38 Comments - JS Mill - Friday, Aug 27, 21 @ 9:56 am: I wish I could run the school district from home. - Independent - Friday, Aug 27, 21 @ 9:59 am: I started working from home even before the pandemic exploded. I love it. It would take at least a 50% raise for me to consider returning to an office on even a hybrid basis. I find the office environment rewards superficial characteristics and game playing over competence. - Grandson of Man - Friday, Aug 27, 21 @ 10:00 am: It seems like a great idea. For one, it would save gas money and vehicular wear and tear. It would also break up the monotony of either exclusively working from home or going to the office. There’s so much more freedom at home, like wearing a pair of comfy shorts and and t-shirt while working. Hopefully more businesses and governments consider something like this. - Sangamo Girl - Friday, Aug 27, 21 @ 10:00 am: Remote and hybrid work is here to stay. Even the bureacracy of the state of Illinois is sloooooowly creaking in that direction. It’s looking like my agency will offer remote work as an option and as a result is looking to cut down its office footprint. So those that want to work in the office can and the folks that need or enjoy the flexibility can have it. The next step is hiring, training, and keeping good managers that can manage remote workers. It’s a different skill set that is far different from the command and control model that is the standard now. You need folks who can mentor, coach, and keep an eye on meeting objectives rather than marking hours in the office. At least a girl can dream[banned punctuation] - City Zen - Friday, Aug 27, 21 @ 10:00 am: My Chicago employer pushed heavily to get everyone back in the office this summer. While they have since backed down a bit, it’s not the virus that has been the main driver, it’s the Great Resignation. I’ve had many colleagues quit this year to work for new employers that were more remote-friendly. Many were 100% remote. I don’t think having a strict office policy is going to fly anymore. Offices spent the last decade pursuing the open concept only to get pushback from a virus and workers who can’t concentrate. It will be interesting to see how they evolve from here. - SWIL_Voter - Friday, Aug 27, 21 @ 10:01 am: I’m a more conscientious steward of my time when I’m at home because I feel like I have to actively demonstrate I’m not slacking, which I assume is what the bosses think I’m doing working from home. I think I develop unhealthy habits like slouching in my recliner instead of sitting at a desk. I think the flexible schedule works best for me. I have lots of stuff that needs physical presence, but most of my job is being accomplished at home. My wife quit her job because they wouldn’t be flexible with her on the work from home schedule. She took a pay cut to move to a fully remote job rather than go back to the 45 minute commute each way - Amalia - Friday, Aug 27, 21 @ 10:04 am: the hybrid model works well. office space where people can gather when needed, work from home on a regular basis. sometimes you just need to be around people. I will say that the incidental communication that occurs in an office situation is often great for brainstorming. some biz school person will write a piece on the differences in communication back in the day and now. - Amalia - Friday, Aug 27, 21 @ 10:05 am: also…with extreme snark…how would Kanye get ideas if he did not have people around? - muon - Friday, Aug 27, 21 @ 10:05 am: I’ve worked in an office and taught in the classroom, but also worked from home on side projects. During the pandemic I got a better understanding of what tasks could best continue at home with videoconferencing, and which could benefit from a face-to-face presence. I think that companies actively pursuing hybrid models are taking the right step. - LakeCo - Friday, Aug 27, 21 @ 10:06 am: Hybrid seems like a good model. I get weird and in my head when I’m at home all day and don’t talk to people in person. But I like the flexibility of working from home. - DHS Drone - Friday, Aug 27, 21 @ 10:07 am: WFH has been a success for large parts of the state workforce. No one wandering by our cubicle to complain and no 2 hour meetings-that-should-have-been-emails end up meaning we get more work done. There are a bunch of leases up this year. State should let all these end, hand out laptops, and just keep this going. Unfortunately you have many members of management who have no idea what to do without subjects to terrorize. Hopefully cooler heads will prevail. - Moved East - Friday, Aug 27, 21 @ 10:20 am: Kraft-Heinz allowance of its workers to work from home will help employees who fall behind in their work to ketchup. - Fav Human - Friday, Aug 27, 21 @ 10:23 am: My company has announced it will be two days in, three out. incidental communication that occurs in an office situation is often great for brainstorming That is the Google/silicon valley view. I think that eventually it will be shown to be as fallacious as the GE driven rank and yank was, that was the fad in the 90’s. resignations I know several people who quit rather than go back to a environment they were not comfortable with. - Just Me 2 - Friday, Aug 27, 21 @ 10:23 am: In some ways we are much