Prior to the pandemic, it was widely assumed the transition to remote work for office staff was on the horizon at some point, but potentially years away. Some businesses had adapted a work-from-home model for some employees, but it was far from "the norm." Most employers were leery of how productive people would, or could, be at home, and many struggled to wrap their minds around how work would be managed. For better or worse, Covid drastically accelerated that timeline when many businesses were forced to go remote in the Spring of 2020. Now, more than 2 years later, the work landscape seems to have changed forever. Being in the tech field I feel like we are one of the very few companies who are fully back to our in-office routine and have been since July 2020. It's becoming increasingly difficult to find people who do what we do (IT consulting, web development, programming) who have any interest in coming to an office full time. Most seem to want fully remote, or at least a hybrid office/remote situation. So, for those of you who either have or had a remote or hybrid environment, I'd love to hear details, thoughts, and opinions on how your program was set up and what you thought about it. The good, the bad, the ugly.
I have been a WFH employee for 20yrs and it takes a certain type of person to do it successfully. I believe the burden will be on the managers going forward, they will need to employ a micro targeting system. Where goals are the bench mark as opposed to the well they always look busy when I see them approach. Sent from my Pixel 6 using Tapatalk
I worked the prior 15 or the last 18 years in consulting at one of the big global companies. Pre-pandemic, Monday morning flights to client locations, Thursday night flights home and Friday remote for probably 13-15 off those years. More than 20 of those years with teams offshore. The last 2 were fully remote…and the younger newbies to the workforce have known nothing else. Clients realized there was no/little need to incur T&E from the out of town, contingent workforce any longer, but a few clients had also returned to work the past year. I think the 30+ crowd in general misses a bit of small talk, relationships, collaboration. Millennials don’t. I left the consulting biz and started a new gig 5 weeks ago back at a bank and kinda like the 3 days a week/2 remote model. Generally at your discretion which days you want to be in the office. Almost nobody picking Friday. Unless you’re one of the very senior leaders, all workspace is ‘hotel’ and needs to be reserved (a bit impersonal, but more cost effective). Leadership meetings are generally Mon or Tues, which gives predictability, should you be in those ranks, and consistency for those leaders who need to travel to HQ. Company provides a docking station/hub, double monitors in the office and to employees homes. Volunteerism, collaboration, and team work is pretty big with this company and I’ve been getting to know those in this office fairly personally…about 60% of our team is based in another city…talk to them often online/Webex/ etc, but I’ve not yet been down to their office… I think it’s a decent model, reasonable cost management and productivity.
Funny that you started this today. I have been 100% remote for the last 2 years and today was our first quarterly meeting in person in those 2 years. We used to have a hybrid model of WFH 2 days a week and then WFH 3 days a week switching on/off. During this WFH period our company has embraced it with open arms in the "how can this save us money" sense. Just in our Minnesota locations we have gotten rid of 2 leased office spaces and have sold one building while transitioning those warehouse employees to our main office. They are now in the process of remodeling our main campus. I can't imagine the strain the transition had on our property/IT managers because that was a HUGE undertaking. Now that all of us have our laptops/docking stations/monitors set up at home there have been little to no issues that I know of. In our division we have experienced 0 problems that have prevented us from doing our work at home vs the office. Basically every employee has expressed they would prefer to work where they want and when they want (all of us are 30+ with me being 33 and the rest 40+ years old). During this time we have also eliminated 50% of our typical meetings so employees could better utilize their time. Nothing worse than sitting through an hour long meeting that just needed a simple email. In my opinion the mantra that "it takes a special type of person to WFH" is now overblown after these 2 years. Sure there are people who are going to abuse it and not get their work done, but those people will be fired because of it. My managers know that all of us employees are extremely grateful we have the opportunity to WFH full time as it eliminates a lot of stress out of all of our lives. I've driven my car 3500 miles since last July. I don't stress about my daily hour long each way commute. I don't stress about having to buy gas 2-3 times a week. Working from home has truly been a blessing for me and I know that if there ever is a day where I am let go that I will be doing my best to find a position with some sort of work from home schedule.
Our sales office in MI is still WFH and I believe that we have several employees who are doing this. They rarely answer emails. Even calls using the hated TEAMS program go unanswered.
Pre-Covid we used Slack for inter-office communication. When everything shut down and we went fully remote for a couple of months we switched to Teams since it had built-in video conferencing, and we haven't looked back. I pretty much live and die by Teams all day, every day. It feels weird chatting someone who is sitting across the room, but it's way quicker than an email and less distracting to everyone else than yelling across the room.
The video conferencing and IM feature of Teams is OK. We have had less than mediocre success with the "Office" type products. In fact, we have abandoned them completely.
My life is in Outlook. Outside of that, I don't use much in the Office suite anymore. Pretty much all Google Apps for me at this point.
Spreadsheets, spreadsheets and more spreadsheets. We have this modern system to use and those who think they are important are too lazy, dumb, incompetent ......to learn the most rudimentary functions. "just put it in a spread sheet for me" Yeah, only 86 more Mondays buddy unless I cave in to the wife. Then its 43!
Google apps are like fisher price toys for kids. Regarding work from home, I feel like any computer based job especially in technology is going to have to rethink their view on WFH or hybrid working models. My opinion is people that won’t hold up in that environment would’ve been bad employees anyhow in an office environment. You’re only alienating your top end employees by not embracing some type of a hybrid or WFH model. Those that embrace it now before they’re forced can use it as an offensive weapon in the talent war to snap up the best talent and also top end talent in lower priced locations.
Was thinking about this other day. Although I'm not big into computers, what a life one can live with an expertise in computers. Live on the road. Hunt and fish, work from a hotel or your live in vehicle. Makes me kind of wish I had learned a skill in IT.
Effectively I lived in the road 8 or the prior 10 years...it gets old. On the IT front, a LOT of work (esp for big companies) is really done offshore...you learn all sorts of ancillary skills like how you communicate with a person in India is just a bit different... IMHO ABC of sales, staying relevant and continually learning may be more important.
My job is still in office but I believe WFH will be an option for me in near future. 70% of the company (around 50,000 employees) is now WFM. Weird thing is the corporate office I work out of used to house 1,200 employees. Now it’s more like 150.
After max telework during the height of the scamdemic, we've gone to a hybrid. Those in my series are allowed 4 days per pay period (every 2 weeks) to be WFH, the rest are in the office or the field. Those WFH days are scheduledas needed/ at their choice, not mine. The admin people are allowed 6 WFH days per PP. The good- I can be a lot more productive both home and doing admin paperwork b/c I can break up my day, if I need a mental break or a workout I can do that, and I don't mind working evenings at the keyboard with a beverage in hand. I also don't have to waste an hour or more one-way in traffic every day which would otherwise be the norm. While this does not apply to my profession, I could see where from a budgeting perspective you could get by with a lot less square footage if half your office is WFH every day. The bad, I have seen a breakdown of personal relationships and with that, personal accountability to the group. Mind you, I am a supervisor of 12. So there are 2-3 guys who are perceived (and perception is real but I can't do much about it as they are journeymen) to be abusing the system. Guys have become more factional about when, what, and who they will work with. This is becoming exacerbated as we are hiring new people, it takes longer to get to know and trust each other. So while traditionally there was a lot of office time that was wasted on pure BSing and effing off, at least they were effing off together as a team. Now if they're effing off they're doing it at home by themselves in their short drawers.
