Everybody is talking about working from home and how it will become a kind of new normal with fewer people working in offices and more people working remotely all the time or most of the time.
I agree with what you say the reopening has shown that companies already ask their people to come back (traffic jams are back).
Although, this exercise has shown to corporate that it is possible to move a lot of the back office work to home and thus save on costs (Bonus: some employees even like it). Perhaps provide a satellite office they can sometimes come to.
I remember a couple of years back how everyone was in awe at the amazing office google had (all the free stuff n such). I assume it is far easier for a company to maintain and lock in some talented people by pampering them as much as you possibly can.
I think this is somewhat harder to do WFH becomes the norm.
Zoom happy hour calls are really a waste of time in my opinion. Long live the after-work bar!
Well, I think once you are out of your 20s the Google office setup doesn’t look that sexy anymore. I think in the end, we will have to strike a compromise between working from home a couple of days and coming to the office most of the days. This way the creative discussions still happen while we can save the commute a couple of days per week.
Although Google does hire a lot of people that score well above average on autism and to them, the pampering office setup might very well still matter after their 20's.
Now of course google is the outlier.
What do you see as most day's? 3 days a week or 4 days a week? In general, Tuesday is the busiest day on the road. So I wonder if people will wfh on Tuesdays. :)
Don't lose sight of the fact that technology has changed so radically since those earlier epidemics that there's no need to physically work with someone to get most of not all of the same benefits. To put this in perspective, currently in the US 96% of the population has a cell phone and over 80% have high speed internet. If you had to choose from working at a beach house or in the mountains versus driving an hour to work each way in heavy traffic how many would pick the latter?
Interesting perspective. I live in London where practically nobody drives to work but takes public transport. The key difference here is that on a train you can work or use your time in other productive ways.
Also, there is now increasing evidence that zoom etc. is not only not replacing in-person meetings but is causing anxiety and other forms of additional stress. Read this article which very positive on the opportunities of working from home but has some interesting paragraphs on the drawbacks of zoom, etc. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/09/magazine/remote-work-covid.html
Thanks for this. I own a homecare company and, since the start the pandemic, I just couldn’t see my office team all working from home. Partly because of the complex nature of the service, as you so eloquently explain in your penultimate paragraph, partly mutually supporting each other in tough tough times, and partly how does it look to our CAREGivers (carers) if admin, management and leaders are all “at home”. Not for us... and I truly believe we’ve benefited from the approach.
Another consideration is that younger members of staff need to learn by observing and listening to senior staff as they go about their day - maybe a sales call, maybe dealing with a difficult customer etc. You can't do that from home.
It is now nearly a year - what is the latest data? How can we gather those instead of anecdotes? Someone running survey monkey somewhere? IMO there are functions and there are industries that lend themselves better to remote work while there are those that require more social interaction. In some cases, WFH is really necessary e.g. I work in a global interaction setting so regardless if it is customer or colleague interaction, the time zone challenges require WFH (or else I have to be at the office damn early just to check-in with the London morning crew). Some social interaction occurs more for SOME corporate cultures on slack or similar chat boxes (as in we use a chat app like that even if we are all on the same floor - go figure why I don't get 10K steps a day according to my Fitbit - but then again, I have friends who are married to each other and text each other while both are at home...). Lastly, WFH or at least the flexibility to have certain days WFH is going to contribute positively to lessening our carbon emissions. What will not work is making too broad strokes. Each department rather than whole company may have to evaluate very closely how to make this advantageous - I know that during snow days WFH is very positive to both the employer and employees, especially if the school district is lazy reactive and sent notice of snow day too close to the start of the morning commute.
Your comment inspired an update post on the topic to be published soon. But in general I see the desire for WFH waning on the employer side. There will likely be a mix of WFH and work in the office going forward but compared to the expectations of people shifting to WFH full time, that is much more muted.
