Your company doesn’t care about protecting their landlord’s asset value any more than a residential renter cares about protecting their landlords house value
If anything, companies are financially incentivised to reduce their office space consumption to reduce their overheads.
The ACTUAL reason why companies want to kill WFH is that, despite what people want to believe, most people are far less productive when working at home. It takes a lot of willpower to do a job you don’t want to do, when your boss isn’t around to see you do it. Most people don’t have that much willpower.
also if you offer WFH as an option, you’re going to have a lot more desirable candidates to choose from who wouldn’t otherwise consider the job. i think if anything that incentivizes people to be mindful of their productivity.
i worked from home for a number of years, and it honestly helped me get through the menial tasks that didn’t require razor sharp focus when i could have the tv on in the background or something. at the office i was bored out of my mind and it was torturously difficult to stay on task.
This debate seems to overlook the benefits that WFH offers for some roles that don't require constant supervision or the energy of an office environment to be productive. Productivity isn't always about where you work, but how you work and the systems in place to support that work. Sure, WFH might not be a silver bullet for every industry or role, but it's definitely not the productivity black hole some make it out to be.
I'm fine with that. I know my job (non disclosed programming/analyst role) can't be done from India due to security reasons but I would love to be threatened with it and offered my redundancy payment.
I work with a company in India that manages a nationwide IT network in the US. They just work their primary hours in our business hours. Its not that hard for them to be available when the US needs them because thats kind of their whole business.
Most people refuse to admit that whilst WFH can be productive for focused individual work, it is detrimental to projects and team work. Virtual meetings just aren’t as effective, harder to build social connections that makes working together more effective, also allowing people to check out easily, hide behind their screens and keyboard etc. and that is why most companies are trying to force people back into the office because they don’t know how to solve that problem.
There is copious research on all this and while co-location done well for certain types of work is helpful, it can also harm collaboration and performance when done poorly.
There’s a nice HBR study on some of this, link below. To summarise:
Open plan offices reduce collaboration, because if two people talk they disturb everyone else. When groups that don’t need to work closely together are co-located, performance is undermined. When focused time is impossible due to distraction, innovation and problem solving collapse. But yes, when teams need to work in close coordination for complex and time-bound delivery then co-location is helpful. That’s a rare case. But many studies have shown that teams should meet in person to build trust. After a full day or two of in-person bonding, that trust will start to fall away. After about 3 months. So, quarterly in-person away days for the full team are a good idea.
https://hbr.org/2019/11/the-truth-about-open-offices
It is more the youth and inexperienced that struggle with WFH. In the office they can ask more questions more frequently.
The ability to have time to think, like older generations with their individual offices, makes WFH more effective for me.
The older people via group chats or direct messages.
I mean ... that happens in office work as is, people sitting in the same building and sending e-mails to one another, rather than walking. As it's faster, and more polite.
It's not like computers and e-mail and electronic contact forms aren't already part of work culture and reality.
I notice that younger people in general often lack the confidence to ask questions formally by chat, email or phone. It is like they have to prep themselves before asking.
In the office they are much more willing to simply ask.
Additionally especially for younger colleagues they get much more out of socialising at work. Helps them build networks.
Of course, because they lack experience and confidence. But that was always the case with humans. It's up to the experienced and the older people to create an atmosphere where that is welcomed, and where there's opportunity to ask "dumb" questions.
For me that's part of the social contract. Reaching out. It's how you help people that are new, and it's how you help minorities and disadvantaged.
When I am in a team leader position I *want* people to feel respected and appreciated. They are not employed to feel scared to contribute.
A toxic work culture is toxic, no matter if it happens online or offline. Many young people socialise online outside of work. It's not that they can't.
My mate just wiggles her mouse so it looks like she’s working. As WFH has become more prevalent the supposed productivity gains have gone to shit.
I can see that wfh will only be available for middle tier roles soon.
We have to have teams open all day so that also shows if u aren't 'being productive' We have so many kpi targets that it doesn't matter how much you wiggle your mouse because unmet targets will fuck you up anyway.
This should be at the top. The commercial realestate market is huge and very far reaching politically. It not only includes the people renting out office space, but the development and maintenance companies also. That said, its complete collapse would be pretty disastrous for the economy, we need them to pivot to residential realestate rather than yanking the rug from under them and leaving us with a bunch of unusable office blocks that nobody wants to stump up the capital to convert to usable housing. What this looks like is a slow conversion of more staff to WFH positions over the next few years, which means OP might get their wish in the next five years.
The horse and cart market would have been pretty huge in the 1910s but moving to cars was worth it. The same might happen to petrol cars soon. It's worse for the economy in the long term to prevent disruptive technologies to preserve the value of bad investments and obsolete jobs.
>Also think of the Nepalese students serving the coffees near office buildings …. Or the owners paying them peanuts
WFH people still might go fetch a coffee. Just not near the office, but where they are. They have more time for it too, given they need to commute less.
It could revive small villages.
I'm kidding myself if I say I'm WFH whilst 100% doing company related work.
However the additional time saved in commute and cost savings in transport is substantial.
The greater good is really the gentrification of suburbs outside of the CBD, nobody really needs to cram into the CBD 5 days a week, us as a country really need to be more efficient with transport and use of space.
Additionally to this. I can almost guarantee that people were never working 100% of the time they were in the office.
More random chats about random shit. Companies thinking that people being in the office makes them work more is pretty antiquated. Research has shown that people are more engaged with an employer who supports WFH.
In the office, I worked it out. 40% of the time I was working in my "8.5 hours" in the office as a contractor. The first 2 hours, the last hour and an hour in the middle (plus the 30 min "lunch" break" effectively had no work done in the office. Factor in travel between meetings, water breaks, dunny breaks, random chats. Some days it was more than 40%, frequently it was even less.
I get so much more done at home
I just replied to someone else on this very topic but I think I goof off the same amount at home or at work, it’s just that at home I’m letting a tradie in or doing laundry and at work I’m having water cooler conversations and chatting idly to juniors about deals. My employer happens to strongly value the networking/team building aspect of the latter so they’ve mandated 3 days a week in the office.
I don’t think either makes me work more - I can’t work for 7.5 hours a day either way because my job involves a lot of waiting for people to get back to me - and I don’t really mind being asked to be present in person when I’m not working because, I dunno, I feel very lucky to have a cushy office job. Plus I like the free air conditioning.
Me too. Ironically I’m going in to the office today, purely to attend a farewell lunch. Being up more than an hour earlier than normal so I can go sit in traffic for more than an hour isn’t sitting well with me.
The truth is I slack off way more when I'm working from home mostly because I don't have to hide it, but I also get through the same amount of work because I'll smash through it faster in the morning to allow myself more slacking off time.
I have a to do list that I'll get through everyday regardless of where I'm working from. That said I don't mind going into the office I guess.
I am almost nearing 4 years work from home now.
Best thing ever for me, my workplace clearly manages well and I get so much of my life back and I can actually fit in domestic tasks as hell 10 minutes ago I just hung up the washing.
Also I think I have actually taken outright less sick days overall.
I honestly think at bare minimum most places should have a degree of hybrid options, most office based roles do not NEED to be 100% in the office and so much I.T tech is becoming hosted in Azure, 365, AWS and countless cloud based shit so even being at the office people are technically are working remote as dumb as that sounds.
This plays a major part for me as well. The tiny bits of extra time throughout the day make WFH options a must-have.
For example, laundry.
When I WFH, I can spend those ten minutes where I have nothing to do throwing my laundry in the washing machine.
At lunch, I can throw it in the dryer.
By the end of the day, my laundry is done.
I haven't been any less productive at work and I now have the time and mental energy left over at the end of the day that would normally have been spent on transport shenanigans and post-work laundry.
Yep, those time I do the washing, dishes, take the bins out, check the mail are what I use to do back in the day where I would get up and walk around and make a coffee or go to the dunny and take a bludge bog or whatever just to get away from my desk for a couple of minutes.
Now I do the same but get actual chores done instead of letting it pile up for the end of the week or after hours work when once I would have been mentally burnt out from a full day of work and commuting.
Also since late last year I have got myself into a new routine of the second I finish work, I put on my shoes and close the house up and go for my few km walk and I have lost 10kg of weight. I am still fat but it is nice to have lost a bit though lol and WFH gives me this time and mental capital to allow it to happen.
The sick days thing is so true. I work a hybrid model, 2 days a week in the office, but even with that, I have noticed a decrease in sick days. I think it's partially that I'm less exposed to sick people, so I'm not getting sick as often. It's also because if I'm feeling a bit unwell but not bedridden, I'll just work from home rather than taking a day off.
Also, my mental health is better by having this flexibility. In the past, I would have probably 3-4 days each year where I just felt tired and burned out, so I would take a 'mental health' day. I haven't felt that I've needed that since I moved to the hybrid model about 3 years ago.