more efficient. Adding a co-worker to a teams meeting when an issue comes up is super easy. Much better than calling them or grabbing them from two floors up. But in personal collaboration is superior for brainstorming sessions or true collaboration meetings. Employers that do not do at least hybrid will see their employees leave, especially in a tight labor market. - OneMan - Friday, Aug 27, 21 @ 10:27 am: There are different hybrid models out there. We talked about hoteling (where you don’t have a permanent seat in the office) and no one was a fan of that in our area of the firm. I was in two days this week and have to say we had one thing come up that physical proximity was very helpful with (yeah we could have zoomed, but being there was definitely faster). Going to be in 3 days a week starting in a week or two (and will be tested twice a week), we will see how it goes. Have to admit there is something to be said for getting 2 hours back in my day by eliminating the commute. - ChicagoBars - Friday, Aug 27, 21 @ 10:39 am: Fewer interruptions with WFH (or corner bar) a few days a week is what most of my office friends love about it. Having no separation from home/family was biggest complaint they had. So guessing 3-4 days a week in offices becomes standard and several high rises in Chicago become residential conversions as office footprints shrink. Super excited to see legal bills shrink as lawyers spend less time commuting to 5 minute hearings downtown. /extreme snark The interesting battle ahead is when major employers who allow very remote work (i.e. out of state, rarely in office) try to scale pay to where those people want to live not to where the head offices are. - Give Us Barabbas - Friday, Aug 27, 21 @ 10:45 am: To an extent, how effective a communal, collaborative space actually is, depends on the management and supervisors. I experienced this in actual “team meetings” and zoom meetings. Both wound up the same; everyone sitting quietly while the supervisor and their boss had a dialogue in front of us. Our input wasn’t ever really sought, unless it was cheerleading what the bosses had just said. And everything covered could have been an email. So you may be wasting time and money converting private offices to open plan. That was a pre Covid trend pushed by ” visionary” exec types that already seeing major push back from people having to actually work that way. - Dave Fako / Fako Research & Strategies - Friday, Aug 27, 21 @ 10:57 am: Our firm went 100% WFH when we restructured in 2013. Organizations that don’t see the value and employee benefits and adapt will simple lose quality employees. Me and our staff became much more productive with a ton more free time too. In nearly 25 years of business I can probably count about 20 times a client actually came to our office and our staff was increasingly interested in at least partial WFH. We owned our own building and paying for that plus the operations made no economic or business / client sense by that point. We were well ahead of the public opinion methodology changes and internal technical needs to do it at the time. We were using a remote file sharing system for nearly a decade by that time, and had internal process to communicate and “meet” remotely even before we went virtual, so the transition eight years ago was seamless. We were well prepared for the pandemic spurred WFH move which had literally zero impact on our ability to perform our work and daily needs of the business because we had already been doing it for eight years. - Techie - Friday, Aug 27, 21 @ 11:02 am: There are few good reasons to keep everyone in the office, even if it weren’t for the pandemic. A number of studies have examined productivity of remote workers compared with those in the office, and results are mixed, but often find no change or an increase in productivity for remote workers. I’m sure some people would find themselves more productive in the office, but by and large, I would imagine most people are more productive at home. Why? Greater work-life balance. Not having to commute to work means time and stress of the morning routing is greatly reduced, maybe allowing more time for sleep. It means that when there’s not as much work to be done for the employer, the employee can go start the dishwasher or a load of laundry, then come back to their desk. This means less time spent doing chores after work, meaning more free time with which to relax and destress. Employees who are less stressed can think and perform better. The people who really seem to want to keep people in the office are those who somehow think that chance encounters in the office will result in great, new ideas. Or they think employees need to be monitored in order to be productive. Over time, employers that don’t adapt will lose good talent to those that understand the value remote work/hybrid work provides to employees and employers alike. - AD - Friday, Aug 27, 21 @ 11:03 am: We’ve switched to a hybrid model at my state agency and I’ve found that to be ineffective. Only benefit to being in the office is collaborating with co-workers, but when other people aren’t in the office or social distance requirements are in place, the benefit is negated. Maybe the kinks just need to be worked