The Ongoing work from home debate

[bjl584]

The weirdest part of remote work is pretending the office never had downtime



One thing that has always bothered me about the return to office debate is how people suddenly act like everyone in an office was productive for eight straight hours every day.

I've worked both remotely and in offices. In the office there were coffee breaks, random conversations, long lunches, people wandering over to your desk, discussions about sports, discussions about weekend plans, and entire meetings that could have been emails.

Yet whenever remote work comes up, some managers talk as if every minute away from a keyboard is evidence that work isn't getting done.

If I spend ten minutes grabbing coffee at home, that's somehow a concern. If I spend ten minutes talking about a coworker's vacation in an office kitchen, that's considered team building.

Am I the only one who feels like remote workers are often being measured against a version of office work that never actually existed?

[riverwed070707]

I don't even really consider this a debate. People/companies who try to argue work from home isn't viable just want to be able to micro-manage their teams and probably spend more time analyzing what others are doing than being contributing members to a team. I've never worked as hard for a company as I do working from home for an employer where I feel valued and trusted to do my job. I get generous time off and am not expected to be available during off hours or PTO, I set my own schedule, I take on value add projects, heck I don't even ask for raises because I am so content. Corporations need to stop treating adults like children requiring 24/7 supervision. If the employee isn't doing what they were hired to do, let them go and move on.

[Fishindude77]

I've always been self employed and had employees.
My thoughts are that there needs to be separation between home life and work life and that is a valid reason to do your work at the work location, and home is for family and free time. When you shut the door to the office you need to leave work behind you.

Further, getting up and going into work requires a certain discipline that employers like to see. It takes a little effort to clean up and dress appropriately for the workplace and you can't replace face to face interaction with texting, emails and phone calls in many cases.

As an employer, I want to see my employees showing up at the workplace. The employer gets to set the rules, so if you don't like it I guess you're free to go elsewhere. If the employer thinks they are losing good help by not allowing work from home, they can make a decision to change that stance.

Micromanaging is an entirely different subject, however I think we can all agree that many employees need supervision and oversight in order to be productive.

[riverwed070707]

I've always been self employed and had employees.
My thoughts are that there needs to be separation between home life and work life and that is a valid reason to do your work at the work location, and home is for family and free time. When you shut the door to the office you need to leave work behind you.

Further, getting up and going into work requires a certain discipline that employers like to see. It takes a little effort to clean up and dress appropriately for the workplace and you can't replace face to face interaction with texting, emails and phone calls in many cases.

As an employer, I want to see my employees showing up at the workplace. The employer gets to set the rules, so if you don't like it I guess you're free to go elsewhere. If the employer thinks they are losing good help by not allowing work from home, they can make a decision to change that stance.

Micromanaging is an entirely different subject, however I think we can all agree that many employees need supervision and oversight in order to be productive.

It's fine to say it is your preference to work from an office and you're correct you can run your business to your preferences. We do not all agree that many employees need supervision and oversight in order to be productive. My company is global and my immediate team is distributed from Seattle to Amsterdam. Working from an office would not put me face to face with my team, just a bunch of people from other departments and when I do go to the office I find it dramatically hinders productivity. As a lot of tech companies force return to office policies, we're picking up high quality talent from Amazon, Google, etc. because the last 6 years have taught us that letting employees work where they work best = growth.

[QuarterMillionMan]

I work for big government, 4 ten hour days a week. One day a week I'm required to report to the office in downtown Los Angeles. The other 3 days work from home. I get more work done working from home vs at the office setting where distractions abound from co-workers were we talk about various work related and non work related communications. Working from home all the unnecessary chit chat gets eliminated and more work gets done, IMHO.