it is revolting for many.
Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office
#70I'm not going to endure an hour's commute and all the expense involved with that to just sit in another box where communication will just marginally improve.
Does it even improve marginally?
I can see this being highly variable for the type of position / work. As a software developer the ability to schedule face time and use messenging for low-priority is way more productive than an unexpected door-knock that demands an immediate response.
Apart from that, I was going to comment saying the exact same thing. Not having a commute is non-negotiable for me. That said, I have been working from home long before the pandemic, and for the one year out of 20 that I worked in office (was a once in a lifetime job opportunity) I rented a condo across the street from the office. Life is way too short to waste 1 - 2 hours per day driving. I also finding driving to be one of the most stressful activities in life. Not because I don't enjoy driving itself, but because of traffic and having to share the road. In other words, I am positive that working from home is literally adding years to my life due to drastically reduced stress levels in addition to having more time to actually enjoy life.
So no, I will never accept a position where I need to commute for work regularly unless it is temporary and a very special circumstance.