I agree with what you say the reopening has shown that companies already ask their people to come back (traffic jams are back).
Although, this exercise has shown to corporate that it is possible to move a lot of the back office work to home and thus save on costs (Bonus: some employees even like it). Perhaps provide a satellite office they can sometimes come to.
I remember a couple of years back how everyone was in awe at the amazing office google had (all the free stuff n such). I assume it is far easier for a company to maintain and lock in some talented people by pampering them as much as you possibly can.
I think this is somewhat harder to do WFH becomes the norm.
Zoom happy hour calls are really a waste of time in my opinion. Long live the after-work bar!
Well, I think once you are out of your 20s the Google office setup doesn’t look that sexy anymore. I think in the end, we will have to strike a compromise between working from home a couple of days and coming to the office most of the days. This way the creative discussions still happen while we can save the commute a couple of days per week.
Although Google does hire a lot of people that score well above average on autism and to them, the pampering office setup might very well still matter after their 20's.
Now of course google is the outlier.
What do you see as most day's? 3 days a week or 4 days a week? In general, Tuesday is the busiest day on the road. So I wonder if people will wfh on Tuesdays. :)
Hard to say if 3 or 4 days. I am confident, though, that Monday and Friday will be very popular days to work from home 😜
And Wednesday's for those with kids :D
I always love working in the office Monday and Friday as less people in. :-)
Don't lose sight of the fact that technology has changed so radically since those earlier epidemics that there's no need to physically work with someone to get most of not all of the same benefits. To put this in perspective, currently in the US 96% of the population has a cell phone and over 80% have high speed internet. If you had to choose from working at a beach house or in the mountains versus driving an hour to work each way in heavy traffic how many would pick the latter?
Interesting perspective. I live in London where practically nobody drives to work but takes public transport. The key difference here is that on a train you can work or use your time in other productive ways.
Also, there is now increasing evidence that zoom etc. is not only not replacing in-person meetings but is causing anxiety and other forms of additional stress. Read this article which very positive on the opportunities of working from home but has some interesting paragraphs on the drawbacks of zoom, etc. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/09/magazine/remote-work-covid.html
Thanks for this. I own a homecare company and, since the start the pandemic, I just couldn’t see my office team all working from home. Partly because of the complex nature of the service, as you so eloquently explain in your penultimate paragraph, partly mutually supporting each other in tough tough times, and partly how does it look to our CAREGivers (carers) if admin, management and leaders are all “at home”. Not for us... and I truly believe we’ve benefited from the approach.
Another consideration is that younger members of staff need to learn by observing and listening to senior staff as they go about their day - maybe a sales call, maybe dealing with a difficult customer etc. You can't do that from home.
It is now nearly a year - what is the latest data? How can we gather those instead of anecdotes? Someone running survey monkey somewhere? IMO there are functions and there are industries that lend themselves better to remote work while there are those that require more social interaction. In some cases, WFH is really necessary e.g. I work in a global interaction setting so regardless if it is customer or colleague interaction, the time zone challenges require WFH (or else I have to be at the office damn early just to check-in with the London morning crew). Some social interaction occurs more for SOME corporate cultures on slack or similar chat boxes (as in we use a chat app like that even if we are all on the same floor - go figure why I don't get 10K steps a day according to my Fitbit - but then again, I have friends who are married to each other and text each other while both are at home...). Lastly, WFH or at least the flexibility to have certain days WFH is going to contribute positively to lessening our carbon emissions. What will not work is making too broad strokes. Each department rather than whole company may have to evaluate very closely how to make this advantageous - I know that during snow days WFH is very positive to both the employer and employees, especially if the school district is lazy reactive and sent notice of snow day too close to the start of the morning commute.
Your comment inspired an update post on the topic to be published soon. But in general I see the desire for WFH waning on the employer side. There will likely be a mix of WFH and work in the office going forward but compared to the expectations of people shifting to WFH full time, that is much more muted.