Workers Are Winning the Return-to-Office War Because They’re Right
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
If, however, you're asking people to return to mayhem, where they have to use blinders and noise-reducing headphones to think, you're crazy.
We've know this "secret" for long awhile, because literally everyone talks about it. We do some schedule office WFH days as well to balance things out.
They're not fighting the man, they're the person who shows up on the last day of class and slaps their name on the group project. These aren't a new class of individual arising from the pandemic or remote work, it's a situation which is emboldening pre-existing bad behavior.
Firing is a pain in most orgs. Telling other employers that this employee behaved like this is illegal, so they keep doing this in more places. It's plain old theft and disrespect for team members.
Our main office is a drive a few hours away. Because of cost optimization, the building is in a less desirable part of town, and a few colleagues had to deal with crime on the way to work. On some days, predicted desk usage is above 100%, but management said that's OK because we'll spend our time in meeting rooms anyway, and we're supposed to empty our desk while we're in a meeting room. There's an endless amount of people shuffling back and forth, so if you're close to a door there is no way to have any concentration.
Seeing all this, why should I go back to my company building? To annoy the people sitting next to me who are not my team members anymore, by having full time meetings over the computer?
Thank god my managers are wise enough to say:this doesn't make sense, stay at home when necessary. But other teams are required to come back and they don't like it. Their bosses wonder why. I want to answer, they are hiding to try and get some work done, but you're not allowing them.
To have a proper answer you need a proper question. The proper one would be "what is the difference between an office and remote worker?". And the answer would be:
1. You have the easiest KPI to measure: butt-in-the-seat/hour. Because making some valid KPIs tied to the business performance is hard and requires to at least to think.
2. If something isn't right you can always come to the drone's desk and shout at him all you want.
3. If something isn't right you can always call a meeting and blame everyone for the fault until some without guts would accept it or just would be tired enough to want it end right now with any means.
With all the points combined it becomes crystal clear what the need to "see and touch" your office drones is because the management is absolutely incompetent both in the business and a human interactions and this is the last option for them to have a sense of control.
Outrageous. Takes me right back to high school and moving between classrooms. Except now you're shooting productivity right in the foot every time you have to pack up and move for a meeting.
I went to the only high school in my country which had lockers (it was mildly famous for it, being seen as an "American" trait) and I never had a locker because they were on a first come first served basis.
They are... slightly higher than normal. "Great" is clearly an exaggeration.
I agree with gentleman11. The news often clings on to and exaggerates ideas that sound interesting and reasonable but aren't actually happening to any notable degree.
[1] The other "big lie" about calling it the "great resignation": there were plenty of layoffs that happened (and didn't need to) and burnt employee good will for short term stock concerns.
I suspect that was not inadvertent.