There are growing voices from the corporates to force people to go back to office 5 days a week, with NAB now taking action for full 5 days a week in the office for senior staff:
https://www.9news.com.au/national/nab-ceo-calls-end-of-flexi…
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/apr/25/time-to-go-…
Have you been asked to go back to work 5 days a week yet? Would you accept the request?
Spot on. I have to plan for my office days to involve next to zero productivity.
I share a house with 3 other people (family) , 2 of them work from home. One of them goes to their office once a week. Their companies have sent tables,chair, laptop and monitors for WFH so they have turned our lounge area into a office room. The problem is that when they are working which is 9 to 5 every weekday, they dont want any disturbances or noise in the house, I try to watch the telly ( which they moved to the kitchen/dining ) but they have online meetings every 30 minutes so they ask me to put the volume down and all i can hear is their meetings. I work in the hospitality industry so i have to go to work but my timings are mostly after 5 o clock so for the time i am home i cant do much except just stay in my room. Thanks for reading my little rant but i really want people to go start going back their offices.
I really want you to find a new house share
but they have online meetings every 30 minutes so they ask me to put the volume down and all i can hear is their meetings.
Hook up a pair of headphones to your TV? Get a wireless transmitter of some sort and a pair of Bluetooth headphones and you won't be bugging anybody.
Cmon that is too far advanced tech for some people .
And why should Oz do that? It's their place too….
Why don't the people working do it in their rooms? Or use their own headphones?
Mum and Dad get their way mate
That's not a problem with WFH, if your room-mate set up aquaponics in your lounge and told you the TV would disturb your fish, would you complain people should stop eating seafood?
pandemic. Now that it’s over
There were 147 deaths associated with COVID-19 in Australia last week (ending May 12th)?
I've worked in places with substantial WFH policies for nearly a decade. It was not just "temporarily for pandemic".
I always wonder how little self control people have when they say they can't get work done at home. Either that, or they never bothered to setup an office space/room at home.
"Now that it’s over"
Over?
more conducive to work
Have any sources to back that up (besides talking out your rear) over the years of studies suggesting the contrary? Also remote work has existed for years. People have been recruiting remote employees and contractors from different states and countries for ages before the pandemic, wtf are you talking about?
Probably a seagull manager.
We actually closing all offices globally, incl HQ in San Fran, and it'll be fully WFH or from coworking places. It'll be an interesting conversation when the loan advisor asks for employer's address and phone number
virtual office address per region likely to be used
When CR Commercial Property Group chief executive and managing director Nicole Duncan made the news a couple of days ago with negative views on Working From Home my first opinion was, she's the Director of a property group. It's in her and her company's self interest ($) to get people back into the office. Not my self interest.
Not even sure why it made the news unless they pay advertising dollars to these news channels/web pages.
Saw this too… And was like wtf else would someone in that position say.
About par for newscorp jounalism.
A large portion of news sources are owned by Rupert Murdoch. Rupert Murdoch also owns and makes money from the real estate.com.au and related businesses
No surprises with NAB, we’ve had our home loan with them for years and they are always the last to adopt good changes.
Only during lockdown.
Lets hope we lock down again soon.
Feel free to lock yourself own, but don't advocate for that vileness being imposed on other people.
Lockdowns and mandates were always, and always will be, immoral.
:D
Why you do this?
I'm amused :D
I quit when the company I worked for started to try to get people back into the office full-time, I was like yeah nah I like actually being able to help the customer and give them suggestions on how to work around certain big-corporate money hungry obstacles without like 10+ people listening to everything I say (In the fairness of all parties, but more or less biased towards the little guy trying to survive) because said people were too busy bending over for a multi-billion dollar company while trying to work up the corporate ladder and would throw you under the bus to get there (eg. reporting that you're giving advice that isn't 100% biased to the company) for a company that wouldn't give a rats ass about its employees.
Ours tried last year and 5 employees put in their 2 week notice the same week. Couldn't find replacements and we missed a pretty big deadline. Work eventually ended up dropping the office lease for a smaller co-working space and offered permanent wfh.
I think it depends. For senior managers or people managers who are involved in alot of meetings I can see the need for them to be back in the office as their work is more collaborative. But for worker drones it's probably not as important to be in the office. I currently work in the office 3 days a week and I find that perfectly acceptable. Gives a good mix for the week.
No reason you need to physically sit in the same room just to have a meeting.
Have you seen senior managers trying to operate tech? Something’s are just easier in person.
The most useless gasbags love an in person meeting to validate their importance
You can have meetings remotely but often it's less efficient, the more people in the meeting the less efficient it gets. Sometimes with the slight audio delays and lack of any normal body language or social cues it can be hard to get a word in without talking over the top of someone.