out, but I don’t think the value of coming into the office offsets the costs related to having and maintaining an office. - Rusty Shackleford - Friday, Aug 27, 21 @ 11:03 am: Our agency is currently working remotely one day a week for most staff and is moving to two days a week remote/three days in office in September. Union leadership claims the move from one day to two days a week working remotely was due to attrition. I am currently seeking positions that allow me to work remotely full-time, and I am willing to take a cut in pay/benefits to do so. I think it was a step in the right direction for my agency to offer a hybrid model, but I still find that it no longer works for me from a productivity standpoint. - Techie - Friday, Aug 27, 21 @ 11:03 am: I also forgot to mention the environmental benefits of fewer people commuting. Fewer commuters means fewer cars, less CO2, meaning cleaner air and a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. - Fav Human - Friday, Aug 27, 21 @ 11:19 am: The people who really seem to want to keep people in the office are those who somehow think that chance encounters in the office will result in great, new ideas. Or they think employees need to be monitored in order to be productive. Exactly so. And they will eventually need to explain why their competitors, who don’t do so, are doing so well, but with less real estate costs. - UI manager - Friday, Aug 27, 21 @ 11:29 am: I supervise a group of about 25 people at UI. This summer, my boss’s boss started talking about bringing people back to the office, because “camaraderie”. First, we were asked to survey our staff to see what they thought. Of mine, two people said they would like a hybrid model of home/office, and the remaining 20-some wanted to work from home full-time. Zero people wanted to come back to the office full-time. So much for the “camaraderie” the boss’s boss thought everyone would want. (I might add that although I’ve talked to him on the phone, I myself have never even seen Mr. Camaraderie in person. Hasn’t affected my performance in the least.) (We’ve all been at least as productive at home, if not more so. In fact, a few of my people who were just-okay performers in the office have become much better. I’m guessing it’s because they can’t wander the halls with their coffee cups in their hands any more, looking for people to chat with.) - Pundent - Friday, Aug 27, 21 @ 12:00 pm: Hybrid models do seem to be gaining traction because they take into account that no one size fits all. For employees that have been with an organization for awhile, have relationships, and know how to get things done, pivoting to remote work was fairly easy. Contrast that however to people that are new in their career and/or with a new organization. I enjoy the freedom that comes from being able to work remotely. At the same time however I have people on my team that feel disconnected or don’t know where to go to get information or how to effectively get things done because they’ve never been in the office or built the relationships with co-workers. And there is value to that. There are going to be some unfortunate consequences associated with a shift to remote and hybrid working. Think of all of the businesses that are dependent on commuters and or downtown foot traffic. This new reality could hit them hard. - Lucky Pieree - Friday, Aug 27, 21 @ 12:16 pm: No doubt about it productivity and collaboration suffer with remote work environment. No water cooler talk means people work in silos - Oswego Willy - Friday, Aug 27, 21 @ 12:19 pm: === No doubt about it productivity and collaboration suffer with remote work environment.=== Cite please? - Mason Born - Friday, Aug 27, 21 @ 12:25 pm: I like work from home when my kids aren’t home, it was hard to be productive over the summer. Granted my home is poorly set up for work from home and when i move I’ll spend more to get a better set up for WFH. hybrid seems like a win to me, there are things that are better communicated in person then by zoom. Hard to get nuance in a 6 person teams meeting when half the people are trying to talk over each other. - Sangamo Girl - Friday, Aug 27, 21 @ 1:17 pm: ==No water cooler talk means people work in silos== Because there were **never** silos when everyone reported to the office? - Lucky Pierre - Friday, Aug 27, 21 @ 1:29 pm: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/tracybrower/2021/01/17/think-productivity-with-work-from-home-is-improving-think-again-heres-what-you-must-know/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.techrepublic.com/google-amp/article/long-term-remote-work-is-leading-to-a-global-drop-in-productivity/ https://mytechdecisions.com/unified-communications/blind-survey-48-report-decrease-in-productivity/ Plus it’s not that easy to surf the internet and blog all day from your cubicle in the office OW. Companies have ways of monitoring this for workers in the office - Thomas Paine - Friday, Aug 27, 21 @ 2:32 pm: === No water cooler talk means people work in silos === Oh yes, TG for water coolers and vending machines, there are no more silos left in state government. - Oswego Willy - Friday, Aug 27, 21 @ 2:43 pm: - Lucky Pierre - Your first cite? Yeah, that was … if your facing problems, here are solutions… not really a “ah ha” kinda thingy, Second cite? === Better on-premise tech support from IT, superior hardware for resource-intensive tasks, and the elimination of slow VPN connections are all cited as potential reasons for an increase in productivity while back in the office. Aternity defines productivity in its report as “hours spent on business applications,” and the charts in its latest report show more time spent in business applications while remote, despite “the volume of business activities executed by employees at home [being] about the same as it was pre-pandemic,” said Aternity head of product marketing, Mike Marks.