I am a boss and I got to work from home during Covid. My boss couldn’t wait to get everyone back to work in the office. Me and most my direct reports did not want to go back.
I ended up quitting and getting a 100% remote job as a boss somewhere else.
//Removed a mention of a remote job as it’s US only and I didn’t realize this was an Australian subreddit.
I remember when we were in the office everyone would wait until the boss left and then pretty much 30 mins later everyone was waiting for the first person to get up to leave and then it would just be an avalanche of people flowing out the door.
Some days we could all bugger off by 3PM so id just sit on the train with my laptop and work till I got home.
Thiiisssss x 10000
left my old work for this reason, job is 100% able to be done remotely (have so incredibly well for the last 4 years) bloke wanted us in the office 4 days a week "for the vibe" was fucking annoying
yeah was mainly a show for social media, make it seem like we were a huge company doing very well, I'm at a new company now doing 3x the lending than before, half the staff, have been to the office 2 times in the past 12 months only to collect gifts from clients haha
The people I actually work with are in other cities and countries, so being forced into the office is seriously a waste of time but for seeing one or two faces of higher ups. If they force me to go in I’m leaving.
There's an element of this, but the major reason is the concern that people won't be as productive and can "quiet quit" more easily.
It's fundamentally because measuring outcomes is harder than measuring time at desk, and some managers don't want to make the switch and do the work. A culture of distrust driven by insecure or directive-control style managers makes it worse.
I remember the sea of posts on Reddit during COVID about how much people preferred wfh because they could watch a movie or gonn by out and do the shopping, play games during work hours.
Tbh I’m not surprised bosses prefer to see people actually working for them.
That happens but it's frequently balanced by people finishing stuff at other times.
My bosses forced us back to the office and quickly found out that all those last minute things they used to spring on you at 445pm now get ignored or not finished cos we've gotta rush it to get a train home for an hour and a bit, whereas before none had a problem staying back 10 or 20 mins when they had no commute... Or could go pick up the kids and get dinner on then spend another 45 mins later on finishing it cos you were able to be flexible...
They're all shocked Pikachu that no ones gonna stay back 20 mins in the office
They were warned but ignored it for the optics of a full office, and yes, the'vibe'
Humans naturally work in cycles of crunching and procrastinating. Nobody, fucken nobody, can work at 100% capacity for 8 hours straight with a little break sandwiched somewhere in between. Anyone who says they can or do is lying to you.
The worker who watches a movie in-between meetings and deadlines would just find something else to waste their time with if they're forced into an office.
By the way, did you know that even before COVID, the average office worker was [only productive for less than 3 hours?](https://www.vouchercloud.com/resources/office-worker-productivity)
If employer groups are actually serious about getting people back into the office, they should look at significantly reducing at-work time. Even a four day work week isn't enough, I'd want to see hours hacked off at both ends on the remaining days to make me even consider it.
So yeah, if I'm chained to my laptop at home for 8 hours for literally no reason, then yes I'm going to goof off
I've been 100% wfh since covid hit.
If anything, my productivity has increased because I don't have to travel. I wake up, walk a few meters, and I'm online.
I'm more likely to sit at my desk and eat lunch while working to meet unreasonable deadlines set by Project managers and the business.
I'm more likely (for the same reasons) to work OT.
I have had very few sick days because I'm not being exposed to every grub who continues to come into work while sick, spreading it around, then everyone is taking sick leave.
They're saving money on electricity.
I have a markedly better work/life balance.
And yes. I will watch TV or play a game during my lunch break *if* I manage to get one.
So while there might have been a "sea of posts on Reddit" with people gloating about slacking off, there's the silent lot like me that actually makes wfh beneficial for both party's.
For me wfh *is* the perk... Take that away and I'll move onto somewhere else that will let me continue to wfh FT... And probably get paid more too.
They still do, because some people prefer to work in the office. Ask someone in Brisbane who lives in an un-airconditioned share house if they prefer wfh during summer.
The smart employers are moving away from "one desk per employee" style offices to more flexible team areas with flexible wfh policies.
A place I'm observing has already moved away from one desk per employee. But they've got behaviours mandating office attendance - to the point where they take a "if you're not here then you're not here" approach.
So now there are employee numbers that exceed desks.
But at the same time they keep doing rounds of redundancies.
Taken together it's bizarre.
100% the same situation. And instead of spending two hours in traffic or on public transport every single day I get more precious time with my family.
I am much happier (remember when a happy employee was the key to a company's success?) and more productive by far.
And still get my job done. I work, I chill, I play games etc. i also log onto work sometimes on the weekend and at night to do stuff.
There’s nowhere to hide if I don’t do my job but people generally aren’t dumb fucking lemmings who need to be chained to a desk 9-5 to get their work done.
We are doing the same amount of work or more.
At home people play games, at work they have pointless conversations instead, it's really no worse for the boss.
Worse for the boss if they are the ones that need someone to nod along to their pointless conversations :D.
They're stucking talking to their pets if noones in the office
Our workplace does hybrid now and yes, you can goof off whilst at home but you also get urgent tasks done straight away or work longer hours with less of an impact to your work life balance before. My work switched to a largely task based rather than presentism basis and it really works.
Paradoxially, I work less and get more done. Hardly ever have a day off.
Exactly this.
I actually work more when WFH so it looks good. I don’t want to risk being able to do chores and the like. And I’m far more willing to do urgent things after hours than if I was travelling to/from the office every day.
Yep. My husband never worked from home but his company did allow it. They stopped WFH this year because the people that were WFH abused the situation and were not even logging 6.5 hours of actual work in their 9 hour day (approximately 1 hour for lunch break so 8 hours).
Sounds like the company has a crap culture or completely ineffective leadership. It’s a misnomer that being in the office = productivity. In my experience it’s the extraverts who crave socialisation (ie less productive) or people who are avoiding their home life that like the office.
Yep. It’s all culture.
You dan walk around the office and see people checking the property market or reading the news. Long chats in the coffee room, long coffee breaks at 10 and 3. Not to mention they have spent 2 hours commuting.
Of course people abuse the WFH from time to time but only two metrics are relevant:
1. Is our overall productivity higher than before; and
2. Do we have higher or stable (good) employee engagement scores.
Literally nothing else matters. If 10% of the workforce are fucking around I guarantee they were fucking around in the office.
Its only a manger’s anxiety that they want to observe them doing it and maybe stop it which makes them make the stupid decision to ask the other 90% who are more productive and more engaged to come back to the office (hence wasting time in the commute.)
Unless you have major issues with productivity (and a mature organization can measure that) then suck up the outliers and move on.
You’re spot on about this.
If theyre not getting work done, no amount of wfh or office hours will change that. Most people struggle to make their day last until 4pm most days. You can normally smash out most work well in 3-4 hours. 6.5-8 is still pushing it. However a lot of bosses especially the much older gen don’t like that people can get work done well much quicker and that they still deserve the same pay
What does "6.5 hours of actual work" entail though?
In an 8 hour day I'll often smash my tasks, raise all of my reports and then clear out not just mine but 3 other shared inboxes yet I've probably done maybe 5.5 hours of actual work. Maybe your husbands employer doesn't know how to measure/reward productivity.
If you spend the majority of your day (say 5 hrs or more) on Zoom/Teams calls, what is the point of being in an office? Water cooler gossip is overrated and leads to trouble nowadays anyway.
Depends on your job / environment.
I aim to do a few days per week at home, but there is definitely value in being around your team. You pick up on things you wouldn't remotely, and easier to bounce ideas around.
People don’t want to admit it but there is so much value in actually being there face to face. Offices work and are useful. What isn’t working is car based transport. If we design places better for walking/cycling to work, it would work so much better.
>If we design places better for walking/cycling to work, it would work so much better.
Better for walking/cycling to work means you have to be living near the office (not everyone is going to cycle 20km one way to the city to work).
Not every company has office branches scattered everywhere. Also, everyone lives in different locations, so let's say there are different office branches scattered across the city, you have Karen who works in Parramatta and Kevin who works in City CBD, they are both doing Teams calls in the office, what is the point of going into the office?
Much like the women’s autonomy argument, people just need to be given the choice for what works for them.
My company is totally hands off, but the office typically has 20-60 people in there on a day to day anyway.
I rarely go in because i work better at home, but when we have big projects that require a group I go in.
Just give people the power to choose and it’s all sweet.
Face to face is also a good social interaction that is valuable for humans.
I’ve got a couple of friends who are now 100% WFH and they certainly aren’t the better for it socially - just withdrawn further from
The world and it’s sad to see
It's a lot healthier to have friends OUTSIDE of work. There's zero reason people who WFH can't be social and active in society/ the community just because they're not sitting in front of a screen in an open plan office 5 days a week. I'd say the opposite is true, actually.
It varies depending on the person.
I’ve been working from home nearly constantly since mid 2021 (last time visiting an office was October 2022).
