Meme - "Not allowed to work from home so I don't
My job recently told me that even during the snowstorm we got earlier this week, I am not allowed to work from home at all. Even though I work in IT and do everything remotely, they want me in the office. So I deleted Teams and my email off my phone. I am no longer available after hours. My boss tried to call me for something urgent last night and couldn't reach me. He asked why today and I explained to him what I was told. I am not allowed to work from home."
Opinion: Hybrid offices are creating liability headaches for employers - The Globe and Mail - "The heyday of the hybrid office is coming to an end. Many CEOs are grumbling that model – a mash-up of remote and in-person work that gained popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic – is making their employees less productive and corroding corporate culture... Liability headaches are heaping up for companies in a range of industries as large numbers of employees work from home. They involve everything from occupational health and safety issues to privacy and security concerns. If an employee is hurt while working from home, is it a workplace injury? Should businesses provide workers with ergonomic chairs for remote work? Can health benefits be extended to workers residing in far-flung jurisdictions? What happens if a family member overhears sensitive information during a Zoom call? Are employees leaving confidential documents lying around their homes? Can companies require that employees regularly change the passwords on their residential WiFi routers to prevent cybersecurity breaches?... a 2021 decision by a Quebec administrative labour tribunal sparked a debate about the definition of workplace injuries in the era of hybrid work. In that case, Alexandria Gentile-Patti, an Air Canada call centre employee who was working from home, fell down the stairs and hurt herself during her lunch break. Although the airline conceded that she was hurt, it questioned whether the accident constituted a workplace injury since she wasn’t at her computer at the time. Not only did the tribunal rule that her fall was indeed a workplace injury, it also deemed her eligible for workers’ compensation. In making that determination, the tribunal stated her fall, which occurred just moments after she disconnected from her workstation, represented “an unforeseen and sudden event” that occurred during work... A lot of companies embraced the hybrid model to attract and retain workers. But the economy is slowing and executives are concerned about liability risks."
B.C. tribunal decision on ‘time theft’ opens door for firms to track employees more, lawyer warns - The Globe and Mail - "Sandra Robinson, an organizational psychologist at the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia, says tracking or micromanaging employees with software erodes trust and goodwill. Organizations should track outcomes, not processes. Even before the pandemic, there was a strong push to make work more results oriented... employers must focus on playing the long game and build a high-quality relationship with their employees through good remuneration and treating them with respect... Surveillance software that records every key stroke and mouse click to gauge whether an employee is working is counterproductive and will end up costing the organization, she said. “Working adults want autonomy,” Prof. Robinson said. “You don’t want your employees to feel they’re not trusted. It could backfire because the reason most companies are doing remote or hybrid is because they’re trying to attract and retain employees. If you micromanage them, they will leave.”"
Disney CEO Bob Iger tells employees to return to the office four days a week - "Iger’s four-day-per-week stipulation is relatively strict compared with other large companies, which have opted for two or three mandated in-office days for hybrid employees"
From Singapore to Japan, workers get restless as offices call - Nikkei Asia - "Recent research shows that Asian companies are more eager than their Western counterparts to open up offices and bring employees back full time, after more than two years of widespread remote work. But many employers are being met with reluctance or resistance, with some studies showing that large proportions of workers lack a feeling of "connectedness" to their organizations and are likely to quit... A survey EY published in July found that 45% of respondents in Southeast Asia indicated they were likely to leave their jobs in the next 12 months. This was the result mostly of a desire for higher pay, better career opportunities and more flexibility amid rising inflation, a shrinking labor market and an increase in jobs offering flexible work, EY said. The survey covered more than 1,500 business leaders and over 17,000 employees across 22 countries. Yet many Asian companies seem intent on forcing workers back into the office. Earlier this year, when U.S. real estate services firm CBRE surveyed 150 Asia-Pacific companies, nearly 40% of respondents were expecting staff members to work fully on site, up from 26% in 2021. This contrasted sharply with results from the U.S., Europe, Middle East and Africa, where just 5% or fewer expected workers to be in the office all the time... "One of the biggest trends that we saw in 2021 was 'The Great Resignation,' which saw resignations around the world reaching an all-time high," Leung said. "However, another phenomenon has been 'The Great Reshuffle,' which refers to a large swath of workers reconfiguring their careers and focusing on jobs that best fit their personal needs." Leung said that it is "clear that a number of factors are driving general dissatisfaction and restlessness." Companies, she continued, will need "to keep pace with new employee expectations and adopt a more holistic approach to the types of benefits they provide."... the significant majority of expats working in Europe and Australia were confident that they would remain overseas. The same could not be said for Asia, with only 5% of those in India and 16% of those in mainland China confident that they would stay put. Another set of troubling numbers for employers was released in May by the consultancy Accenture. Its survey of about 5,000 workers and 1,000 top executives in a range of countries found that in places such as Singapore, India, China and Japan, fewer than 40% of respondents felt highly connected to their colleagues and companies. One might assume that this was the result of pandemic disruptions and months or years of remote work. But a closer look at the data shows that those who worked on-site felt the least connected, versus their remote- or hybrid-working peers."
