“I think flexibility is here to stay,” she said.
This is the problem with academics. They do a study, find something is logically better, then assume humans will act logically.
Unfortunately, most CEOs don’t give a shit if their employees are more happy, productive, and less likely to quit if they work remotely. They just want to feel like they have control over people’s lives, which is why we’re seeing more return to office initiatives.
It’s like the study itself became an expert in the obvious.
Here’s the actual study if anyone cares to read it.
Skimming it, a couple things I noticed: This was a study of over 7,000 people across all departments at a large healthcare system. They found on-site workers skewed younger with shorter tenure and remote workers skewed older with longer tenure.
One potential pitfall: They didn’t control in any way for department or role, and so floor nurses and housekeeping staff who must work fully on-site are being compared to tenured nurses working utilization review or revenue cycle staff whose job is billing/coding and who don’t have to interact with anyone in their roles. In-person and remote jobs in healthcare tend to be very different jobs. I don’t know how well this study could be generalized to other types of job settings based on this info
That domain is “Frontiers In”, but it would be so much cooler if it were “Frontier Sin”. I want to stay apprised of all the latest developments in crimes against morality
I can’t believe how much more I get done when I’m left alone and focused on the task at hand.
I don’t feel particularly isolated. Everybody is different but a once-week team chat and seasonal social lunches fill my cup.
Turns out when you can do errands and meet non-work friends for coffee as you please you don’t need to lean on your office family so much for connection and purpose.
Yeah not a problem at all for many. The ineffective remote workers are the same ones ineffective in the office, the ones on 15-minute side chats in the cube rows (loud of course) every hour. Great collaboration on the latest sportsball match, glad we were able to bring that back.
We actually have the recommendation too: oif you need to do something like sign for a package, let a contractor in for an hour to fix something, etc, then use a vacation day (with 2 weeks prior notice, of course). The flexibility goes both ways though, “can you do this quick thing Wednesday night”?now gets escalated to find approval for after hours work. Payroll/HR is not very flexible or responsive.
Who TF is using up an entire PTO day so they can sign off on a package when they are literally already home?
It takes me longer to take a shit than it does to sign for a package.
And It definitely takes Debra in Product Management longer to get to the point than it does for me to let a plumber in, and out.
This honestly doesn’t sound like much flexibility at all. If you need time to go to the bathroom - you use your 4 days of PTO. If the company needs time to take a shit on your head - you work late.
I have daily voice calls, usually several times a day.
Seems like my country has mostly moved back to offices now though and finding remote contracts is tough. Man I miss the pandemic. Not the death and suffering, just the compassion some people showed others. Sure there was a lot of people who just lost their minds entirely, but I feel like the overall sense of community was better back then.
Yeah, but community doesn’t make the corpo pigs moneyz, so back to in-office work, slave!/s
When we got a new CEO one of the first things he mandated was RTO. He said the alternative was to shut the office down, and that he was fine with that (I highly doubt that) but a decision had to be made. And so RTO it was, because that had better vibes or something. It’s fascinating, the leadership has during several meetings mentioned how much nicer it is now that people are in the office, but none of the “grunts” I’ve spoken to like it.
HR drone always talks about how nice it is to see everyone collaborating in the office when we come in for quarterly meetings.
Nobody is getting work done. We’re all “collaborating” about sportsball or coffee machines or whatever it is, or just trying to tune it out. It’s a full day of productivity lost for nearly everyone there. Not to mention the early rise for a commute, cost of the commute, missed workouts, and exhaustion on the return home.
Yeah, we’re in a similar boat with new CEO, RTO, etc. The increased collaboration is amazing: now instead of video calls, we have in-person in a cubical video calls because our team and department is scattered across multiple physical locations. Additionally, the increased collaboration from non-team “pop-ins” is a much-needed break from doing the work we’re brought in to do. Not tomention, all of the systems we manage are now much closer in case of emergency: colocated the same 50+ miles away or “cloud”. Maybe /s maybe I’m pro-CEO.
we have in-person in a cubical video calls because our team and department is scattered across multiple physical locations.
You’ve got to insist everybody be at the same location for collaboration. Demand management to arrange conference room, flights or travel and hotel rooms. It might cost a pretty penny and effort but think of the synergy created.
Even before COVID/WFH, this was the case of being spread out. CEO basically eviscerated on town halls, with a dead-eye blank stare in reaponse, then continues to champion RTO in the face of direct conflicts of their own words.
There aren’t enough cubes for the full timers, there aren’t enough conf rooms or other reservable meeting spaces, there isn’t distribution of needed equipment (headsets with ANC, decent mics or computers that can do noise supression without making the computer uselessly slow.
