As the pandemic wends its way toward endemic status, companies are grappling with how - or whether - to bring those employees who've been fully or mostly working from home (WFH) for the past two-and-a-half years back into the office.
Gauntlets are being thrown, and some folks are quitting over it.
Another reason why I'm just as happy to be working freelance, and exceedingly part time.
As a FT worker, I probably would have been fine with a 3/2 or 2/3 arrangement. But would I have wanted to tangle with employees over it? Would I have cared?
WFH wasn't much of a thing when I was out there in the workforce. Back in pre-history, it wasn't an option. If you worked in the technology industry, you had to be where the technology was, and when I began my career, that technology was a mainframe that you connected to via hardwired paper-based terminals.
Over time - still pre-Internet - the technology was untethered, but not by all that much. I remember lugging home a "portable computer" that weighed about 40 pounds. It came with a coupler that you inserted your phone (landline, of course) headset into, and you then dialed the mainframe and connected at some minimal baud rate. (This was before DSL.) The connections weren't just slow, they were fragile. You really had to want/need to get something done over the weekend to go through the trouble. Mostly, if I had work I needed to do, I didn't borrow one of the traveling computers, but just went into the office.
Then there were laptops, and early Internet, so you could work from home via a VPN, which usually came with a security token with numbers that were nearly impossible to read. So it was nearly impossible to get any work done.
And then it all came together. Better, more secure technology. And, voila, you could technically - at least theoretically - work from home.
In my second to last full time job, I had a woman on my team who, when she returned from maternity leave, did some work from home. I can't remember if it was every day, or a couple of days a week. Whatever it was, she was just an outstanding performer. I trusted her completely to get her work done. And she never let me down. I don't know what I would have done if others in my group had made the same request. Some I would have trusted; others, not so much.
In my last full time job, I WFH on Fridays. I had decided I wanted to work freelance, but after a few months, I gave in/gave up and took a job working for an old manager of mine. I took that job on the condition that I wouldn't come in on Fridays, and I wouldn't be working much after noon on that day. It worked out very well.
When that job ended, I went 100% freelance, occasionally blowing into a client's for a half day, but mostly, gloriously, working from home.
So I know all about the glories of not going into the office. You don't have to sit in traffic. You can throw a load of laundry in. You can take a catnap or a little unmonitored break.
I highly recommend it. But I also highly recommend going into the office, if only for social reasons.
Not that you can't develop work relationships, friendships even, if you're not face to face with your colleagues.
For that last FT job of mine, the company was an agglomeration of small tech companies from all over the country. I worked at headquarters, but two of my closest colleagues were elsewhere - one in Upstate NY, the other in Houston. Somehow, the three of us became good friends. We IM'd constantly, and chatted on the phone all the time. It helped that these two guys came into HQ once a quarter or so, and we got to have lunch and/or go out to dinner while they were around. But it worked. And nearly twenty years later, we're still friends.
Still, I think there are benefits to spending some time in the physical presence of your colleagues.
But maybe I'm just being old school. I am, after all, old.
Anyway, there seems to be a rift between what bosses want and what worker bees do:
Nationwide, two-thirds of senior managers want their teams on site every work day, according to a Robert Half survey, while half of employees say they would look for a new job if forced to return full time. The return-to-office/work-from-home tug of war has even spawned an acronym war: RTO vs. WFH.
Pro-office executives cite the value of in-person collaboration and the need to maintain a vibrant company culture. Breaking with tradition is difficult, workplace analysts say, especially for bosses with an underlying belief, warranted or not, that people get more done in the office. (Source: Boston Globe)
But workers, especially younger ones - the "digital natives" - think that the demand that they RTO is just a lot of hooey. And they may well be right.
What I think is going to happen is that, in the long run, the workplace is going to have to accommodate the demands of a workforce for greater flexibility. And the technology makes it possible, in many professions, to work remotely. The looming (maybe) recession may give the big bosses who want to see workers scurrying around the upper hand, but it'll be temporary. I'm guessing most people will be hybrid, balancing WFH with RTO, while at the ends of the bell-shaped curve will be the 100% remotes and the 100% in the office types.
Crappy companies will spy on employees, counting keystrokes, spy-camming to make sure they're present. Good companies will trust employees, and get rid of those who aren't productive.
Folks who choose to work 100% remotely will adjust to the trade-off that plum projects and promotions, managerial slots, etc. are somewhat more likely to those who get to know their colleagues - and the higher-ups in their workplace - up close and personal. And the trade-off may be just fine for those who don't want to commute, like wearing pajama pants to work, and like living in some bucolic podunk.
Because the rewards are more likely to accrue to those who are, at least part of the time, there in person to chat at the coffee machine and eat a slice of sheet cake with when it's someone's birthday.
That's just human nature, or as they're calling it now, "proximity bias."
As Seth Worby, chief exec of Champ, a local digital marketing firm, sees it:
“You’re not going to earn brownie points just by showing up,” Worby said, “but once you’re there, there might be more opportunities to earn those brownie points because you’re there.”
I do believe that Seth's right.
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