And I love it. I can focus on my work, communicate with my colleagues via chat, and have enough social energy to spend time with people outside work instead of being completely drained.
And I live near the beach, so being able to go for a walk immediately before work, afterwards, or even during my lunch break is great.
30% of couples met at either education (uni mostly ) or workplace . Dating apps, mutual friends and bars share most of the rest .
It’s actually a lot healthier to have friends both inside and outside work - the better your social connections, the longer you live and the happier you are
Maybe that needs to change? I think more third spaces that people can gather in to socialize OUTSIDE of work and study would make society better for everyone. People would also mix with people of other socioeconomic backgrounds more that way, and society would be less stratified.
I technically work a hybrid position - one day a month in the office (job is in Sydney, I live in Queensland)...but I've told them if my day isn't going to be chock full of face to face meetings, there's no point to my being there. Fortunately, they agree, so now it's an ad hoc arrangement.
The ridiculous online meetings are those where employees remain in their cubicles/offices even though they are in the same building! Or even worse cram in front of a single screen to accommodate an out-of-towner.
My wife's company decided to have after work drinks at 5pm on a Friday. Next to no one shows up. In NZ after work drinks on a Friday means 3pm during work hours.
My boss always wants to organize a team holiday after we've finished an audit...I've just spent all hours of the night for a month working with these people. I don't need to have a 'team building's trip afterwards. Which is just a holiday for his family and the couple outsiders that also work there.
I’d question how likely it is that those meetings are needed or are ineffectively run. Simply replacing meeting with zoom calls isn’t good management or work practice…it’s just lazy.
Yeah as a trade myself (realising I will never have the work at home option) I would still rather see it Implemented for those that can if anything to help free up congestion!
100%
I work in the trades myself and this rant was on behalf of my wife.
I remembered what it was like driving to work and going home during covid. It was amazing. Next to no traffic and more work could get some as there's less travel time between jobs.
I recall driving home from Melbourne to home along the Monash Fwy and east link(two typically congested roads) and i would sit on cruise control the whole way. It was a silver lining for sure.
Yep. My **entire** job is done on a computer, but I have to go in the office 5 days a week.
8-9 hours a day sitting under glaring fluorescent lights in a soulless grey box, physically detached from the outside world. All I need is a straightjacket to complete the look. (I know there's worse jobs out there, but let me complain please.)
Gonna try and find a new job that lets me WFH if I don’t get a raise on my upcoming 1-year review. Boss is obsessed with micro-managing us and I'm losing my mind.
Sounds like regardless of your raise you should be looking for a new job - you can find a higher paid , hybrid role . No point staying where you aren’t happy
Because there is aspects that are better in the office and most places are still flexible with 2 or 3 days in an office
Not everyone also wants every day work from home some actually like going to an office and interacting with who they work with
Offices are also not good to convert into housing as its expensive as fuck given the modifications that need to done especially plumbing
This.
In my role there is a lot of collaboration, challenging each others' ideas and continuously refining our products and services. The absolute best results we can get are through in-person work, side by side, in the 'trenches'. While 1-2 days WFH per week is certainly helpful for family commitments, any more than that is an impediment to the team and business's progress.
Plus I am client-facing and you cannot build good relationships in my line of work virtually over Microsoft Teams.
Edit: clarifying WFH is ok if balanced
if your job is done by sitting in front of a computer it really doesn’t matter where the computer is standing, love our companies way of approaching this, our management also doesn’t micromanage everything we do, so that’s probably a requirement
WFH was spoiled by those who took the piss and didn’t do the actual “working”, or minimised it.
If businesses had seen a massive productivity spike they’d obviously have continued it on as they only care about profit.
We saw no drop in productivity through and after covid with our 100% flexible policies, because we already had self-directed teams measured by outcomes rather than time at desk.
We saw significant improvements in employee satisfaction and retention, even with low/no annual payrises (mandated by head office, not our call) because people view wfh as a perk worth $20-40k pa.
Companies all over the world who actually measure this stuff rather than "feelings" saw the same.
I have done analysis for our company. It's not just the drop in productivity, it is the imbalanced drop in productivity. Some people do better at home but some people do almost nothing. Overall productivity is only down by small proportion.
Our company can target specific users to wfh by monitoring work allocations but I assume not all companies have this luxury.
A lot of people still take the piss working from home.
The amount of times I've messaged someone needing something and I don't get replies for hours is crazy 🤣
I’ll be honest, on my WFH days I’m significantly less productive. I have tradies over, I do my laundry, I go for a long bike ride at lunch. I do goof off while I’m at work too but that takes the form of going for coffee walks with my mates which my managers accept as “networking”.
Ultimately I sort of accept that my managers know I don’t have 40 hours of work to do per week but they would prefer that my goofing off takes the form of “team building” and not hanging out in my house. And I think I do add more value when I’m around because I’ll help juniors troubleshoot stuff that they wouldn’t necessarily call me about. But then again I’m not fussed about working in the office, it’s cheaper for me to cycle in and sit in their free air con than to make my own house cooler so I don’t care. I can see it would be a waste for people who need to commute from far away.
People should just be actually honest in this debate tbh. Yes, working from home has a lot of conveniences. But the people claiming it's all some grand conspiracy to prop up real estate or that every single manager on the planet is just too dumb to see the truth is just ridiculous.
Corporations only care about money. Obviously if they almost all universally decide to go back to working in the office, it's because it makes them more money. Not because they just want to make you suffer for no reason, while spending a fortune to do it.
lol - this is so true. And the same people who say how great it is, are also the ones talking about doing the washing and watching Netflix while being paid.
Office costs are massive - if the CEO could save a million and put it on the bottom line, they 100% would
> are also the ones talking about doing the washing and watching Netflix while being paid.
You think people in the office are working 100% of the time? "Oh let's go grab a coffee" boom, they're gone for 20 mins. Get stuck talking to a random about their weekend? 5-10 mins etc.
There are many studies showing wfh is more productive. People are taking wild guesses because returning to the office is so baffling. I spoke to someone on here recently that works with the management that make these decisions and he provided some insight.
It's not a master plan to have people quit without having to pay severance. It's not because workers are more productive (because the research shows otherwise). It's actually **incompetence** (my word, not his). The company is in a downward spiral and they don't know how to fix it. So they use rto to buy them time to figure something out. I'm sure there are still some that do it for money purposes or just because they're old and don't want to change their ways overall it just a last ditch effort to save themselves.
Quite possibly yes. I would imagine they took into consideration the hiring of the office spaces and keeping the lights on etc etc into the equation if it was worthwhile.
Some of us prefer working in the office to be fair. Also I personally feel more productive in the office.
I think the best happy medium is half a week in the office (3 days) at half at home (2 days).
My office is just 10 minutes by train then a 10 minute walk, so an easy commute, but I hate going in as they insist on the fluorescent lights on all day and they give me a headache! And I can't get up and stretch, walk around etc to improve my focus if I'm in the office.
Could just let people choose. I work with some people who are 100% in the office, despite that being double what’s mandated. Other people are trying (and some are succeeding) to go 100% WFH, including some of the management.
I'm all for choice. I prefer the office just so as my work life does not intrude into my home. I like the mental separation.
But if you want to work from home, I don't care.
Yup same for me. I distract myself too much at home and find it really hard to start. The separation via commute works well for me. My commute is easy as well being on a motorcycle. But yeah, home or office you do what makes you happy. As long as we're getting done what needs to happen who cares where it's happening
The personable side of being in the office is a bonus for some people. I love having a chat to my coworkers about there plans etc.
These ‘around the water cooler’ conversations are often conducive of a positive mental health.
Personally while the ‘idea’ of never having to goto an office sounds good in theory, I’d be a few weeks in and not be a fan or as productive… but hey, that’s just me.
I think a key fact that people often ignore in these conversations is that some offices are way better than others.
My office is awesome, and walking distance from home, so I enjoy being in here all week. It also keeps work out of my home space.
Haha, and that’s cool too. I think it really depends on the TYPE of work someone does and also their personality and work ethic.
Some people can work fantastic alone whereas others don’t and need direction.
because the owners of the majority of commercial properties in the CBD have money and influence. All they care about is their own pockets, they don't care about the normal Joe that has to commute two hours every day or about global warming.
But don't worry, at this rate, the next pandemic is not too far, it seems governments didn't learn anything from it either.
Because all us plebes are lazy bastards who wouldn't work in an iron lung without management cracking the whip over us 8 hours a day.
Don't believe me?
Just go and ask your GM. He'll set you straight!
My old work trialled WFH back in 2013. They started off with one woman who had an 18 month old with the understanding that she would have someone look after the kid during work hours.
Of course, it was cheaper for her NOT to do this, so her productivity fell drastically and they ended up making her come back into the office.