Mentioning these things are ignored though. The CEO and others continue on. Performing remote work for maintenace, patching, etc. outside business hours got a lot more obnoxious to “the business people”, now that we seek approval for outages during business hours to do the work inthe office, as mandated.
There aren’t enough cubes for the full timers, there aren’t enough conf rooms or other reservable meeting spaces, there isn’t distribution of needed equipment (headsets with ANC, decent mics or computers that can do noise supression without making the computer uselessly slow.
This is a feature not a bug to the CEO
Our CEO started talking of RTO while he himself was at home, not even a Teams background to try and hide it. Haven’t seen him in any office during any of the subsequent townhall meetings either. He’s just one twunt in a massive circlejerk
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RTO work often is about control and not about cost or efficiency.
Also because commercial landlords demanded it. In Canada the biggest push for it was from Oxford Properties. They even managed to get the Mayor of Toronto, Olivia Chow, who is about as liberal as we’re gonna get up here to push for it. Never voting for that corporate shill again.
Or encouraging people to quit on their own. It’s a lot cheaper than firing people.
Quit my last job over being asked in once a week. It was the commute rather than the office that I really wanted to avoid but it was also an awful open plan hotdesk office for a company of hundreds of people I didn’t know or care about.
New role is office based but I don’t need to drive or take public transport and teams have their own rooms to work in. Much smaller company too, under 30 people. Banter is far better here and that helps quite a bit.
I feel like this is a pretty useless study, this is going to be entirely subjective what you prefer. Optionality gives a lot of upside, more than either extreme.
Personally I prefer being in the office, better for my focus, my likely (undergoing diagnosis) ADHD as fuck brain, but I also have dynamic work hours so I can simply avoid peak traffic.
That being said, if I was required to be in the office everyday at a set time e.g 9 to 5 I would fucking quit.
Turns out the commute, fluorescent lighting, constant interruptions and performative desk sitting weren’t secretly essential ingredients for human happiness after all. Shocking. Next study: 7,700 managers discover that seeing someone in a chair is not actually a productivity metric.
I’m about to support a satellite launch later this month. Guess what, I have supported the development from my house for the last 5 years. Surprise surprise, butts in seats aren’t necessary.
Has anyone done a study yet to see how many managers’ insecurities about remote work can be handled by placing mannequins in chairs at the office?
Performative desk sitting is the worst. Got nothing to do so I have to just click on things.
And 7,600 of them discover that aside from micromanaging and degrading the well-being of their employees, they have no other substantive job duties, and their employment is completely pointless.
I became a manager about a year ago. Now that I’m part of the “inner circle”, I can see firsthand what I suspected for the past 20 years.
There are 2 types of managers.
There are cunts bosses who treat their employees as property for their personal gain and advancement. They demand productivity at all costs (see: LLM-cogsuckers), punish for mistakes and pressure people into responsibilities they should take. They are the ones who want RTO to exert control on their employees. They are the ones who “joke” you must take a half-day leave if you need to go before 6PM. They are the ones who openly shit on their employees (or other teams employees FWIW) because they’re not benefiting them enough. They are not part of the team, they feel and act above everyone in it.
The second type, which I strive to be and most of my closest “manager friend” are, are servant-leaders. They want to get shit done by easing roadblocks and making technologically informed decisions. They understand that productivity is a consequence of a functional team and happy employees. They take on responsibility for mistakes and push the team towards finding solutions to prevent them. They understand that LifeTM is more important than work. They are an integral part of the team, they’re not the boss but a full member with a different role and different responsibilities, like a PO or a data analyst.
As a tech lead first and a trained Scrum Master second, I feel much more comfortable in the second role. I help the team internally and report and manage external roadblocks with other teams. It’s what I already know. I hate the hierarchical part of the job.
I had 2 such 2nd type bosses in over 20 years.
You really notice they’re how you described when they’re gone - the deluge of shit begins almost immediately.Keep at the good stuff, managers with a functional brain are rare. Best of luck keeping sane with all the dumb politicking and other “inner circle” BS.
I fucking hate politics so much…
There’s a guy in my team. I need to push him into a more advanced role. Because he deserves it, and because otherwise I might lose him. I brought him in from another team where things were going bad. Real bad. Turns out, all he needed was a human working with another human, not an type 1 cunt demanding output from a walking, breathing toolset. He already fits and fills that role within the team, but I need to make it official. Better pay, more perspectives. I know I’m gonna get cockblocked by the fuckers who still hate him for the wrong reasons. Career reviews are at the end of the year and I already dread it. I need to get involved in politics and I’m terrified of it.