A Meta employee paid $300,000 for a cruise ship condo so he can work from home while traveling, report says - "Austin Wells, a 28-year old employee of Reality Labs, Meta's virtual reality arm, will be one of the residents on the MV Narrative. The cruise ship promises to let guests live permanently at sea – at a price. Permanent 237-square-foot studios went on the market this year for $1 million. Wells, from San Diego, told CNBC he was enticed by the opportunity to see the world while maintaining a semblance of routine that would allow him to continue working. And the 12-year lease put a cap on the price tag for the soon-to-be digital nomad... The MV Narrative, run by luxury travel company Storylines, promises residents the opportunity to visit all six continents on a 1,000-day circumnavigation, spending an average of three days in each port. The price tag includes nearly everything a resident could need, with food, drink, and laundry services provided, alongside all the recreational activities found on a luxury cruise liner like gyms and performances."
Don’t Let Employees Pick Their WFH Days - "about 70% of firms, from tiny companies to massive multinationals like Google, Citi, and HSBC, plan to move to some form of hybrid working... 32% of employees say they never want to return to working in the office... 21% tell us they never want to spend another day working from home... One concern is managing a hybrid team, where some people are at home and others are at the office. I hear endless anxiety about this generating an office in-group and a home out-group... The second concern is the risk to diversity. It turns out that who wants to work from home after the pandemic is not random. In our research we find, for example, that among college graduates with young children women want to work from home full-time almost 50% more than men. This is worrying given the evidence that working from home while your colleagues are in the office can be highly damaging to your career... allowing employees to choose their WFH schedules could contribute to a diversity crisis... This would be both a diversity loss and a legal time bomb for companies... managers should decide which days their team should WFH. For example, if the manager picks WFH on Wednesday and Friday, everyone would come in on the other days. The only exceptions should be new hires, who should come in for an extra office day each week for their first year in order to bond with other new recruits. Of course, firms that want to efficiently use their office space will need to centrally manage which teams come in on which days... To encourage coordination, companies should also make sure that teams that often work together have at least two days of overlap in the office."
Some people get very upset when I point out that some people don't like to work from home, for some reason
Diversity means forcing people to do what they don't want in pursuit of equity, resulting in everyone being unhappy
What remote work does to your brain and body - "If you’ve been working remotely for sometime now, you may have already noticed the physical impact on your body. According to Krys Hines, a Washington, D.C.-based workplace wellness and ergonomics educator at KH Ergo and Wellness, the recent shift to remote work has aged our bodies by about 10 to 15 years. “Quite abruptly people were making workspaces at home that perpetuated postural strain and mechanical stress. Work was happening at the kitchen table, on the couch, in the bed, and from a desk space without ergonomic support specific to the individual,” she says. “Essentially, people fit themselves into a workspace instead of creating a workspace for their body.” But it’s not just our bodies that are hurting. In a 2020 Microsoft study, researchers found that “remote collaboration is more mentally challenging than in-person collaboration,” but not necessarily in a good way. The study found that “brainwave patterns associated with stress and overwork were much higher when collaborating remotely than in-person.”... To counter Zoom fatigue and reduce eye strain, experts recommend breaks between meetings. According to the basic rest-activity cycle (also known as BRAC), humans are optimized to pay attention for about 45 minutes, but at 90 minutes, our cognition drops significantly. Need to jumpstart your brain? Try walking through a door to reset your short-term memory."