A few bad eggs have spoiled it for everyone, but unfortunately it’s hard to tell who is going to play the system beforehand. This woman was a fantastic worker before she started working from home.
To be honest I don’t know how well I’d go working from home. My Xbox sitting alone in the lounge…all lonely and not being played... it wouldn’t work out.
My entire team works remote and I can tell you from experience that 80%+ of Gen Z hires really struggle to remaining productive without the mentoring and face to face comms that their older colleagues got when starting out in their profession.
You don't get the same level of learning via osmosis when working from home or learning via a video call.
I say this as someone that has worked remotely for over 10 years.
me this morning angry af stuck in traffic, when 10000% I can work from home.
Everyone at my work 30+ years older than me, like printouts, bums on seats and being able to know what im doing every fucking minute. I've been trying for 2 years to get a WFH role, still no luck.
Because of "unscheduled coworker interractions" that result in a positive outcome. At least, that was the bullshit excuse handed down to us. Little do they know we don't want unscheduled interractions and most of which are 15 minute bullshit sessions about how we cut our lawn last weekend.
Despite what Reddit says, in my opinion it’s so much easier to work with people and get things done when in the office.
I agree short bouts of WFH increase productivity but as a daily thing I’ve found the opposite. Hybrid is the perfect mix 2 home 3 office.
Dude, your employer pays you. They can place conditions on how you work, eg working hours, working location etc. if you don’t like it, get another job.
There's a difference if it's arbitrary conditions..
I turn up to solve problems and provide value, in the trade that I take pride in.
If most bosses start demanding you wear a clown-suit too it's not really 'take-it-or-leave-it', it's more like 'why the fuck are you getting in the way of my job?'
Very true. My old job demanded everyone come in on Monday and Wednesday.
Guess what, they hired so many people during COVID they nowhere to sit.
The whole benefit of being able to work from home is flexibility. You go to the office when it makes sense and stay home when it doesn't.
>Instead of converting these office spaces into housing in inner city areas to solve the housing crisis.. we got commercial landlords forcing folks to come in an try to go back to a norm that makes our future worse.
Mate, converting office spaces into housing is not easy. It is an expensive and long journey to convert a tall office building into many rentals..
Also, some workers screw around too much at home. I've noticed a 20% jump in productivity since people went into my office.
We have a lot of the usual conspiracy theorists that every company is trying to support a failing commercial office space problem, or every company is run by narcissists, or what ever the group religion on reddit is right now.
Many companies claim an overt productivity, creativity and execution benefit from having people in offices. Goldman/Google/Zoom and others have been very clear on why they believe it works best for them.
The great news here is we live in a very capitalistic world. If working from home has substantial productivity and creativity gains, correlated with associated cost savings from commercial real estate, then new companies will step into that gap. They will outperform those who take on the "traditional" mindset and subsume them. We see this again and again, is this is an analog to digital moment? It should quickly become apparent in the next two years when companies who do not carry the commercial space costs (a good proportion of 10 year leases will have expired 2020-2025)
The next five years will show us.
Probably because people do less work at home than they do in the office.
If I WFB and finish the task that has been assigned to me, I'm not giving it in straight away. I'll fanny around the house, I'll run an errand, have a long lunch, jump on the PlayStation for a bit.
If I'm in the office I'll be bored and probably do more work.
Everyone claims to be 'more productive' at home, but it's simply not true.
Edit - also, if anyone is wondering, 'WFB' is an acronym I have coined. 'Working from bed'.
They said that about call centres and programmers years ago.
Still hiring local call centre workers and programmers.
There's only so much you can outsource without affecting output.
Because as good as meetings and work efficiency can be from home, they are always going to be better in person. Not to mention, it is way more healthy the separation of the two aspects of life.
Any job that can be done remotely from home can be done remotely from a low wage country. Anyone still working from home should be terrified their job is going to be outsourced in the next few years.
But don't let common sense stop you from walking off that cliff and ending up in the unemployment office.
I don’t know what media outlet people are parroting around this.
Companies have been hiring cheap offshore labour for decades predominantly in IT. As someone who has played a pivotal role in making decisions around vendor management and outsourcing at my company, I experienced first hand what “you get what you pay for” means. Quality of delivery is extremely poor, vendors fighting between themselves, absolutely abhorrent and hostile culture, extremely poor communication and even poor English.
Some higher up somewhere will get paid a huge bonus for delivering a subpar shitty project regardless of how it’s delivered. How do you think most of our critical infrastructure is built?
What I want to get to is - if your company could replace you for cheaper labour whether you go to the office or not then trust me they would do it without a second thought. Stop reading shitty media outlet that don’t have your best interests
Residential real estate must be owned by The De Beers Diamond Consortium because every 4th house on my block is empty and prices are going through the roof.
So micromanagers can micromanage. There is absolute no reason to physically be in an office if the productivity is the same. These weasel managers just can’t exist without someone to manage
Because some people like working in the office as a team and I honestly don’t think more than one day home is productive. It is harder as a team to get work done with half them out.
Happy for one day a week if an option but anything more becomes inefficient
It's crazy. I'm basically in an empty office most of the time with my boss not even there but still need to be there every day all day. Can't even work from home with covid.. cuz either i'm sick and take a day off or I come to the office. Middle ages..
Muddle manglers know they are not really needed. Wfh showed up their deficiencies and the fact they are not really needed by the business. So they fear for their jobs. Fuck those guys let them eat cake...
Some of us just like going to the office. What’s wrong with that?
I last about 3 days working from home in isolation before I start getting pretty depressed. I need socialization and quarantine almost broke me.
They had a chance. My partners office worked from home during covid. Productivity tanked. Once everyone went back to the office it increased. They did another WFH trial about a year ago and same thing. Unfortunately if you give our workforce a chance to be lazy they will take it.
I’m a middle manager.
I prefer to WFH but unfortunately kids straight out of uni complain they want face to face. All of us muddles with young kids love the WFH life, but it’s the boomers and the really young ones that complain and want us in.
To be fair, a day or two is good to get the creativity flowing but anything past that is bullshit.
Also, we’re more unproductive in the office - we all talk shit and interrupt each other a lot more. There’s more gossip. There’s more snarkiness. Line up all your key meetings for 1 or 2 days and then WFH 3 or 4 days
Because the powers that be don't know how to handle the collapse of CBDs and commercial real estate.
ftfy: commercial real estate makes large political donations.
That too.... Property council of Australia has a lot of reach.
Your company doesn’t care about protecting their landlord’s asset value any more than a residential renter cares about protecting their landlords house value If anything, companies are financially incentivised to reduce their office space consumption to reduce their overheads. The ACTUAL reason why companies want to kill WFH is that, despite what people want to believe, most people are far less productive when working at home. It takes a lot of willpower to do a job you don’t want to do, when your boss isn’t around to see you do it. Most people don’t have that much willpower.
This isn't supported by most studies. Ineffective in-person staff are still inneffective at home.
also if you offer WFH as an option, you’re going to have a lot more desirable candidates to choose from who wouldn’t otherwise consider the job. i think if anything that incentivizes people to be mindful of their productivity. i worked from home for a number of years, and it honestly helped me get through the menial tasks that didn’t require razor sharp focus when i could have the tv on in the background or something. at the office i was bored out of my mind and it was torturously difficult to stay on task.
Add on the fact that ineffective in person staff are likely to distract effective in person staff and I don't see how wfh isn't more productive.
This debate seems to overlook the benefits that WFH offers for some roles that don't require constant supervision or the energy of an office environment to be productive. Productivity isn't always about where you work, but how you work and the systems in place to support that work. Sure, WFH might not be a silver bullet for every industry or role, but it's definitely not the productivity black hole some make it out to be.
this will upset people to hear 😂
Yes, because people don't like misinformation.
Facts aren't welcome here.
Not to mention, if your job can be done WFH then it can also be done from India or any other country with cheap wages.
I'm fine with that. I know my job (non disclosed programming/analyst role) can't be done from India due to security reasons but I would love to be threatened with it and offered my redundancy payment.
Well, if you ignore timezones and difficulties in language, sure
Don't forget about cultural fit, knowledge and acceptance too.
I work with a company in India that manages a nationwide IT network in the US. They just work their primary hours in our business hours. Its not that hard for them to be available when the US needs them because thats kind of their whole business.
Ditto most managerial positions generally.
Most people refuse to admit that whilst WFH can be productive for focused individual work, it is detrimental to projects and team work. Virtual meetings just aren’t as effective, harder to build social connections that makes working together more effective, also allowing people to check out easily, hide behind their screens and keyboard etc. and that is why most companies are trying to force people back into the office because they don’t know how to solve that problem.
