turbanplanner
Active Member
Thread about the topic of workers returning to offices
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Return to office discussion
- Thread starter turbanplanner
- Start date
Undead
Senior Member
Maybe this could also be a catch all for office/corporate culture discussions.
lenaitch
Senior Member
There's been a lot of press on the federal civil service having to return to the office. Leave it to the government to take a comparatively straight forward process and screw it up, but from some of the quotes of impacted employee, there seems to be an assumption that they feel they have a say in the matter.
turbanplanner
Active Member
I get why the government pushed back to the office. Pretty much every service regular people use that is run by the federal service has gotten 10x worse than before the pandemic.
I know their offices lost some floors and people are now hotellng desks which is where part of the screwyness comes from.
ARG1
Senior Member
Just because this isn't the experience you had, doesn't mean it's false. I've been pretty accepting of the idea that the place you work at has had a different story, but the reality is there are many places where employees are itching to go back to work. This differs from company to company as cultures can vary massively, but there are many workplaces where you can just walk up to someone's cubicle to ask for favours, amongst other cultural choices that make working in an office preferably to being at home. While I'm not going to deny that some people find themselves being more productive at home, this isn't everyone, and when you're sitting at a desk you watch Netflix or play games on, it's far easier to get distracted than in a work environment. Psychology related to location absolutely affects people's work patterns.
Undead
Senior Member
@ARG1 As I see it, the issue is that most office work consists of calls and emails. Many people rightly resent being forced to wake up early and commute just to sit at their desk and do things that can be done from anywhere.
As for people itching for the office, that may well be people sucking up to management because of poor job security (or just the usual braindead HR/management narrative). I currently work somewhere with significantly better job security than standard corporate; you should hear how honest and straightforward people are about not needing/wanting to be in office. Turns out once the pressure to ass kiss is gone, you find out what people really think; and it's quite unfavorable toward the office.
As for people itching for the office, that may well be people sucking up to management because of poor job security (or just the usual braindead HR/management narrative). I currently work somewhere with significantly better job security than standard corporate; you should hear how honest and straightforward people are about not needing/wanting to be in office. Turns out once the pressure to ass kiss is gone, you find out what people really think; and it's quite unfavorable toward the office.
I don't understand how anyone can claim this given everything we know about open concept offices. Edit to add: I've seen people shopping, browsing social, listening to their music, reading random stuff online, watching video game clips on YouTube, going for relentless coffee breaks, etc at the office. Distraction at home is a total red herring.
I've been in several different places and it was the same story everywhere. At some point, it's a case of where there's smoke, there's fire.
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lead82
Senior Member
The solution is quite simple - both need to be viable options. There are times when an office day or days makes sense - team planning, 1:1 meetings, Townhalls, or training are all best done in person. Even some collaboration work is most efficient when everyone is in the same room or floor. It’s easier and faster to communicate. However, working from home is more productive if you are taking calls or doing quiet solo work.
The era of dedicated desks is over as it’s not needed since everything is digital and on people’s laptops. So I think there needs to be flexibility to support both. Work from office if you want or need. Work from home when needed or if you are sick and don’t want to spread.
What I get upset about is the mandate to go in x times a week. I’d say there is no single answer. Maybe it’s 1x a week, maybe 2x or daily. Depends on role/seniority.
The one thing the has died with mass work from home is any work culture and people relationships. It’s hard to form true bonds when everything is virtual and interactions are scheduled and focused for a particular agenda.
The era of dedicated desks is over as it’s not needed since everything is digital and on people’s laptops. So I think there needs to be flexibility to support both. Work from office if you want or need. Work from home when needed or if you are sick and don’t want to spread.
What I get upset about is the mandate to go in x times a week. I’d say there is no single answer. Maybe it’s 1x a week, maybe 2x or daily. Depends on role/seniority.
The one thing the has died with mass work from home is any work culture and people relationships. It’s hard to form true bonds when everything is virtual and interactions are scheduled and focused for a particular agenda.
Northern Light
Superstar
I'm more with @ARG1 here. I know lots of people who really missed their colleagues and the social contact; and many, many more who loathe Zoom meetings.
That's not to suggest everyone wants a full return to the office with no flexibility.
Rather its to suggest a significant number would prefer a hybrid arrangement to a purely work-from-home scenario.
Some, perhaps a minority would prefer full return to the office.
But I find the majority in the middle somewhere.
I think it really depends on how collaborative your job is; whether you meet and enjoy meeting clients, and how positive/social your workplace leans.
Some people really enjoy lunch with a colleague, different lunches out, office parties for birthdays, project completions, retirements etc.
Others, less so.
afransen
Senior Member
Have you worked in a hot/hotel desk environment? It is brutal. Constant noise, irrelevant conversations, people taking conference calls at their desk, etc. I have to listen to music to drown it out. I have some banal instrumental jazz as I find anything with vocals too distracting. I prefer to work in quiet, given the choice. Working in such an environment is antithetical to focus work. Flow states are pretty fragile and that is when many people get most of their productive work done.