Good job. You’re one of the 100 out of that 7,700 managers who actually do something productive and manage properly.
Obviously, that number of 100 is arbitrary to make a wider point. To be fair, it’s probably a significantly higher percentage than I provided in my hypothetical. But holy shit are there waaaaay too many of the type 1 and far too few of the type 2 that you outlined.
This guy manages and gets it.
A note, they demand their own SUBJECTIVE PERCEPTION of productivity, not objectively measured productivity itself.
Of course. In this case productivity is a shorthand for obedience. If you do everything I tell you to do, when I tell you to do it and have it done before I need it so I can look good to my managers, then I will deem you productive. Meanwhile, their requirements are completely fucked up and impossible to implement as is, and the deadline is impossible to achieve.
Most of my managers have been the second type, although how effective they are at it has varied a lot. Some are very passive and that has been good and bad, being left alone is great when things are going well. But when you need help they are useless.
The best have been the ones that know a decent amount about the job, they can either help you directly or know exactly where to point you for it. That or they understand the pain and you can both cry together for 4 days with a SQL database and increasingly vague error messages.
I’m all for as much remote work as possible, but I would love a study to include commute length and mode of transport. When I lived a 20 min walk from my office it was great and didn’t mind being at the office full time.
I moved away and it’s now a 30 min car drive which I really hate, a 1 hr bus journey, or 45 min bike ride.
I wouldn’t mind the bus journey so much, as I can read a book on my way, but the unreliability makes it feel so much worse.
And despite being longer than the drive, I much prefer to cycle into work, and I’ll usually do extra days in the office during the summer as an “excuse” to be on the bike.
I‘ve read a study somewhere that compared car and bike commutes. I turned out that people were much happier riding bike and have real life interactions with people at the streets than sitting alone in an iron box and drive a car.
Despite this, having the same times as you, I enjoy riding bike more because the commute time is always the same. Nobody can stop you on a bike. No traffic jams, no accidents that blocks a road, no rush hour stress.
I only work 25 hours a week, was that part of the study?
Awesome, now all I need is a (remote) job…
A couple of important caveats:
Still, Johnson said face-to-face interaction can play an important role in helping coworkers build relationships, especially if they are just starting out in their careers.
“Remote works better after you know people,” she said. “So there is still a benefit of having some face time.”
So, it does rather beg the question, what should one do if someone is joining an existing team?
Which is bullshit, I joined and have worked for a remote only company for over a decade now and I’ve never met any of my coworkers, but I chat and have calls with them daily and we all have the office banter and even talk about outside work stuff as well. You don’t need to know people to magically work remote, that’s just an excuse to stuff people into a building together.
Based on two decades of experience: As a general rule, there should be regular in-person team events (around two a year and just for fun). In addition, there should be joint training sessions (also around two a year). New staff members require a great deal of attention from their team, both at these events and when working remotely, particularly at the outset.
Eh, capitalism can get bent.
A step further it should be more than twice a year I would say once a quarter would be more preferable. There should also be one day a week everyone on the team should be expected to be in the office. Beyond that max 3 days a week none of this minimum bullshit.
If more are needed, just give it a try. We’ve learned that organising more than 3-4 a year is very time-consuming, particularly when it comes to scheduling them for the whole team.
Also if there’s an option to go to the office, that works too. I’d like to have an office to go to once a month or less, just for the social, meet people irl, etc, but wouldn’t give up remote work for it.
In your experience, have any online social things worked well? We’re always looking out for stuff where I am.
A former manager had team lunches every month. It wasn’t mandatory but it was a day that we could go in and team members would be there. It was also not a day taken up with general business update meetings and the like, so we could get work done.
The key is ensuring that people know when they can go in and see other people they know, not just the marketing team.
Cooking together is brilliant: just yesterday we held our summer strategy meeting at a cookery school, where we cooked and enjoyed a three-course meal together. Basically, anything that encourages plenty of interaction and offers a completely different setting to the usual one is ideal.
it does rather beg the question
Nope. It just raises the question.
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Stop this bullshit, if you want me to work from home you have to considerably increase my salary so that I can rent a place with an office and setup the office.
Playing the “I need everything handed to me on a platter or I don’t lift a finger” mentality is fine I guess.
Do you need assistance wiping you ass too or is that covered by your employer?
For all the gas money I’ve saved, I invested in my own WFH setup. Not having a dedicated space would make it a challenge
The saved time alone pays for a better office at home than at work in my case
Wat? Are you for real or bad sarcasm?