There is copious research on all this and while co-location done well for certain types of work is helpful, it can also harm collaboration and performance when done poorly. There’s a nice HBR study on some of this, link below. To summarise: Open plan offices reduce collaboration, because if two people talk they disturb everyone else. When groups that don’t need to work closely together are co-located, performance is undermined. When focused time is impossible due to distraction, innovation and problem solving collapse. But yes, when teams need to work in close coordination for complex and time-bound delivery then co-location is helpful. That’s a rare case. But many studies have shown that teams should meet in person to build trust. After a full day or two of in-person bonding, that trust will start to fall away. After about 3 months. So, quarterly in-person away days for the full team are a good idea. https://hbr.org/2019/11/the-truth-about-open-offices
It is more the youth and inexperienced that struggle with WFH. In the office they can ask more questions more frequently. The ability to have time to think, like older generations with their individual offices, makes WFH more effective for me.
But if the older generations are at home, who do the young workers ask?
The older people via group chats or direct messages. I mean ... that happens in office work as is, people sitting in the same building and sending e-mails to one another, rather than walking. As it's faster, and more polite. It's not like computers and e-mail and electronic contact forms aren't already part of work culture and reality.
I notice that younger people in general often lack the confidence to ask questions formally by chat, email or phone. It is like they have to prep themselves before asking. In the office they are much more willing to simply ask. Additionally especially for younger colleagues they get much more out of socialising at work. Helps them build networks.
Of course, because they lack experience and confidence. But that was always the case with humans. It's up to the experienced and the older people to create an atmosphere where that is welcomed, and where there's opportunity to ask "dumb" questions. For me that's part of the social contract. Reaching out. It's how you help people that are new, and it's how you help minorities and disadvantaged. When I am in a team leader position I *want* people to feel respected and appreciated. They are not employed to feel scared to contribute. A toxic work culture is toxic, no matter if it happens online or offline. Many young people socialise online outside of work. It's not that they can't.
My mate just wiggles her mouse so it looks like she’s working. As WFH has become more prevalent the supposed productivity gains have gone to shit. I can see that wfh will only be available for middle tier roles soon.
We have to have teams open all day so that also shows if u aren't 'being productive' We have so many kpi targets that it doesn't matter how much you wiggle your mouse because unmet targets will fuck you up anyway.
What does it have to do with government unless you work for the government? It's employers who decide where people can work
Wow such a clever point except who do you think sits on those councils? Who do you think owns commercial property?
We dooo, we dooooooo!
This should be at the top. The commercial realestate market is huge and very far reaching politically. It not only includes the people renting out office space, but the development and maintenance companies also. That said, its complete collapse would be pretty disastrous for the economy, we need them to pivot to residential realestate rather than yanking the rug from under them and leaving us with a bunch of unusable office blocks that nobody wants to stump up the capital to convert to usable housing. What this looks like is a slow conversion of more staff to WFH positions over the next few years, which means OP might get their wish in the next five years.
The horse and cart market would have been pretty huge in the 1910s but moving to cars was worth it. The same might happen to petrol cars soon. It's worse for the economy in the long term to prevent disruptive technologies to preserve the value of bad investments and obsolete jobs.
Speaking of that, you think car companies are going to sit by and watch people stop driving to work?
I'm sure they will engage in precisely the type of lobbying that harms the population, economy and climate. And we should tell them to GFY.
Also think of the Nepalese students serving the coffees near office buildings …. Or the owners paying them peanuts
>Also think of the Nepalese students serving the coffees near office buildings …. Or the owners paying them peanuts WFH people still might go fetch a coffee. Just not near the office, but where they are. They have more time for it too, given they need to commute less. It could revive small villages.
I'm kidding myself if I say I'm WFH whilst 100% doing company related work. However the additional time saved in commute and cost savings in transport is substantial. The greater good is really the gentrification of suburbs outside of the CBD, nobody really needs to cram into the CBD 5 days a week, us as a country really need to be more efficient with transport and use of space.
Additionally to this. I can almost guarantee that people were never working 100% of the time they were in the office. More random chats about random shit. Companies thinking that people being in the office makes them work more is pretty antiquated. Research has shown that people are more engaged with an employer who supports WFH.
In the office, I worked it out. 40% of the time I was working in my "8.5 hours" in the office as a contractor. The first 2 hours, the last hour and an hour in the middle (plus the 30 min "lunch" break" effectively had no work done in the office. Factor in travel between meetings, water breaks, dunny breaks, random chats. Some days it was more than 40%, frequently it was even less. I get so much more done at home
I just replied to someone else on this very topic but I think I goof off the same amount at home or at work, it’s just that at home I’m letting a tradie in or doing laundry and at work I’m having water cooler conversations and chatting idly to juniors about deals. My employer happens to strongly value the networking/team building aspect of the latter so they’ve mandated 3 days a week in the office. I don’t think either makes me work more - I can’t work for 7.5 hours a day either way because my job involves a lot of waiting for people to get back to me - and I don’t really mind being asked to be present in person when I’m not working because, I dunno, I feel very lucky to have a cushy office job. Plus I like the free air conditioning.
Bit does anyone spend 100% of their time in the office doing work? I definitely don't.
Me too. Ironically I’m going in to the office today, purely to attend a farewell lunch. Being up more than an hour earlier than normal so I can go sit in traffic for more than an hour isn’t sitting well with me.
The truth is I slack off way more when I'm working from home mostly because I don't have to hide it, but I also get through the same amount of work because I'll smash through it faster in the morning to allow myself more slacking off time. I have a to do list that I'll get through everyday regardless of where I'm working from. That said I don't mind going into the office I guess.
Your point about suburbs is probably the biggest gain from large numbers WFH
I am almost nearing 4 years work from home now. Best thing ever for me, my workplace clearly manages well and I get so much of my life back and I can actually fit in domestic tasks as hell 10 minutes ago I just hung up the washing. Also I think I have actually taken outright less sick days overall. I honestly think at bare minimum most places should have a degree of hybrid options, most office based roles do not NEED to be 100% in the office and so much I.T tech is becoming hosted in Azure, 365, AWS and countless cloud based shit so even being at the office people are technically are working remote as dumb as that sounds.
This plays a major part for me as well. The tiny bits of extra time throughout the day make WFH options a must-have. For example, laundry. When I WFH, I can spend those ten minutes where I have nothing to do throwing my laundry in the washing machine. At lunch, I can throw it in the dryer. By the end of the day, my laundry is done. I haven't been any less productive at work and I now have the time and mental energy left over at the end of the day that would normally have been spent on transport shenanigans and post-work laundry.
Yep, those time I do the washing, dishes, take the bins out, check the mail are what I use to do back in the day where I would get up and walk around and make a coffee or go to the dunny and take a bludge bog or whatever just to get away from my desk for a couple of minutes. Now I do the same but get actual chores done instead of letting it pile up for the end of the week or after hours work when once I would have been mentally burnt out from a full day of work and commuting. Also since late last year I have got myself into a new routine of the second I finish work, I put on my shoes and close the house up and go for my few km walk and I have lost 10kg of weight. I am still fat but it is nice to have lost a bit though lol and WFH gives me this time and mental capital to allow it to happen.
The sick days thing is so true. I work a hybrid model, 2 days a week in the office, but even with that, I have noticed a decrease in sick days. I think it's partially that I'm less exposed to sick people, so I'm not getting sick as often. It's also because if I'm feeling a bit unwell but not bedridden, I'll just work from home rather than taking a day off. Also, my mental health is better by having this flexibility. In the past, I would have probably 3-4 days each year where I just felt tired and burned out, so I would take a 'mental health' day. I haven't felt that I've needed that since I moved to the hybrid model about 3 years ago.
Because bosses love to look over a sea of people working for them and the feeling of bieng in control gives them a hard on
And then the boss doesn’t even turn up to the office
Fun fact - your boss probably doesn't wanna be there either. But their boss are making them tow the company like.
Thank fuck my boss jumped on that grenade for us below him.
I am a boss and I got to work from home during Covid. My boss couldn’t wait to get everyone back to work in the office. Me and most my direct reports did not want to go back. I ended up quitting and getting a 100% remote job as a boss somewhere else. //Removed a mention of a remote job as it’s US only and I didn’t realize this was an Australian subreddit.
>tow the company like toe the company line.
ceo of webmd made a greenscreen video of him in the office to tell his employees to come to the office.
I remember when we were in the office everyone would wait until the boss left and then pretty much 30 mins later everyone was waiting for the first person to get up to leave and then it would just be an avalanche of people flowing out the door. Some days we could all bugger off by 3PM so id just sit on the train with my laptop and work till I got home.
Thiiisssss x 10000 left my old work for this reason, job is 100% able to be done remotely (have so incredibly well for the last 4 years) bloke wanted us in the office 4 days a week "for the vibe" was fucking annoying
“For the culture/vibe” is just code for I wanna goof off but my goofing off involves forcing you to talk to me.
yeah was mainly a show for social media, make it seem like we were a huge company doing very well, I'm at a new company now doing 3x the lending than before, half the staff, have been to the office 2 times in the past 12 months only to collect gifts from clients haha
The people I actually work with are in other cities and countries, so being forced into the office is seriously a waste of time but for seeing one or two faces of higher ups. If they force me to go in I’m leaving.
