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The data is clear. Workers are happier, and more productive at home. Huge benefits to society and environment as well.
The only exception seems to come from those who live alone and where work is their only physical social contact.
My work lost decades of experienced workers forcing people back to office with long commutes.
What makes you think that employers actually care if you're happy? Or that they care about society or the environment?
I have colleagues with small kids at home. They like coming into the office because the nippers distract them too much.
My employer tried imposing post-Covid RTO mandates on us, compliance was slow and reluctant, but they soon realized that they were better off selling off and/or subletting the massive office space we had. Now, a new RTO mandate would be impossible to implement because there aren't enough desks or floor space. And that's just fine. Our capex is much lower, opex has gone down a bit too. It's absurd anyway. My team is mainly made up of contractors, my customers are also non-local, they're based in different cities, so my meetings with them have to be online whether I WFH or I'm in the office. I'd rather be at home, the coffee is better and I can take conjugal breaks without distressing my coworkers.
The idea of people hauling ass all the way in to the office only to sit on zoom calls—sometimes with people in the same office—simply blows my mind.
A close person to me is sueing their employer for ADA violations because they became disabled during the pandemic while working full time WFH but now the office is RTO and they won't give them an exception to continue to WFH which is a clear ADA violation because they could do their job 100% without the accommodation when they worked for over 5 years remote.
Having oversight is not an essiental function of a job if you have ever in the past been able to accomplish the work 100% remotely.
Boy I hope they win this shit out of this.
We need to pass a law requiring employers to pay twice the payroll tax contribution for any office worker that they require to work in the office.
Not only that. Travel time should count as work time, with full reimbursement of all travel costs: gas, tickets,...
If they really feel that added cost is worth it? Let them.
Takes you three hours of travel time to get to work and back? That counts into your 8h workday, so you'll both be paid full salary for it and get to work "only" 5h at the office.
Most should quickly turn away from the idea.
My workplace requires everyone within a 50 mile radius to RTO. Because it’s a crowded metro area where a lot of workers had the same mandate at the same time, traffic is now absurd. At the outer ends of that radius, it could take well over 2 hours to drive in (and of course the further out you are, the less likely you are to be able to take public transit it). I bet paying an extra 4 hours a day would shrink that radius real quick.
The obvious effect this would have would be to make it so that employers stop hiring anyone living X distance away from the office, which I don't actually think would be a good thing.
My initial reaction is the same, but I could also see it having the positive effect of making companies lobby for better mixed zoning.
On the other hand, you know good and well who’s going to “invest” in the property around their buildings. Then it’s just company towns with extra steps..
Doubtful. If they live in an urban area, that means they need to up their compensation to compete with local talent in the city (because housing is more expensive). Whereas an employee in a suburb commuting might take a smaller pay. The extra few thousand dollars of stipend wouldn't cancel this dynamic out.
In that scenario, the pay kind of shakes out to be the same between the worker living closer in the city and the suburban commuter, if the pay is going to be lower for the suburban commuter to have them remain competitive.
So are they even really getting paid for their commute time, in that case? It seems like extra steps to arrive at the same end result.
Gotta justify the $20k/month office lease somehow.
I've been told it's a better experience to book conference rooms instead of us just being able to be remote on zoom or teams for things that require screensharing. Cause it's not like half the meeting is getting that room working 🙄.
But yeah in office is so much better
There have been a few times when it was useful being able to see the whites of their eyes, but generally, there's no benefit besides knowing how tall people are, and (not always a benefit) being aware of how they smell.
For difficult line-management conversations, though, face-to-face is better, although there was one guy who got spun up to the point where a physical altercation was possible-- luckily, I talked him down. He was having mental-health issues, his work was suffering, but didn't want a paid leave of absence so he could get his shit sorted. He was afraid we'd sack him while he was on leave (which we don't do). That problem solved itself after he had an episode outside working hours and got sectioned. He resigned while he was being treated. Luckily it wasn't the US, where police too often shoot people when they're having a crisis.