A boss got angry at employees' Microsoft Teams habits. It didn't go well - "He called a meeting. This was "because the manager is not impressed with our department logging onto teams at 8:35 while working from home when we're supposed to be clocking on at 8:30." The shame of it. The sheer impurity and impudence. Yet, as u/Watsis_name pointed out: "This simply means that we're starting our workday at 8:30, and it takes a few minutes for our computer to load up, the same as in the office.""
Remote work could be the reason you're not getting a raise: NBER paper | Fortune - " Remote work has an innate “amenity value,” comparable to company-provided lunch or discounted gym membership, explain the researchers. The value of remote work is taking the time that workers once spent commuting to an office and giving it back to spend with themselves and their family. There’s a price for that, the paper argues, and it could explain this year’s 3% decline in hourly earnings... the NBER researchers said they’re “hard-pressed” to find a positive amenity-value shock as huge as remote work; they peg its amenity value on wage growth at about two percentage points over the past two years. That’s the cumulative, one-time effect of transitioning to persistently high levels of working from home. A whopping 38% of the nearly 600 companies surveyed by the researchers said they’ve offered more remote roles in the past year owing to “moderate wage-growth pressures,” and 41% expect to do so in the coming year. In other words, to alleviate pressure from employees on wages, companies are turning to the “perk” of remote work instead."
Take advantage of in-office ‘anchor days’ to strengthen relationships and build skills - The Globe and Mail - "1. Deep collaboration: One of Mr. Razzetti’s six identified modes is Deep Collaboration (for example, teamwork without distraction, to accomplish a single task together). Not all collaboration is best accomplished in-person – it has been shown that an asynchronous and remote form can mitigate bias and groupthink. However, when we need to focus as a team on accomplishing one common task or goal, being together in the same room can enable quicker alignment and decision making.
2. On-the-job learning: Data from The Power of Proximity study suggests people give and receive more regular feedback when in proximity with people on their teams, even in a digital world. This type of feedback is considered “on the job” and/or “in the flow” learning, which is a critical component of building new skills.
3. Exchanging human energy: Or “casual collaboration,” per Mr. Razzetti. The Microsoft report indicates that:
85 per cent of employees would be motivated to go into the office to rebuild team bonds.
84 per cent would be motivated to go into the office if they could socialize with coworkers.
74 per cent would go to the office more frequently if they knew their “work friends” were there.
73 per cent would go to the office more frequently if they knew their direct team members would be there."
✨ on Twitter - "Work From Home is overrated. Instead, I propose Work From IKEA. Go to IKEA when it’s absolutely dead during the week and join a video conference from a different mock room every hour until your team notices."
What exactly is the dress code these days? - "Expectations in the workplace changed through the decades, but in the early days they could be easily traced to common understandings of what it meant to be “professional.” For men, the suit is the most enduring symbol of that understanding. “The suit reflected seriousness and practicality; it conveyed a hierarchy of status,” says Richard Thompson Ford in his book Dress Codes: How the Laws of Fashion Made History. Doing business—making money—was a serious endeavor for serious people, therefore looking the part was key to success. But even enduring symbols are subject to trends. In the ‘50s, it was suits accompanied by hats and overcoats. In the ‘60s, brighter colors and patterns began to emerge. The ‘70s brought forward more expressive details, like wider lapels. In the ‘80s, power suits emerged, and women got in on the trend—a physical manifestation of the fight for equality. Then casual Fridays arrived, and Silicon Valley became the hub it remains today. The tech world is rampant with hoodies, denim, and famously not wasting time thinking about what to wear, evaporating the assumption that successful people only wear suits to work. And while certain metrics of success do still come swathed in Super 120 wool blends, enough moguls adorned themselves in hoodies and flip flops that the narrative began to erode. Suddenly, an understated look meant something new. You weren’t a slob—you were a creative. That programmer isn’t lazy; she’s just got better things to do than press a shirt"
The Impact of Extent of Telecommuting on Job Satisfaction: Resolving Inconsistent Findings - "Although popular management wisdom has suggested that telecommuting enhances job satisfaction, research has found both positive and negative relationships. In this study, the authors attempt to resolve these inconsistent findings by hypothesizing a curvilinear, inverted U-shaped relationship between the extent of telecommuting and job satisfaction. Using hierarchical regression analysis on a sample of 321 professional-level employees, their findings suggest a curvilinear link between extent of telecommuting and job satisfaction, with satisfaction appearing to plateau at more extensive levels of telecommuting. In addition, task interdependence and job discretion moderated this link, suggesting that some job attributes play an important, contingent role."