I always wondered how bad their home life must be if they wanted to spend 24/7 in the office.
There's an element of this, but the major reason is the concern that people won't be as productive and can "quiet quit" more easily. It's fundamentally because measuring outcomes is harder than measuring time at desk, and some managers don't want to make the switch and do the work. A culture of distrust driven by insecure or directive-control style managers makes it worse.
Its the commercial real estate valuations. At the end of the day its all about money... And power.
I remember the sea of posts on Reddit during COVID about how much people preferred wfh because they could watch a movie or gonn by out and do the shopping, play games during work hours. Tbh I’m not surprised bosses prefer to see people actually working for them.
That happens but it's frequently balanced by people finishing stuff at other times. My bosses forced us back to the office and quickly found out that all those last minute things they used to spring on you at 445pm now get ignored or not finished cos we've gotta rush it to get a train home for an hour and a bit, whereas before none had a problem staying back 10 or 20 mins when they had no commute... Or could go pick up the kids and get dinner on then spend another 45 mins later on finishing it cos you were able to be flexible... They're all shocked Pikachu that no ones gonna stay back 20 mins in the office They were warned but ignored it for the optics of a full office, and yes, the'vibe'
Humans naturally work in cycles of crunching and procrastinating. Nobody, fucken nobody, can work at 100% capacity for 8 hours straight with a little break sandwiched somewhere in between. Anyone who says they can or do is lying to you. The worker who watches a movie in-between meetings and deadlines would just find something else to waste their time with if they're forced into an office. By the way, did you know that even before COVID, the average office worker was [only productive for less than 3 hours?](https://www.vouchercloud.com/resources/office-worker-productivity) If employer groups are actually serious about getting people back into the office, they should look at significantly reducing at-work time. Even a four day work week isn't enough, I'd want to see hours hacked off at both ends on the remaining days to make me even consider it. So yeah, if I'm chained to my laptop at home for 8 hours for literally no reason, then yes I'm going to goof off
I've been 100% wfh since covid hit. If anything, my productivity has increased because I don't have to travel. I wake up, walk a few meters, and I'm online. I'm more likely to sit at my desk and eat lunch while working to meet unreasonable deadlines set by Project managers and the business. I'm more likely (for the same reasons) to work OT. I have had very few sick days because I'm not being exposed to every grub who continues to come into work while sick, spreading it around, then everyone is taking sick leave. They're saving money on electricity. I have a markedly better work/life balance. And yes. I will watch TV or play a game during my lunch break *if* I manage to get one. So while there might have been a "sea of posts on Reddit" with people gloating about slacking off, there's the silent lot like me that actually makes wfh beneficial for both party's. For me wfh *is* the perk... Take that away and I'll move onto somewhere else that will let me continue to wfh FT... And probably get paid more too.
Not to mention they also don’t have to rent out an overpriced commercial office.
They still do, because some people prefer to work in the office. Ask someone in Brisbane who lives in an un-airconditioned share house if they prefer wfh during summer. The smart employers are moving away from "one desk per employee" style offices to more flexible team areas with flexible wfh policies.
A place I'm observing has already moved away from one desk per employee. But they've got behaviours mandating office attendance - to the point where they take a "if you're not here then you're not here" approach. So now there are employee numbers that exceed desks. But at the same time they keep doing rounds of redundancies. Taken together it's bizarre.
Kinda like a high stakes musical chairs? If you turn up late and can't a free desk, you're out?
Agreed 100% although I’m working hybrid at the moment and I can’t complain. Hopefully it stays I hate traffic commutes.
100% the same situation. And instead of spending two hours in traffic or on public transport every single day I get more precious time with my family. I am much happier (remember when a happy employee was the key to a company's success?) and more productive by far.
And still get my job done. I work, I chill, I play games etc. i also log onto work sometimes on the weekend and at night to do stuff. There’s nowhere to hide if I don’t do my job but people generally aren’t dumb fucking lemmings who need to be chained to a desk 9-5 to get their work done.
We are doing the same amount of work or more. At home people play games, at work they have pointless conversations instead, it's really no worse for the boss.
Worse for the boss if they are the ones that need someone to nod along to their pointless conversations :D. They're stucking talking to their pets if noones in the office
Our workplace does hybrid now and yes, you can goof off whilst at home but you also get urgent tasks done straight away or work longer hours with less of an impact to your work life balance before. My work switched to a largely task based rather than presentism basis and it really works. Paradoxially, I work less and get more done. Hardly ever have a day off.
Exactly this. I actually work more when WFH so it looks good. I don’t want to risk being able to do chores and the like. And I’m far more willing to do urgent things after hours than if I was travelling to/from the office every day.
Yep. My husband never worked from home but his company did allow it. They stopped WFH this year because the people that were WFH abused the situation and were not even logging 6.5 hours of actual work in their 9 hour day (approximately 1 hour for lunch break so 8 hours).
6.5/8 hours of work is actually great from a productivity perspective
Managers are kidding themselves if they think people work the full 8 hours in an office job.
Sounds like the company has a crap culture or completely ineffective leadership. It’s a misnomer that being in the office = productivity. In my experience it’s the extraverts who crave socialisation (ie less productive) or people who are avoiding their home life that like the office.
Yep. It’s all culture. You dan walk around the office and see people checking the property market or reading the news. Long chats in the coffee room, long coffee breaks at 10 and 3. Not to mention they have spent 2 hours commuting. Of course people abuse the WFH from time to time but only two metrics are relevant: 1. Is our overall productivity higher than before; and 2. Do we have higher or stable (good) employee engagement scores. Literally nothing else matters. If 10% of the workforce are fucking around I guarantee they were fucking around in the office. Its only a manger’s anxiety that they want to observe them doing it and maybe stop it which makes them make the stupid decision to ask the other 90% who are more productive and more engaged to come back to the office (hence wasting time in the commute.) Unless you have major issues with productivity (and a mature organization can measure that) then suck up the outliers and move on.
You’re spot on about this. If theyre not getting work done, no amount of wfh or office hours will change that. Most people struggle to make their day last until 4pm most days. You can normally smash out most work well in 3-4 hours. 6.5-8 is still pushing it. However a lot of bosses especially the much older gen don’t like that people can get work done well much quicker and that they still deserve the same pay
What does "6.5 hours of actual work" entail though? In an 8 hour day I'll often smash my tasks, raise all of my reports and then clear out not just mine but 3 other shared inboxes yet I've probably done maybe 5.5 hours of actual work. Maybe your husbands employer doesn't know how to measure/reward productivity.
Though wfh hours are different to office hours. They’d also not be getting 6.5 hours of actual work done in an office
Correct, without control it's like them wearing a cock ring and getting blue balls.
But how can they do that when they work in the Ivory Towers while the rest of us trudge away in Junior Executive Cubicles in the next town over?
Inadequate untrained or unsuitable managers... These people are not leaders.
If you spend the majority of your day (say 5 hrs or more) on Zoom/Teams calls, what is the point of being in an office? Water cooler gossip is overrated and leads to trouble nowadays anyway.
Depends on your job / environment. I aim to do a few days per week at home, but there is definitely value in being around your team. You pick up on things you wouldn't remotely, and easier to bounce ideas around.
People don’t want to admit it but there is so much value in actually being there face to face. Offices work and are useful. What isn’t working is car based transport. If we design places better for walking/cycling to work, it would work so much better.
>If we design places better for walking/cycling to work, it would work so much better. Better for walking/cycling to work means you have to be living near the office (not everyone is going to cycle 20km one way to the city to work). Not every company has office branches scattered everywhere. Also, everyone lives in different locations, so let's say there are different office branches scattered across the city, you have Karen who works in Parramatta and Kevin who works in City CBD, they are both doing Teams calls in the office, what is the point of going into the office?
Much like the women’s autonomy argument, people just need to be given the choice for what works for them. My company is totally hands off, but the office typically has 20-60 people in there on a day to day anyway. I rarely go in because i work better at home, but when we have big projects that require a group I go in. Just give people the power to choose and it’s all sweet.
Face to face is also a good social interaction that is valuable for humans. I’ve got a couple of friends who are now 100% WFH and they certainly aren’t the better for it socially - just withdrawn further from The world and it’s sad to see
It's a lot healthier to have friends OUTSIDE of work. There's zero reason people who WFH can't be social and active in society/ the community just because they're not sitting in front of a screen in an open plan office 5 days a week. I'd say the opposite is true, actually.
It varies depending on the person. I’ve been working from home nearly constantly since mid 2021 (last time visiting an office was October 2022). And I love it. I can focus on my work, communicate with my colleagues via chat, and have enough social energy to spend time with people outside work instead of being completely drained. And I live near the beach, so being able to go for a walk immediately before work, afterwards, or even during my lunch break is great.
