We ran a drill a couple of weeks back where everybody worked from home to ensure that if we have to close our office we are able to continue working (assuming we're not ill, of course). This was really just to shake out any issues.
Fortunately, since most of us already work remotely for at least some of the time we didn't have any significant issues.
I run a team that went remote with the COVID restrictions and have not gone back to the office.
I observed:
- Working from home is _different_, but we still have the same work throughput
- Communication is slower, but more considered
- Personal boundaries on DnD time are more closely held
- Needless communication was reduced
I wouldn't go back to an open-plan office for anything. Even when we were in the office, most communication was on Slack because everyone had their sound cancelling headphones on trying to control the intrusiveness of the environment.
Until these managers mandating that WFH ends show some actual evidence of the benefits of being in the office, i'm going to assume this is a manager's ego not doing very well without overlooking their team.
I'm sure if your job is a bit ... needless ... it feels even worse when you work from home. In the meantime, some of us have work to do.
Yes, something similar happened with my team, although there was a consideration to allow some work to be remote before Covid, once it started that sealed the deal.
It is strange to walk around an office and see a bunch of workstations, desks and PC's that are all setup to do work in person, but only the PC is being used remotely and the only other people in the building are a security guard or janitor.
Why not work from home? Are your employees not able to get their job done remotely?
The right thing to do from every perspective is close your office. If any of your employees is has a risk factor and dies of covid you will spend the rest of your life wondering if you could have prevented it - trust me I know.
When I joined my current employer the biggest drawback was that unlike my previous job they did not allow remote work. Managers were against it because they were paranoid about people slacking off.
The pandemic hit, we transitioned to remote work, I was happy. Everyone quickly adapted and learned how to efficiently work from home. About two years later, two things happened:
1. Surveys and postmortems showed that remote work lead to increased employee satisfaction and productivity at our company.
2. Company leadership started talking about a mandated return to office.
People of course challenged this decision, pointing to the data, and no real explanation was given. Those who wanted to returned to office, but the mandated return was indefinitely postponed and eventually silently dropped as the manager primarily pushing for a return left the company.
Someone I'm close to is an exec in the architecture and engineering industry and during covid told me that companies are going to go back to office because of the nightmare dealing with these kinds of issues.
He made the point that, what happens if your employee gets hurt working from home? It's a silly example but the employer could be liable for some reason since the employer could have failed to provide a "safe working environment".
Not sure if this actually could happen in reality, but an employer has to think about these possibilities and determine the risk (and mgmt overhead) of remote vs in person
Remote work does not work for people who switch from office to home. It is not in their blood. Most office employees need constant management. If the employee can get away with watching netflix and do minimum from home, they will do it. I've observed many employees getting super slow or unreachable almost instantly after they start working from home. Most bosses don't like it and they get fired. In most cases nothing was related to covid in my opinion because obviously the employee performance dropped dramatically.
Work from home won't work for many companies. Period.
Before covid, being able to work from home once in a while was something of a perk. After a few months of fully remote it is now a hard requirement for me, a significant chunk of my work time has to be able to be home office, or I'm walking away.
Our department was already 100% remote for the past two years since corporate shut down our office... so yeah, things haven't felt too different, except our clients have pushed back some of their campaigns (not cancelled them though, at least not yet) because of the virus, so work is somewhat light.
Good thing, too, since it's been harder to focus with everything else going on.
I work for a small (~100 employees) electronics manufacturer. Most of our developers have been working from home since mid-March. We have been ordered to return to the physical office, despite an ongoing uptick in COVID19 cases in the area. Despite safety precautions, myself and many of my co-workers are concerned and uncomfortable with this. I'm curious if anyone else has experienced a similar situation, and if so - how did you handle it?
Sounds like a lot of cultural issues. My pre-covid job was a very small company but similar stuff.
We hired an in-town workforce and cut the old guard out completely. Worked in person everyday until lockdown but had flexibility as well.
We were all pretty close (10ish people including execs) so remote work was fine and we shut down the office… I’m a much bigger remote work fan now because of how well it went.
The people on the same page will be on the same page whether they’re waking through the park or not. It may be time for the others to move along.
My employer is having everyone return to the office. The difference is that we now have satellite offices, easing the commute for many people (I will be a five minute drive away, as opposed to a 30-60 minute bus commute). Plus we have limited WFH days available each year.
Working remotely full time is pretty much forbidden. People who moved out of the area during the pandemic were told to move back or leave their jobs (which more than a few did). No one was fired over it (that I'm aware of), but there were a number of resignations and retirements.
This is pretty much what I'm hearing even at a rather remote-friendly company. Most people have not up and moved away from where they were working--though I know a few who have. And pretty much every survey I've seen suggests that the most common behavior is going to be people coming into an office two or three days a week.
Personally I've gone fully remote but that's I was effectively (though not officially) pre-pandemic. I just never bothered to request a status change in the system.
- Many people chafing to get back to an office are concerned that it's going to be a diminished experience with many of their teams missing
- As a sibling comment notes, remote workers will advocate for remote-first practices. For example, if anyone on a call is remote, everyone has to call in individually. No gathering in conference rooms. I knew teams that did this pre-pandemic. There are also practices that are frankly good in any case like everything needs to be written down, no hallway decisions, etc.
For reference, this is how my workplace at the time handled remote through the years:
2015-2019: "If you take a day to work from home, that's fine. Just don't make it a weekly thing. We don't allow remote work as a general rule. Working together in the office is a key part of our culture."
Jan 2020: "We've heard your concerns about coming to the office, but we assure you that we follow the government guidelines, installed sanitizer stations everywhere etc. Working together in the office is a key part of our culture."
Feb 2020: "OK so the government now officially recommends that all employees work from home where possible - we will look into that, but for now, let's all still go to the office. Working together in the office is a key part of our culture."
March 2020: "OK so now the government has made it illegal for us to ask you to come into the office. We are grateful to have this opportunity to embrace remote work! As we've always said, we are glad that we are now fully ready to allow remote work for the future!"
Also our team has been working together for a while so can work from home without too much interruption. But its changing, we have some new guys on the team and no one wants to train them. People are trying out new things but coordination is a mess. Morale is bad but maybe that is just virus and economic related.
Many of us had a bumpy morning, at least those of us relying on Internet services on the East Coast of the US. This was my first "I can't make progress on my tasking, guess I'll just have tea and read for a bit" moment since I began working remotely.
What is your employer's policy regarding outages like this? In my experience, most employers simply eat the time if there's an in-office disruption (network outage, fire alarm, etc). But now that we're all at home, I feel a bit more pressure to get done what I intended to (although I haven't seen an actual policy).
What's expected of you when you're working from home, but can't actually get work due to external factors? Is it documented in an actual policy, or is it more a cultural thing?
This, I have been working remotely long before COVID and even if I could stay at home I was going to the office to see friends / have lunch / hit the gym / grab a beer.
Nothing productive was getting done during those office days but they definitely made the job more tolerable and contributed to me not job hopping earlier.
Fortunately, since most of us already work remotely for at least some of the time we didn't have any significant issues.
Beyond that, nothing really.
reply