IME once people get fully experienced at remote meetings these problems diminish - a process much hastened if the meeting has a strong chair to direct it. But it is a problem for people not used to them, or who struggle with the tech.
I mean it's not as though people don't try and talk over each other, ignore social cues, or try and dominate the floor at in-person meetings anyway.
Same arrangement. 3 days a week at office. I would rather prefer 2 days only.
Yeah 3 days is bit of a pain, 2 days would be perfect. I find that my office days are shorter than my WFH days. Maybe I could do 3 days a week if they were 5 hour days.
Wonder if wfh makes it more transparent that the people that spend their time having meetings together all day and doing jobs for each other are not actually adding any value.
"doing jobs for each other" is exactly what productive teamwork is about, though.
Success is about doing work that improves the company value though so care needs to be taken that people don't keep just keep each other busy doing nothing of value.
I work 2 days a week in the office. My previous job was 100% work from home. Would only consider going fully back to the office if I was paid another 20%.
Only worth 20% for you? My price is 50% for me to 2 days to 5 days in office.
Mining industry in WA. 3 days in the office is encouraged and two at home.
Yep it’s stupid, could save on office space yet mining companies that are growing don’t want to adopt to a better way of working.
I like the balance. Days I work from home I often don’t leave the house. Best of both world is great. One engeeering firm doesn’t have enough office space so they’ve got hot desks and most people have to work from home.
Agreed my point is they should be more flexible. Everyone’s different as I would prefer a max of 2 days a week at the office.
I also don’t usually leave the house but I prefer seeing the kids off before and after school. I then usually exercise in the evening so it makes up for the lack of movement WFH.
Simple. Make it a KPI to be in office min number of days.
Sure, you’d get the brownest of brown noses and everyone else with an ounce of self esteem would leave.
I work permanently from home, it’s called being unemployed.
Storm in a tea cup. Only Elon making a big noise about this is the reason why people are writing forum threads like this.
This. Who will buy his cars if everyone is WFH?
WFH is an unexpected privilege the laptop class gained from covid and I've been enjoying it for the past 4 years. But if I'm honest with myself, my common sense tells me that a company's overall output would be greater if its employees were working at the office and actively collaborating with each other. There will be some people who are exceptions but they are just that, exceptions.
Most management are lacking in ability to be able to lead remote workforces. Ours have been great and see no need to force people back to gain better performance. Our performance skyrocketed during 2020 and hasn't taken a step back since.
Government and businesses wants people to work from office so rich people continue to get rich while working class people continue to pay taxes on salary and then pay GST to everything they buy which they can't claim under tax deduction (majority of expenses) but I refuse to work for those moron micromanagers who want to see my face in the office for the work that i have been doing form home with high efficiency …. !
Has anyone's boss yet realised that skilled overseas workers can do the same work at their home for a fraction of the cost, and lost their job, or seen a colleague replaced?
Yes but the huge difference is that quality of work is “usually” not as good and often communication barriers.
lol …. the boss is smarter than you who will not put security of their documents and work at risk to overseas worker because at the end of the day businesses in australia get revenue mostly from people living in australia and if you outsource everything means more unemployed here and means less revenue and that means the boss lose their business, freebies they claim in work related expenses and potentially lose their homes … and stay in centrelink queue with those worker that they fired to hire cheap overseas workers… lol … !
This sentence could use more full stops and fewer lols
What is that any different if you get a train to the office each day?
Sounds good in theory. Doesn’t work :)
I’ve seen the reverse eg offshore replaced with onshore. One major detriment is Timezone.
Some companies don’t really care if it doesn’t work sadly. They just keep it going and try to improve it, resulting in lost productivity by onshore workers who are too busy trying to fix issues that arise from it, all for the bottom line.
From a software perspective - I have seen project managers try to implement this, realise that the required hand-holding of offshore staff by onshore staff makes it a false economy and scrap the idea about half a dozen times - different managers, different companies. There is the odd great offshore dev (who actually gives a sh*t) - but mostly you just get what you pay for.
"you get what you pay for" is an iron rule in employing labour anyway, whether onshore or offshore.
I have the impression the only people who talk up offshoring work for a fraction of the price have never actually seen it in practice. This only works if you have automatons which means the worker themself (local or offshore) will be replaced by AI eventually anyway. Anything that requires some thought will be so muddled by cultural and middle management layers (eg Australian manager for communicating with offshore, offshore manager to communicate with Australia) that you might get an instant cost saving, but your company in the medium term(>5 years) is going to start spending more effort and money to manage the offshore operations than if you just stayed local.
Still that doesn't stop companies from of shoring. Cost is the deciding factor at the end.