30% of couples met at either education (uni mostly ) or workplace . Dating apps, mutual friends and bars share most of the rest . It’s actually a lot healthier to have friends both inside and outside work - the better your social connections, the longer you live and the happier you are
Maybe that needs to change? I think more third spaces that people can gather in to socialize OUTSIDE of work and study would make society better for everyone. People would also mix with people of other socioeconomic backgrounds more that way, and society would be less stratified.
I technically work a hybrid position - one day a month in the office (job is in Sydney, I live in Queensland)...but I've told them if my day isn't going to be chock full of face to face meetings, there's no point to my being there. Fortunately, they agree, so now it's an ad hoc arrangement.
The ridiculous online meetings are those where employees remain in their cubicles/offices even though they are in the same building! Or even worse cram in front of a single screen to accommodate an out-of-towner.
My wife's company decided to have after work drinks at 5pm on a Friday. Next to no one shows up. In NZ after work drinks on a Friday means 3pm during work hours.
Worst nightmare is drinking with colleagues after hours
My boss always wants to organize a team holiday after we've finished an audit...I've just spent all hours of the night for a month working with these people. I don't need to have a 'team building's trip afterwards. Which is just a holiday for his family and the couple outsiders that also work there.
Meh depends on the colleagues. From the ages of about 30 onwards, the most common way to make friends or sexy time people is through work.
What kind of job where you actually achieve anything has you in meetings for 5+ hours a day?!?
We're all spending our time on reddit anyway.
I’d question how likely it is that those meetings are needed or are ineffectively run. Simply replacing meeting with zoom calls isn’t good management or work practice…it’s just lazy.
Yeah as a trade myself (realising I will never have the work at home option) I would still rather see it Implemented for those that can if anything to help free up congestion!
100% I work in the trades myself and this rant was on behalf of my wife. I remembered what it was like driving to work and going home during covid. It was amazing. Next to no traffic and more work could get some as there's less travel time between jobs.
I recall driving home from Melbourne to home along the Monash Fwy and east link(two typically congested roads) and i would sit on cruise control the whole way. It was a silver lining for sure.
Yep. My **entire** job is done on a computer, but I have to go in the office 5 days a week. 8-9 hours a day sitting under glaring fluorescent lights in a soulless grey box, physically detached from the outside world. All I need is a straightjacket to complete the look. (I know there's worse jobs out there, but let me complain please.) Gonna try and find a new job that lets me WFH if I don’t get a raise on my upcoming 1-year review. Boss is obsessed with micro-managing us and I'm losing my mind.
Sounds like regardless of your raise you should be looking for a new job - you can find a higher paid , hybrid role . No point staying where you aren’t happy
Because there is aspects that are better in the office and most places are still flexible with 2 or 3 days in an office Not everyone also wants every day work from home some actually like going to an office and interacting with who they work with Offices are also not good to convert into housing as its expensive as fuck given the modifications that need to done especially plumbing
This. In my role there is a lot of collaboration, challenging each others' ideas and continuously refining our products and services. The absolute best results we can get are through in-person work, side by side, in the 'trenches'. While 1-2 days WFH per week is certainly helpful for family commitments, any more than that is an impediment to the team and business's progress. Plus I am client-facing and you cannot build good relationships in my line of work virtually over Microsoft Teams. Edit: clarifying WFH is ok if balanced
if your job is done by sitting in front of a computer it really doesn’t matter where the computer is standing, love our companies way of approaching this, our management also doesn’t micromanage everything we do, so that’s probably a requirement
WFH was spoiled by those who took the piss and didn’t do the actual “working”, or minimised it. If businesses had seen a massive productivity spike they’d obviously have continued it on as they only care about profit.
We saw no drop in productivity through and after covid with our 100% flexible policies, because we already had self-directed teams measured by outcomes rather than time at desk. We saw significant improvements in employee satisfaction and retention, even with low/no annual payrises (mandated by head office, not our call) because people view wfh as a perk worth $20-40k pa. Companies all over the world who actually measure this stuff rather than "feelings" saw the same.
I have done analysis for our company. It's not just the drop in productivity, it is the imbalanced drop in productivity. Some people do better at home but some people do almost nothing. Overall productivity is only down by small proportion. Our company can target specific users to wfh by monitoring work allocations but I assume not all companies have this luxury.
A lot of people still take the piss working from home. The amount of times I've messaged someone needing something and I don't get replies for hours is crazy 🤣
I’ll be honest, on my WFH days I’m significantly less productive. I have tradies over, I do my laundry, I go for a long bike ride at lunch. I do goof off while I’m at work too but that takes the form of going for coffee walks with my mates which my managers accept as “networking”. Ultimately I sort of accept that my managers know I don’t have 40 hours of work to do per week but they would prefer that my goofing off takes the form of “team building” and not hanging out in my house. And I think I do add more value when I’m around because I’ll help juniors troubleshoot stuff that they wouldn’t necessarily call me about. But then again I’m not fussed about working in the office, it’s cheaper for me to cycle in and sit in their free air con than to make my own house cooler so I don’t care. I can see it would be a waste for people who need to commute from far away.
People should just be actually honest in this debate tbh. Yes, working from home has a lot of conveniences. But the people claiming it's all some grand conspiracy to prop up real estate or that every single manager on the planet is just too dumb to see the truth is just ridiculous. Corporations only care about money. Obviously if they almost all universally decide to go back to working in the office, it's because it makes them more money. Not because they just want to make you suffer for no reason, while spending a fortune to do it.
[удалено]
lol - this is so true. And the same people who say how great it is, are also the ones talking about doing the washing and watching Netflix while being paid. Office costs are massive - if the CEO could save a million and put it on the bottom line, they 100% would
> are also the ones talking about doing the washing and watching Netflix while being paid. You think people in the office are working 100% of the time? "Oh let's go grab a coffee" boom, they're gone for 20 mins. Get stuck talking to a random about their weekend? 5-10 mins etc.
There are many studies showing wfh is more productive. People are taking wild guesses because returning to the office is so baffling. I spoke to someone on here recently that works with the management that make these decisions and he provided some insight. It's not a master plan to have people quit without having to pay severance. It's not because workers are more productive (because the research shows otherwise). It's actually **incompetence** (my word, not his). The company is in a downward spiral and they don't know how to fix it. So they use rto to buy them time to figure something out. I'm sure there are still some that do it for money purposes or just because they're old and don't want to change their ways overall it just a last ditch effort to save themselves.
You can really easily slack while in the office as well. It’s not hard. If you don’t want to care, you can not care anywhere.
Quite possibly yes. I would imagine they took into consideration the hiring of the office spaces and keeping the lights on etc etc into the equation if it was worthwhile.
Made them think why am i paying you so much lol
Some of us prefer working in the office to be fair. Also I personally feel more productive in the office. I think the best happy medium is half a week in the office (3 days) at half at home (2 days).
I think if we all lived 2 blocks from work most people would go into the office, it’s the commute that sucks.
My office is just 10 minutes by train then a 10 minute walk, so an easy commute, but I hate going in as they insist on the fluorescent lights on all day and they give me a headache! And I can't get up and stretch, walk around etc to improve my focus if I'm in the office.
Why can't you get up to stretch? Do they handcuff you to the chair?
Could just let people choose. I work with some people who are 100% in the office, despite that being double what’s mandated. Other people are trying (and some are succeeding) to go 100% WFH, including some of the management.
I'm all for choice. I prefer the office just so as my work life does not intrude into my home. I like the mental separation. But if you want to work from home, I don't care.
Yup same for me. I distract myself too much at home and find it really hard to start. The separation via commute works well for me. My commute is easy as well being on a motorcycle. But yeah, home or office you do what makes you happy. As long as we're getting done what needs to happen who cares where it's happening
In the office everyone just asks me to do their work for them. So much time is spent on stupid conversations and fixing basic problems
The personable side of being in the office is a bonus for some people. I love having a chat to my coworkers about there plans etc. These ‘around the water cooler’ conversations are often conducive of a positive mental health. Personally while the ‘idea’ of never having to goto an office sounds good in theory, I’d be a few weeks in and not be a fan or as productive… but hey, that’s just me.
I think a key fact that people often ignore in these conversations is that some offices are way better than others. My office is awesome, and walking distance from home, so I enjoy being in here all week. It also keeps work out of my home space.
I'm the complete opposite. Far far more productive from home, not having to listen to every mundane conversation about someone's kids etc
Haha, and that’s cool too. I think it really depends on the TYPE of work someone does and also their personality and work ethic. Some people can work fantastic alone whereas others don’t and need direction.
Maybe if you're an extrovert people person. My job involves concentration and minimal interruptions, I'm so much more productive working from home.
What if you had an office where you could lock the door?
I do. It's called my house.
