Six Months of Home vs. Office – I

I was surprised to see how long it has been since I had a post about developments in working in offices, working from home or otherwise remotely, and the combination now referred to as “hybrid working.”  Where have these gone in the past six months?

First was “Forget Free Coffee.  What Matters Is if Workers Feel Returning Is Worth It,” by Hanna Ingber, on October 29^th in the New York Times.  This piece mentioned that employees newly required to report some days in person, which “after so long away was always going to be a jarring transition,” often complained that “their lives had changed during the pandemic, and they have had to unravel their at-home lifestyle,” including how to “sort out child care and find time to keep exercising,” with problems “no matter what free snacks a company provided.”  As well, “multiple people said the dog was not happy.”  Many then were leaving, or at least threatening that, for more remote pastures.  The question hanging in the air is “how many hours is this scheduling freedom costing employers?” 

A way in which management has been dealing with people out of sight led to “Remote employee monitoring tech is surging” (Hayden Field, Emerging Tech Brew, November 23^rd).  From “pre-pandemic” to “the end of 2021” the share of firms using “tech to measure employee productivity” doubled to 60%, with “eight of the 10 largest private US employers” included by August 2022.  Some of that is from not only more people working from home but the pandemic-caused necessity that all, including those they might not trust, do their jobs from outside the office.  There is much here about measuring productivity, which is easy for data entry, but how can they do that for most cubicle jobs, where neither keystrokes nor hours spent measure effectiveness?  I would be more sympathetic to workers’ indignation if those complaining the loudest were not often those who needed monitoring the most.

On we go to “The open questions of hybrid working” (The Economist, December 1^st).  The column told us that “the office is not dead but many professionals have settled into a hybrid arrangement of some office days and some remote days.”  One study found that workers appearing in person between 23% and 40% of the time “performed best on various performance measures,” and another pointed toward younger employees needing to be there more.  The other issue here was “how strictly to enforce attendance on days when teams are meant to be in the office,” if the same days were expected for all.

Then, we have “A new challenge for hybrid and remote workers:  Promotions” (Lee Hafner, Benefit News, January 19^th).  Not recent, as “if 80% of success is showing up, how can employees in a home office prove themselves equal to their in-office peers?”  One answer, as I have written before, is to accept that as a disadvantage of appearing less in the office – that is unsatisfying yet may be more realistic than expecting companies “to tap into the individual productivity of their workers and make sure that all are on the same page when it comes to responsibilities and company expectations.”  It is still necessary for ambitious employees to “look for opportunities to engage” and otherwise keep high profiles, and such political realities, critically important since before remote work, cannot be expected to disappear.

Back to nebulous total-time expectations with “5 things employers should know about caregiving and remote work” (Deanna Cuadra, Benefit News, January 19^th).  These are “remote work is leveling the gender playing field” assuming acceptability of frequently going back and forth between personal and employment responsibilities, “managers and caregivers are on the same page” likewise, “there doesn’t have to be a downside to remote work” which is highly debatable, “caregivers are working more at home – but they don’t mind” but unclear how or even if they are deducting business-hours child care, and “remote work is here to stay” which if no employee percentages are included is not open to question.  This piece reminded us that the subject of working from home has many questions neither side wants to ask or answer.

Finally this week, representing the other side was “Bad news, remote workers:  You need to return to the office for your employer to succeed” (Bob Shultz, USA Today, February 2^nd).  This president and CFO of Puritan Medical Products held that “workplace culture binds a company together,” and “it is almost impossible to build a strong, cohesive workplace culture if most workers are not actually on-site.”  Per Shultz, hybrid setups “are more likely to succeed, given the face-to-face component, but fully remote situations are not nearly as conducive to corporate collaboration,” backed by 2022 research showing “that remote workers do not tend to replace in-person interactions with virtual ones; rather they’re more likely to just drop those interactions together,” and by “a study of 60,000 Microsoft employees (which) found that remote work caused them to “become more static and siloed, with fewer bridges between disparate parts.”  He mentioned Bob Iger, Disney CEO, “urging” people to report in person a minimum of four weekly days and saying that “in a creative business like ours, nothing can replace the ability to connect, observe and create with peers that comes from being physically together, nor the opportunity to grow professionally by learning from leaders and mentors.” 

Overall, do we have a split between employees and employers, or is there more than that?  What looks like the truth?  What other elephants are in this room?  What has happened in the 2 ½ months since?  See next week’s post for all this and more.