> So unless you have a job that requires minimal communication on a day-to-day basis, an office is superior for productivity.
If that’s the standard then the commute time should be billed to the employer. That way they can weigh the full benefits of the productivity gain of in person communication, against the dramatic efficiency loss of 100 employees commuting to work.
If employers want the productivity benefit of in office communication, they can pay employees for their drive/walk/transit time.
> for those who happen to live in an environment that allows them to commute by foot or by bicycle, working in the office is already much more appealing than for others
I take the bus, but otherwise yeah, agreed. I hate WFH, so I choose to go in every day even though my company doesn't require any office time. I love my time on the bus, gives me a short walk to & from the bus stop, and 45 minutes each way to be offline and read books.
On the other hand, if I had to drive, I'd go insane. Driving for a commute is awful.
> If commuting is work then employers should pay for it or have the time taken to commute deducted from work hours.
If your employer requires you to come to the office, then getting there is part of the job, and I think you should be compensated for that time. Commuting during rush hour certainly isn't a pleasure activity that I'd be doing without obligation.
> If you aren’t working from home, your workplace should be at least a couple of minutes away (better: an hour away)
The notion of a commute being beneficial is weird to me. If it takes more than 5 minutes to get to work, I end up spending the time engaged in something else, which leads to me being significantly distracted when I arrive. Thinking for an hour about what to do when you arrive seems like the opposite of productivity
> But how can organizations encourage their employees to commute differently?
Instead of expecting the employees to fix things themselves, why not hire some busses and pick the employees up?
It is expensive to do so, but nicer commutes often correlate strongly with lower turnover. There is a reason Facebook, Google, and the like pay for it.
> companies seem to ignore they are asking all their workers to unnecessarily spend an hour or more a day driving
Um - not all. A number of people use public transportation. Some walk to the office. I chose a home location close to a subway station that gets me downtown with a 25-minute commute if necessary - not that I have needed it since I do work from home :)
> if you give an inch, your employees will take a foot.
Employers have been eating up to 10 hours (2 hours per day) of unpaid commute time of employees for ages. Is it then really surprising that no one wants to waste time coming to work. If that time was paid, if commute time was paid, then maybe you would consider it. But it's a very simple economic calculation. It's like why am I paying for that time. I don't have to, so I won't. That 10 hours is 20% extra salary that is not paid.
And if your argument is that you could live closer, then the counter argument is that employers should have their offices in affordable areas where any employee can afford to easily live because rent is cheap. Not in the middle of downtown because that's what their peers or customers expect.
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.
That's the biggest inefficiency about in-office work. Its irreplaceable time lost for the employees, the company and the society. We are needlessly hauling people from place to place to have them work at the cost of losing time and resources.
> 2.) A lot of employees live 1+ hour away. The bus doesn't work in these situations.
I live in large dense city in the US (Los Angeles). I live a 15-20 minute car ride from work. The city is going to be doing some construction on my route and have asked the businesses to encourage their employees to take public transit, walk, bike, etc. during the construction. I looked into taking the bus, which for the first time in my life, is a reasonable walk from my home. It would increase my commute time (one way) from 20 minutes to 50 minutes! Sorry, but I don't have an extra hour I can take out of my day for that. It would be better to just work from home, but my employer won't let me do that for the duration of the construction which is supposed to last a year or two.
EDIT: For about a month, my office was at the Santa Monica end of the train. (Like literally right next to the train stop.) Sadly it no longer is. Even then, a coworker decided to take the train once from his place in Pasadena. His normally 45-60 minute commute increased to an hour and 50 minutes taking public transport. Sorry, but he'll just drive instead.
> This eliminates a big chunk of fixed costs... as most are shifted to the employees
On the other hand, employees suddenly gain a lot of free time, especially those on enormous commutes. But even for small-ish commutes and 1 day/wk in the physical office the numbers are significant - at 30min one way travel, 4 days HO give you 4 h of extra time - or 10% of their workweek. Fully remote with 1h one way travel? 10 hours or over a whole work day's equivalent of time.
On top of that employees gain other positive results like saving hard money on their car / public transport ticket and, especially for introverts or people with back issues, a large uptick in life quality as they don't have to stand in overcrowded subway cars or stuck in stop-n-go traffic jams.
The fair solution would be for employers to pay a fair share of rent and decent regulations-conforming equipment (chairs!) for those working from home - and giving a raise to those who physically have to come to the office, e.g. to deal with paperwork.
>If my choices in 2020 are remote work, suburban car commute, or downtown city office commute watching YouTube on a bus or train, one of these options is the clear last-place option.
It depends where you live. If I drive into my company's suburban office (which I have rarely done for the past few years), I'm about a 25-30 minute drive. If I take the commuter rail into the city to go to another office, I'm about 90 minutes door-to-door between drive to train/train/subway/walk. I don't mind doing the latter now and then, but if I had to make the choice most days, that wouldn't be my pick.
I did commute into the city semi-regularly for about a year once. It really wasn't sustainable over a long period even though I didn't need to do it every day most weeks.
>Make the full cost of driving salient for employees
The problem that I usually see when someone brings up this idea is that the employee's "cost" is ignored. I used to live in the Washington, D.C. area, where I could walk or take the bus to the subway. One way, the total time was 30 minutes longer than driving. Between the cost of the subway and my time, it was cheaper to drive.
For 18 years, I commuted year-round by bike, rather than drive. It took as long as the bus-subway combination from my last apartment. While it took more time, I did not have to pay for gas and my maintenance costs were minimal.
>There's a growing consensus that most people like having an office to go to (more social, separated from kids/partners, etc.) but hate to commute.
This is what they get for adopting a car-centric lifestyle.
>As a thought experiment, people should ask themselves: if I could walk 5 min to my office, would I still want to work from home?
I live in Tokyo, and it's about 10 minutes to walk to my office, and it's extremely safe. No, I don't want to work from home much, except maybe the days when there's a typhoon or I'm just not feeling well.
> For those of us who have to commute, it's not exactly the norm to be saving money while commuting
This is true. I choose to live within walking distance of my office, and it has vastly improved my life - prior to this job, I commuted 2.5 hours a day, and that was awful.
These choices of course have complex tradeoffs, but you don't have to commute, it is a choice.
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.
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.
If that’s the standard then the commute time should be billed to the employer. That way they can weigh the full benefits of the productivity gain of in person communication, against the dramatic efficiency loss of 100 employees commuting to work.
If employers want the productivity benefit of in office communication, they can pay employees for their drive/walk/transit time.
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