Undead
Senior Member
Much less so. For the life of me, I never understood the "relationships" claim. Never did I get the feeling from in person work that I was "bonding" with anyone. In fact, the forced socializing was some of the most soul crushing s**t out there.
And if there's so much bonding going on, why are most watercooler conversations so banal? Why is it everyone forgets work the moment they step out the door? Just another of the many spurious claims around office work.
Work relationships are most often utterly superficial. That's not to say people are bad; it's just the environment is not conducive for creating trust. No matter how pleasant or social your day with coworkers might be, none of you are going to ever call each in the middle of the night for a genuine emergency.
What surprises me is people acting as if this hasn't been known for decades; that it's not an open secret what corporate life is like. But too many have bought the HR/management narrative line, hook and sinker.
And if there's so much bonding going on, why are most watercooler conversations so banal? Why is it everyone forgets work the moment they step out the door? Just another of the many spurious claims around office work.
Work relationships are most often utterly superficial. That's not to say people are bad; it's just the environment is not conducive for creating trust. No matter how pleasant or social your day with coworkers might be, none of you are going to ever call each in the middle of the night for a genuine emergency.
What surprises me is people acting as if this hasn't been known for decades; that it's not an open secret what corporate life is like. But too many have bought the HR/management narrative line, hook and sinker.
lenaitch
Senior Member
Ya, it sounds like typical government short-sighted (or perhaps more accurately - disjointed) government planning. If people were directed to work from home 'temporarily', and in the meantime the employer unloaded office space, then told every body to come back, what did they expect to happen.
I'm wondering if we didn't have a pandemic, would we even be having this discussion? Or did the pandemic simply accelerate an inevitable trend? True that, pre-Covid, there were probably pockets of employers with flexible work arrangements but I don't get the sense that it was particularly widespread. I know several people in different areas of IT from network management to software development and support to customer support and, pre-Covid, they went into their shops every day.
When I think a lot of confusion has arisen is collective agreements, labour legislation and even simply workplace culture hasn't caught up. When the employer says 'come back', some employees seem empowered enough to push back and ask why. It might be a valid question, but not from a valid position. One media account I read quoted somebody asking 'well, if you have to stay home because you or a child is sick, can it be a WFH day? A couple of years ago, that wouldn't even be a question.
How well measures like productivity can be managed really depends on the business, and there are matters such as privacy to be considered. If I'm surfing the Interweb at work on company time on the company computer, the expectation of privacy is probably less that if I'm doing the same thing at home, supposedly on company time, on my own computer. The issue of productivity also bleeds into when an employee is on or off the clock. Jurisdictions have started to deal with that but I'm not sure a lot of corporate cultures have.
ARG1
Senior Member
That's definitely an over-generalization. There are many industries (computer engineering) which is more than just calls and emails.
That's a lot of assuming. If you read my post in the other thread, you probably would've noticed that the employees are more in favour of returning to office than management is. We literally do not have enough office space for everyone, and management needs to convince people to stay at home, or to have people share cubicles and work in a hybrid environment.
I don't recall ever saying anything about open concept offices. I've never worked in one, and looking at them, I don't want to ever.
I can also anecdotally confirm that I've seen the complete offices across many companies.
T3G
Senior Member
I am extremely curious to see the demographics of all these Canadians that love WFH so much. I am a single 20 something suburbanite, and myself and everyone I've talked to at work in my age group all agree that we would despise WFH. As much as my retail job is completely worthless and I do nothing that benefits society in any form, in the long wasted months of covid the chance to go out and talk to other human beings (my coworkers - fuck customers) was the only thing that kept me remotely sane. If I had to stay cooped up all the time during those long, bleak months of lockdown, I would've lost my goddamn mind.
It's all right for some (specifically, those who already have family), but one day when I move on and get a real job, it had better have loads of in person interaction. In fact, I hope that when that day comes we'll have abandoned the WFH nonsense altogether, I do not want my work and my home life to be mixed up together in the slightest. The thought of having to waste away in my house, not even having an excuse to go into the city during the week and seeing something of real life, makes me physically ill. I've made some great friends at my current job. Then almost all of them moved on.
It's all right for some (specifically, those who already have family), but one day when I move on and get a real job, it had better have loads of in person interaction. In fact, I hope that when that day comes we'll have abandoned the WFH nonsense altogether, I do not want my work and my home life to be mixed up together in the slightest. The thought of having to waste away in my house, not even having an excuse to go into the city during the week and seeing something of real life, makes me physically ill. I've made some great friends at my current job. Then almost all of them moved on.
ARG1
Senior Member
Not every office is a hot/hotel desk environment.
I'm not saying that there aren't companies where WFH is a better experience, my point is that its nowhere near universal, and more creative/development oriented companies are different leaning towards offices being a more popular path forward.
turbanplanner
Active Member
As a manager I had people who asked to be in the office because they'd have a ton of trouble focusing on task.