=== It was about the ability and challenges… and those failures… Third cite? ===The survey, conducted on Blind, an anonymous community app for the workplace=== How is that a real measure? === Companies have ways of monitoring this for workers in the office=== Your distain for any workers, wanting their fear, and now a “big brother” want… you must be a peach to work for, LOL - ;) - Friday, Aug 27, 21 @ 2:48 pm: There is no need to be going to the office full time for most jobs. This goes for a lot of government, too. Government could reduce a lot of costs that are otherwise viewed as sun costs for operations (e.g. electricity), as well as other expenses (e.g. travel vouchers). No reason to be requiring people to return to offices full time other than for necessary in person meetings and operational functions, and there is especially no reason for it at this current time while the government is implementing things like vax and mask mandates and we see rising COVID numbers again. If the government wants to further enhance its reduction in spread and be consistent, they should also call for remote work again while the vax mandates are carried out and the numbers are brought back under control, especially giving the looming, inevitable and foreseeable rise that will come from the fall and winter months and the various gatherings that will take place (like school, sporting events, and holidays). - Fav Human - Friday, Aug 27, 21 @ 2:49 pm: === Companies have ways of monitoring this for workers in the office=== You think they can’t when you are remote? Think again guy…. - Oswego Willy - Friday, Aug 27, 21 @ 2:53 pm: === === Companies have ways of monitoring this for workers in the office=== You think they can’t when you are remote? Think again guy….=== - Lucky Pierre - is the guy looking more into firing employees than to promoting employees. That’s the “competitive Illinois” traits the folks like - Lucky Pierre - think are “smart business” - A Jack - Friday, Aug 27, 21 @ 3:31 pm: I am “retired”, but continue to work remotely for extra money. Since I am in IT, I get calls from recruiters almost continuously on new remote positions. I also get calls from big companies that have stated their no remote policy. I don’t even spend more than a minute telling those companies that I am not interested. Some of the salary amounts those companies have tossed at me are ridiculously high, but it is not worth it to me to go back into an office. I think that companies that don’t have a remote work policy will find that they are at a competitive disadvantage hiring employees over companies that do have a remote policy. And if we get back to pre-pandemic employment levels, non-remote companies will be the losers. - MyTwoCents - Friday, Aug 27, 21 @ 4:01 pm: As with everything in life WFH vs in office vs hybrid is not a one size fits all solution. Some businesses may work better 100% WFH. In fact a friend from high school recently moved back to downstate Illinois from Colorado because both he and his wife are 100% WFH and they made the decision to move back for the lower cost of living. But at my job we’re in the office but people have the option to set their own hybrid schedules. Most are about 50/50 office and home. Very few are 100% in the office. For our situation the hybrid is the best approach. I’ve found that there are times when it’s best to be in the office because we’re a team based office and sometimes it’s quicker to get everybody in 1 office vs scheduling a web meeting or conference call. I think it’s also better for new employees to get the training in person and to be able to get to know people while they’re in the office. With being at home both employees and bosses have to understand the work/life balance. Already there’s been research on how people are dealing with work emails and calls outside of business hours on a more frequent basis because there’s not that clear demarcation between work and home. It will be interesting to see how this all shakes out over the next few years and what will be all the pros and cons. As an example, Europe is looking at right to disconnect laws: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20210517-can-the-right-to-disconnect-exist-in-a-remote-work-world - LakeCo - Friday, Aug 27, 21 @ 4:03 pm: =No water cooler talk means people work in silos= If only there were some way to talk to your coworkers when you’re not in the office…maybe something with a screen and a keyboard? Maybe a microphone? Some kind of media, where one can be social? I’m surprised no one’s thought of that yet. Sorry, comments for this post are now closed.