Covid News: Remote Work Lets Young Americans Take Road Trips - Bloomberg - "Without kids, mortgages or offices to tie them down, some Americans are city hopping in search of new scenery and open space.
From 2020
The Big Read: Working from home becomes a nightmare when lines are blurred and boundaries trampled - "With “homeworking” taking root amid the Covid-19 pandemic, many employees in Singapore find themselves being pushed to the limits, as the boundaries between work and home become blurred... Stella told TODAY that her work environment was positive and ideal before remote working began. But once it started, “there were no lines drawn and I basically worked around the clock, even on weekends”... “Sometimes I feel that mandated work from home is a reverse social leveller because it really prohibits the less wealthy from having the conducive environment to work”... some human resource experts told TODAY that it is unrealistic to implement “right to disconnect” legislation in Singapore. Ms Angela Kuek, director of recruitment firm Meyer Consulting Group, said: “I think they can encourage these kinds of practices, but how much of it is actually put in play or how successful all these can be is another question. “It comes down to Asian culture and mentality. We work more hours, bosses need more visibility and facetime, and you have to be responsive. This work ethic has been around for decades in Singapore, so one hard and fast rule will not work.”"
No more free coffee as bankers return to Goldman Sachs - "As Labor Day weekend came to a close and bankers at Goldman Sachs shuffled back to the office on Tuesday morning for the mandatory return to a five-day in-office workweek, they found the free coffee cart, which usually sat in the lobby of the 200 West Street office, missing. The days of the complimentary “grab and go” coffee station, brought in last year as an incentive to get people back into the office, are now over, the New York Post reports, as the banking giant strips away pandemic-era perks... Goldman CEO David Solomon previously called work from home an “aberration” and told Fortune, “I just don’t think the way we work in our business is that different than it was five years ago, and I don’t think it will be different five years from now.”... Goldman is hoping to go back to the way things were before the pandemic. Over the past two years, Goldman had also paused its annual year-end performance reviews, where the company would famously cut 5% of its bottom performing employees—but Goldman executives warned this practice would come back by the end of the year... Goldman is also ending free daily car rides to and from the office, which were introduced at the start of the COVID outbreak to help those who still wished to go into the office. And it also isn’t the only company doing away with perks. Morgan Stanley has taken away free tickets to the U.S. Open tennis championship, which were once available to top performers at the bank... But as companies aggressively push to get employees back into the office, the best perk a company could offer may just be an option for hybrid work."
