Commuting when it isn't necessary is economically inefficient. Employees are required to pay the entirety of the cost. The only way this is likely to equalize out in favor of increased time on site is if employers start paying employees extra in some way for those days that they are required to be in the office.
This is already the case in the UK for employees who frequently work away from their main office - the employer is expected to pay both time and expenses for travel.
It hasn't dramatically reduced commute time for those people IMO.
Absolutely. Here’s a suggestion for employers: if you want the employees back in the office then you should pay them for the time they spend commuting. What? That’s too expensive? But didn’t you say that employees are more productive in the office? Then you’re ahead by the end of the day. Oh you can’t quantify the benefit so you can’t justify the cost? Hmmm… Have a think about what you’ve just said.
Employers should be required to pay for employees' entire commuting costs. That would make them think extra about how much they really need people on-site.
Companies that expect people to work in an office will not compensate for commute time. Once employees gained the time which would have been spent on the commute to do other things including work & personal matters, it becomes difficult to justify sacrificing that time every day to improve "company culture".
Companies who mandate return to the office should pay employees for the additional commute time at their hourly rate. If this becomes too expensive then productivity gains from being in the office are apparently not worth it.
Someone is going to pay for that increased efficiency--either your Employer will pay in dollars, or you will pay some opportunity cost. Why should you pay?
After all, there are plenty of things that you could do in your spare time that would make you a more efficient employee. But you wouldn't let your employer tell you to work unpaid for an hour each Monday, preparing for the week. Nor would you let them require that you spend an unpaid hour of your free time reading or doing professional development each week. The only difference between those things and commuting is that we've all been conditioned (not in any nefarious way, just by the reality of work in the past) to consider a commute a hard requirement to have a job. But it's not anymore.
That would seem to incentivize employees to live farther away from work. If you spend 2 hours every day sitting in traffic, that's an extra 2 hours pay you receive. I know a lot of people who would gladly jump on the opportunity to make an extra day's pay every week just by commuting an unnecessary distance.
My commute was a nightmare, and one that cannot be solved by moving closer to the office without paying extraordinarily higher costs. Or accepting significantly reduced living conditions. Or relocating to an entirely different city/region with different commute patterns (this is something under consideration).
While I'm not expected to work after hours, I find myself doing so. However I don't mind at all. Not having to commute more than makes up for it.
In fact, if I'd be allowed to work remotely, I'd gladly work extra hours. I see that as a win-win. I don't have to waste time and energy commuting - I arrive at the office already exhausted. That wasted time and energy can benefit my employer if I spend it on working - not just in time, but in efficiency too. That's an additional 2, often 3, hours not wasted every workday.
Good point. If it were customary (or required) that companies pay for time spent commuting, they'd be less thrilled about mandating return-to-office. As it is today, an employee's 2 hour commute each way doesn't cost the company, it costs his family.
Very neat idea. I think if employers were required to realize economic impacts of commutes they’d be a lot more open and judicious about who they require to come in to the office. Being able to effectively price in the cost of the commute and potentially saving money via tax credits or something is cool.
On the other hand this presents a bit of a problem for, say, Boeing or Honda or Caterpillar who require workers to physically be present. I guess you could argue well then they should figure it out, but that probably results in private transit infrastructure and company towns and those probably aren’t a good path either.
One thing that kind of sits in the back of my mind is that you can effectively create a rat race about going to the office since ostensibly the C-suite team will have the company pay for their commute and then so on and so on as more people demand the company privilege of being able to go to the office.
This is why, when possible, it's best to push the cost and timing of commuting onto the person or company requiring the commute. Some professions classify commuting time as working time, but not all (nor is there a legal requirement for it).
For a lot of companies, there's really no need for long-term fixed colocation, but the economy allows for it since they don't have to account for most of the externalities and 3rd+ degree costs associated with new buildings in ecosystems, construction long-term impacts, or even something as simple for the carbon output of making concrete, all the while reaping the rewards of employees working extra for free in a tightly-controlled environment. And when they inevitably move, there's no legal requirement to pay employees for relocation either. Additional corporate costs anywhere in this ecosystem would probably result in dramatic changes and even more work-from-home opportunities.
Innovative remote-first companies are using the savings to only temporarily colocate their employees in interesting and rewarding ways for all (like all-hands meetups), plus reaping the benefits of naturally-increased written communications, creating a win-win situation for all from what I can tell.
Put another way... the logistics/efficiencies/costs of everything is very different for those involved when individuals have to transport groceries to home (via cars, public transit, assistants, etc) vs a company like Amazon that connects warehousing, grocers, and delivery. Big box stores full of employees without a shred of product knowledge make less sense if people are no longer commuting by personal transport for basic goods because it's cheaper and easier to tap into a delivery network for the same thing. The years when oil was super expensive, economists noted how much less people were shopping (before online shopping was ubiquitous).
It's already been uneconomical for a while now for most businesses to host the same bits their employees flip and/or related software in the same place as the employees (doesn't matter if you're writing software or ticking order-completed boxes after attaching printed shipping labels). The world is inherently more decentralized today than decades prior.
There is nothing more illogical in modern society than commuting to an office every day. Employees waste 2 of their 16 available waking hours in the non-productive commute while incurring significant financial costs (lease/insurance/fuel/energy) in order to support this patently absurd activity. Employers waste time and energy negotiating leases, re-arranging offices, purchasing AV equipment for meeting rooms, etc., in addition to paying the likely enormously expensive lease itself. The impacts on the environment, the number of hours of human life wasted in commute, the pointless buildings and associated costs to employers as well as the public infrastructure to support it (roads, trains, busses, etc.) are all incredibly wasteful. Surely, all of this could only be justified if physical presence had a dramatic impact on productivity. Yet, we cannot tell one way or the other if it actually improves outcomes.
I'd like to see a way to make employers more responsible for commute times. The location and centralization of offices, after all, are decisions of the employer. Many (most?) employees would be more than happy to work and live in the same town instead of commute, but employers don't generally give that option.
A simple mechanism might be to start classifying commuting as a form of work for hire and require compensation (perhaps at half rate?) for the work.
Why? Anything we don't want to do, we should get paid for. Commuting sucks, they should pay us for it. We should get more to work in an open plan office, for dealing with a shitty boss, or for a miserly vacation policy too. Unless there is a cost, they'll keep doing it.
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