I hope your role doesn't include maths
[удалено]
I’m in Adelaide so the traffic is very minimal here also I get too distracted at home. I also like the social aspect of being at a workplace.
What are people doing that's so useful if they're sitting at home or in an office anyway? Forwarding on emails?
because the owners of the majority of commercial properties in the CBD have money and influence. All they care about is their own pockets, they don't care about the normal Joe that has to commute two hours every day or about global warming. But don't worry, at this rate, the next pandemic is not too far, it seems governments didn't learn anything from it either.
Because all us plebes are lazy bastards who wouldn't work in an iron lung without management cracking the whip over us 8 hours a day. Don't believe me? Just go and ask your GM. He'll set you straight!
It's called "work"
Some ppl can wfh fine and get more done. About 2/3 don’t though and I can tell the days my workmates are in the office drastically.
My old work trialled WFH back in 2013. They started off with one woman who had an 18 month old with the understanding that she would have someone look after the kid during work hours. Of course, it was cheaper for her NOT to do this, so her productivity fell drastically and they ended up making her come back into the office. A few bad eggs have spoiled it for everyone, but unfortunately it’s hard to tell who is going to play the system beforehand. This woman was a fantastic worker before she started working from home. To be honest I don’t know how well I’d go working from home. My Xbox sitting alone in the lounge…all lonely and not being played... it wouldn’t work out.
My entire team works remote and I can tell you from experience that 80%+ of Gen Z hires really struggle to remaining productive without the mentoring and face to face comms that their older colleagues got when starting out in their profession. You don't get the same level of learning via osmosis when working from home or learning via a video call. I say this as someone that has worked remotely for over 10 years.
me this morning angry af stuck in traffic, when 10000% I can work from home. Everyone at my work 30+ years older than me, like printouts, bums on seats and being able to know what im doing every fucking minute. I've been trying for 2 years to get a WFH role, still no luck.
Because of "unscheduled coworker interractions" that result in a positive outcome. At least, that was the bullshit excuse handed down to us. Little do they know we don't want unscheduled interractions and most of which are 15 minute bullshit sessions about how we cut our lawn last weekend.
Definitely pro and cons but I do think workplaces should be required to be as flexible as possible these days. Maybe a 3/2 day split or something
Despite what Reddit says, in my opinion it’s so much easier to work with people and get things done when in the office. I agree short bouts of WFH increase productivity but as a daily thing I’ve found the opposite. Hybrid is the perfect mix 2 home 3 office.
Agreed, I can WFH for maybe a week, and did so through most of 2020, but after a while I start to go a little loopy without those random interactions.
Dude, your employer pays you. They can place conditions on how you work, eg working hours, working location etc. if you don’t like it, get another job.
You've never had a single complaint about a workplace?
Dwight here hoping his employer notices him
There's a difference if it's arbitrary conditions.. I turn up to solve problems and provide value, in the trade that I take pride in. If most bosses start demanding you wear a clown-suit too it's not really 'take-it-or-leave-it', it's more like 'why the fuck are you getting in the way of my job?'
Sure, but location of employment probably doesn’t fall within the definition of ‘arbitrary’.
Very true. My old job demanded everyone come in on Monday and Wednesday. Guess what, they hired so many people during COVID they nowhere to sit. The whole benefit of being able to work from home is flexibility. You go to the office when it makes sense and stay home when it doesn't.
Nah that makes too much sense.
>Instead of converting these office spaces into housing in inner city areas to solve the housing crisis.. we got commercial landlords forcing folks to come in an try to go back to a norm that makes our future worse. Mate, converting office spaces into housing is not easy. It is an expensive and long journey to convert a tall office building into many rentals.. Also, some workers screw around too much at home. I've noticed a 20% jump in productivity since people went into my office.
We have a lot of the usual conspiracy theorists that every company is trying to support a failing commercial office space problem, or every company is run by narcissists, or what ever the group religion on reddit is right now. Many companies claim an overt productivity, creativity and execution benefit from having people in offices. Goldman/Google/Zoom and others have been very clear on why they believe it works best for them. The great news here is we live in a very capitalistic world. If working from home has substantial productivity and creativity gains, correlated with associated cost savings from commercial real estate, then new companies will step into that gap. They will outperform those who take on the "traditional" mindset and subsume them. We see this again and again, is this is an analog to digital moment? It should quickly become apparent in the next two years when companies who do not carry the commercial space costs (a good proportion of 10 year leases will have expired 2020-2025) The next five years will show us.
Get a job that allows WFH and stop whinging
Probably because people do less work at home than they do in the office. If I WFB and finish the task that has been assigned to me, I'm not giving it in straight away. I'll fanny around the house, I'll run an errand, have a long lunch, jump on the PlayStation for a bit. If I'm in the office I'll be bored and probably do more work. Everyone claims to be 'more productive' at home, but it's simply not true. Edit - also, if anyone is wondering, 'WFB' is an acronym I have coined. 'Working from bed'.
If you can do 100% of your work from home you will be outsourced in the next few years
They said that about call centres and programmers years ago. Still hiring local call centre workers and programmers. There's only so much you can outsource without affecting output.
>They said that about call centres and programmers years ago. And they were right...
Because smarmy bosses can't get their powertrips on remotely.
You don't employ or manage people, do you?
Because as good as meetings and work efficiency can be from home, they are always going to be better in person. Not to mention, it is way more healthy the separation of the two aspects of life.
Any job that can be done remotely from home can be done remotely from a low wage country. Anyone still working from home should be terrified their job is going to be outsourced in the next few years. But don't let common sense stop you from walking off that cliff and ending up in the unemployment office.
I don’t know what media outlet people are parroting around this. Companies have been hiring cheap offshore labour for decades predominantly in IT. As someone who has played a pivotal role in making decisions around vendor management and outsourcing at my company, I experienced first hand what “you get what you pay for” means. Quality of delivery is extremely poor, vendors fighting between themselves, absolutely abhorrent and hostile culture, extremely poor communication and even poor English. Some higher up somewhere will get paid a huge bonus for delivering a subpar shitty project regardless of how it’s delivered. How do you think most of our critical infrastructure is built? What I want to get to is - if your company could replace you for cheaper labour whether you go to the office or not then trust me they would do it without a second thought. Stop reading shitty media outlet that don’t have your best interests
Be careful with what you wish for. If you work remote, who says they won't start replacing you with cheap labour from another country
They would have already if they could have got away with it.
AI will do it even cheaper soon enough
Banks have a lot of interest in commercial real estate. Whether that be investors or themselves, they can’t allow those buildings to lose value.
Residential real estate must be owned by The De Beers Diamond Consortium because every 4th house on my block is empty and prices are going through the roof.
I chalk it down to corporate micromanagement
So boomers can waste their day gossiping about other workers and wasting everyone's time.
So micromanagers can micromanage. There is absolute no reason to physically be in an office if the productivity is the same. These weasel managers just can’t exist without someone to manage
Control
Maybe some people want to go to the office and a really see other people lol?
We already live in a society that is heavily anti-social. Why continue that trend.
I been going to work for over 35 years and don't know how people expect thier employer to allow them to work from home.....I don't get it.
Because some people like working in the office as a team and I honestly don’t think more than one day home is productive. It is harder as a team to get work done with half them out. Happy for one day a week if an option but anything more becomes inefficient
It's crazy. I'm basically in an empty office most of the time with my boss not even there but still need to be there every day all day. Can't even work from home with covid.. cuz either i'm sick and take a day off or I come to the office. Middle ages..
Muddle manglers know they are not really needed. Wfh showed up their deficiencies and the fact they are not really needed by the business. So they fear for their jobs. Fuck those guys let them eat cake...
Some of us just like going to the office. What’s wrong with that? I last about 3 days working from home in isolation before I start getting pretty depressed. I need socialization and quarantine almost broke me.
I thought after covid the companies would understand but nope. I think they enjoy the torture just as much as we thought they did
Because there are too many managers that are realizing they do absolutely nothing.
They had a chance. My partners office worked from home during covid. Productivity tanked. Once everyone went back to the office it increased. They did another WFH trial about a year ago and same thing. Unfortunately if you give our workforce a chance to be lazy they will take it.
Ever heard of micro managing mate? Aussie managers love that shit, they can't do so if you're working from home.
The best I can hope for when going to the office is a friendly 'whats up' and a free fruit.
I’m a middle manager. I prefer to WFH but unfortunately kids straight out of uni complain they want face to face. All of us muddles with young kids love the WFH life, but it’s the boomers and the really young ones that complain and want us in. To be fair, a day or two is good to get the creativity flowing but anything past that is bullshit. Also, we’re more unproductive in the office - we all talk shit and interrupt each other a lot more. There’s more gossip. There’s more snarkiness. Line up all your key meetings for 1 or 2 days and then WFH 3 or 4 days
There is no justification. It's just a welfare program for CBD cafes...