New York Times workers pledge not to return to office - "The New York Times expects employees to start returning to the office three days a week starting this week — but more than 1,300 journalists are saying hell no, they won’t go. It’s just the latest blow in the increasingly bitter contract dispute between the News Guild journalists union — which includes reporters and photographers, as well as some editors and business-side employees — and upper management, over wages. As of Monday, 1,316 Times workers had signed a pledge not to return to the office. This includes 879 members of the News Guild, but also members of the Times Tech Guild and the union for Wirecutter, the paper’s product-recommendation spinoff... being forced to return to the office during a period of high inflation means workers will have to spend more money on gas, mass transit, clothing and lunches, despite the lack of salary increases... “The @nytimes is giving employees branded lunch boxes this week as a return-to-office perk"... the branded NYT lunch boxes did not have any sandwiches or other lunch food inside. “They were empty,” said one source. “And the lunch box had no handles.”... Sources with knowledge of the company’s stance previously told The Post that Times management was putting off wage negotiations until many other issues — such as adding Juneteenth, Veterans Day and Indigenous Peoples Day to the calendar — were settled. But the last wage hike went into effect in March 2020. “The company negotiators are not slow-walking, they are no-walking the wage negotiations”... In addition to an 8% raise, the News Guild had been demanding a cost-of-living increase of 5.25% — and insisting that all workers who can work remotely retain that option indefinitely, and with no mandatory return to offices before July 2023"
WFH crowd returns to the office and cuts holidays short as recession clouds gather - "The City's financial institutions were forced to come up with outlandish bribes to cajole their employees to return to the office this time last year. Law firm Slaughter and May offered free breakfast, Goldman Sachs gave its bankers ice cream and investment firm Fidelity International dished out candy floss and popcorn to the workers who made it in. Those bribes have now been replaced by stern summons issued to workers who still want to stay at home. Apple has ordered its employees to return to the office for three days a week from September to encourage the “in-person collaboration that is so essential to our culture”. Chief executive Tim Cook wrote a memo to all of his employees last week calling for their return in a sign that managers have still not been able to convince staff to get back to office work... Investment banks are teeing up job cuts already, and top brass are now keen to make sure they are around so they can properly manage “a situation that might get worse”, he says, while younger bankers want to get face time with the people deciding who stays and who goes... people who live close to their workplaces may head into the office to save on energy bills, which are now forecast to soar past £5,000 just as the job cuts start to bite."
Older CEOs hate letting employees work from home - "After one CEO asked a question about the merits of hybrid work, the conversation suddenly became highly emotive. A show of hands revealed most CEOs disliked the policy of remote working. Another showed most were only getting their staff into the office for two days a week at best. Their dilemma was painfully clear. Should they force staff to return by threatening to fire them, as Elon Musk recently did at Tesla Inc.? Strongly urge them to return, like Wall Street bosses such as David Solomon of Goldman Sachs Group Inc.? Or take the same route as Tim Cook of Apple Inc., who initially demanded curbs on remote work but was forced to compromise after mass protests? As the debate raged, it turned this economics dinner into something more like a communal corporate therapy session. “It’s the biggest single issue,” the boss of a Midwest industrial group forlornly admitted... The arguments were intense and driven by culture as much as logistics and economics. As a family therapist might say, the debates showed the generations often “talk past each other.” The same words can mean very different things to people because their assumptions clash... Another theme that emerged from these debates was that most older executives blithely assume it will be easier for them to put an end to remote work when the summer is over — and if a recession hits. But this assumption may be misguided too; surveys from groups such as Gallup consistently show most people working from home today expect to continue to do so, most of the time. It is a fascinating moment to be a corporate anthropologist and a nightmare for those CEOs."
Civil servants ordered back to work sent home again because office is full
Employers be warned: If you aren't careful, remote work could become a permanent feature of your staff's employment terms - "A study on the productivity of the Canadian workforce by enterprise firm Aternity Inc. found that employees who work from home are 22 per cent less productive per hour worked relative to those at the office and, more alarmingly, found that productivity gap increases the longer employees remain home. This desire to get employees back to the office is juxtaposed with a different competing fear, that ordering employees back to work will result in many resigning at a time when it is already difficult to recruit and retain for most positions."
How a Recession Could Weaken the Work-From-Home Revolution - The Atlantic - "Sometimes, a trend that seems inevitable turns out to be a fragile creature of circumstance. For example, throughout the 2010s, a fleet of consumer-tech companies took venture-capital money to provide subsidized services—including Uber and Lyft for ride-shares and DoorDash and Postmates for food delivery. As I wrote this month, these companies were beneficiaries of a low-interest-rate environment, in which investors were eager for firms with world-conquering ambitions to burn cash and grow. Then, the party ended: Interest rates rose along with nominal wages, investors demanded profits, and now an Uber from here to the end of the block costs about $100. Recently, I’ve been wondering whether the work-from-home revolution might suffer a similar fate. Clearly, the pandemic and the brisk economic recovery helped remote work in several ways. The coronavirus closed offices, and the ensuing tight labor market gave workers power to quit jobs, fight for more money, and reject the purgatorial tradition of a daily commute... management may regain the upper hand from labor, as the Great Resignation becomes the Great Labor Slackening. Company culture will more resemble what bosses want, rather than what workers want—and that could mean a lot more butts in seats... We’re already getting little glimpses of how a bleak economic situation might burst the WFH bubble. Several weeks ago, Elon Musk told his employees to return to the office or else lose their jobs. This initially looked like a straightforward threat by an eccentric CEO with a passion for office-based proximity. But days later, Tesla announced that it would likely have to lay off 10 percent of its workforce, suggesting that Musk was using the threat of return-to-office to get some of his workers to quit on their own, without the indignity of announcing a large layoff. This morally dubious playbook is widely available. Several tech companies, including Apple, have tried out (and in some cases abandoned) a version of this stealth layoff strategy, according to the investor Jason Calacanis. “These companies are too prideful to do layoffs, so instead they say, ‘Come back to the office or quit!’”... from a purely mathematical standpoint, the most rational thing for a zombie-office company to do during a recession is to slash spending on everything related to the office"
As Remote Work Becomes Permanent, Can Manhattan Adapt? - The New York Times - "With more companies settling into a permanent period of hybrid work, the average New York City office worker is predicted to reduce annual spending near the office by $6,730 from a prepandemic total of around $13,700, the largest drop of any major city, according to research from economists at Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México, Stanford University and the University of Chicago... The decline in Manhattan office workers poses a profound threat to the city’s real estate-reliant tax base, money that helps fund schools, the police and parks. Without regular commuters, the region’s public transit systems face service cuts that will disproportionately harm workers who must show up in person. And it has also contributed to the shuttering of coffee shops, dry cleaners and other small businesses that served commuters. Vacant storefronts have increased across Manhattan, according to the city comptroller’s office, and in some parts of Midtown, one in three retail spaces are empty... Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, said this month in his annual shareholder letter that about half of his roughly 271,000 employees would be in the office five days a week, a notable shift from one of the biggest holdouts for in-person work. JPMorgan is New York City’s largest private-sector employer. Mr. Dimon also criticized virtual work, saying that it slowed decision-making and hurt “spontaneous learning and creativity.” But in the current war for talent, with job openings near record highs, many companies say flexible work policies are key to gaining an edge over competitors. Women are also far more likely to cite remote work as a job requirement... Unqork announced it would become a remote-first company, allowing employees to work from anywhere. The company almost tripled in size during the pandemic and has about 600 employees worldwide. “It’s a more efficient way to find talent,” said the firm’s chief executive, Gary Hoberman. “If they want to work in Antarctica, that’s fine,” noting that one employee did in fact spend a month of the pandemic near the South Pole... Matt Cooper, Skillshare’s chief executive, is reluctant to sign a lease on a long-term office space, worried that everyone would be pressured to use it. Whenever he sees a competitor announce a return-to-office date, he said he directs his recruiters to target engineers at those companies... Nicholas Bloom, an economist at Stanford University, found in his research that New York City’s office workers plan to cut in half the number of days they spend in the office, the most of any city except San Francisco. That poses substantial risks to the city’s tax base, which is heavily reliant on full office buildings. Before the pandemic, office buildings in Manhattan supplied more than a quarter of the city’s property tax revenue, according to the New York State Comptroller’s Office... Despite the prevalence of remote work policies, they have not necessarily triggered an exodus out of New York, some employers said. After announcing a work-from-anywhere policy in December, the number of lawyers at Quinn Emanuel reporting to its New York office remains largely unchanged at around 300. Some lawyers are instead keeping their apartments in the city and spending winters in a warmer location or a skiing destination, said Andrew Rossman, a New York managing partner at Quinn. “It’s almost shocking to me that I don’t have tons of people saying they’re going to live in a less expensive place than New York”"
Yet liberals hate rich people, gentrification and densification. Presumably the public services they demand can be financed by debt indefinitely