Sure, while other companies are also bringing offshored functions back.
Yes, although sometimes they then realize that the skilled overseas workers aren't as good, because the actually skilled ones immigrated to the US/Australia/UK for higher salaries.
Has anyone's boss yet realised that skilled overseas workers can do the same work at their home for a fraction of the cost, and lost their job, or seen a colleague replaced?
Lol, "skilled" overseas workers.
Have you worked in the corporate world in the last 20 years?
See this post.
This was going on big time before wfh. Bosses are now realising 'skilled overseas workers' is not a thing and it costs more and loses customers..
I've worked in software places that have done this. Even workplaces that pay close to local rates to the offshore staff in an attempt to get quality work. Every time however their work was sub-par. They managed to get shit done quickly on new projects and the appeared productive initially, but building on top of their work a few weeks or months down the track was a nightmare. 1 hour tasks would take a day because of the poorly written code they produced. Not to mention the hours of wasted time dealing with bugs from their code. Many local devs would have to waste a fair bit of time monitoring their work and making sure it met standards, but things would always slip by.
Workplace culture also took a hit in some of these places. Many offshore workers would also do things like work unpaid hours on weekends/overtime etc even when they weren't expected to and make it a point to bring this up to managers in progress meetings as some sort of badge of honour. Most local devs were pretty solid with maintaining work-life balance, but juniors and mids would often feel the need to do the same to keep up unnecessarily. Eventually these devs got burnt out and left. Offshore devs would leave too once their code got to an unmaintainable state.
There were several other issues as well, including one place that had a major security breach due to the work one of these devs rushed through before a deadline. Personally I'm not sure why the difference in work quality was this large. Particularly in the workplace that was paying local rates to offshore workers.
Having a very similar experience, but the worst thing is the lack of transparency and straight up lying. Just can't get anything done because constantly getting lied to. Critical issues that we've been told dozens of times have been reworked and fixed have not been touched. Meetings are just groundhog day with the exact same agenda of issues years on end that we could easily fix locally. Always with an extra player added to the invite and mail trail each time. I did the math and the resources being applied are now 3x locally what they were + 10x OS resource. But now there is no output.
I quit (different reasons) then was asked to stay casually. Been pretty sweet as no need to go in and plenty of hours.
It won't last but fun for now!
I’ve been back in the office once since locked down started over 3 years ago
My company is leasing out three of our floors to other businesses rather than push for more time in the office.
I go in once a fortnight and the utter pointlessness of commuting is clear to me on these occasions.
The thing is with this douche is that he wants and expect people to work 27 hours in a day, no breaks and output 120%. He's a control freak and people look up to this idiot. While I admit he has some good ideas, not like humanity needs him, he's replaceable like anyone else on this planet.
Guy who owns car company says you need to drive to work.
I'm usually not a fan of Elon Musk but he's spot on here.
The entitlement of people who think they are irreplaceable and that working from home is their RIGHT. It's so messed up.
It's ending soon anyway…
Meh, it's ending in industries that stand to gain some sort of financial incentive from the general population returning to work (eg: banks)….and maybe a few deluded small/medium business owners, many of whom have gone under or taken losses form employees moving to competitors.
No one is going to deal with our broken unreliable public transport systems and waste hours of unpaid time commuting if competitors are offering wfh. Competitors who have actually bothered doing research and measuring performance and found it improves performance and retention(but hey, that's too much effort for dinosaurs). People will just move. Nothing about being entitled, it's basic supply and demand. Let the dinosaurs go under, it will leave more investor funding for businesses that are actually proactive.
Yeah, meanwhile productivity is decreasing at the highest rate since WW2.
https://fortune.com/2023/05/05/remote-work-productivity-5-st…
Reality is, it worked ok for a while but it's just not a long term thing. Let's prepare our goodbyes to WFH, it'll happen as soon as the next recession hits and no one, or near no one, will offer WFH anymore.
@liongalahad: The article is paywalled. So you're basically just going off a headline. 10/10 source. This is basically how these dinosaurs do their 'research' for wfh too. Also there's many other factors at play here in 2023 (looming recession, wage cuts, layoffs, reduced team sizes due to cost cutting expected to do the work of a full team, rising expenses, cost of living, outsourcing..etc). All of this has ramped up due to the current economic conditions and returning to the office won't fix it.
You said it yourself and the numbers were there to back it up. Productivity spiked prior to this (profanity) of an economic situation we're in. When research comes out to prove productivity has gone up in companies that have returned to the office I'll eat my words. Till then I could care less about arbitrary headlines.
@[Deactivated]: Lol. Not paywalled from here mate, see copy-paste below.
In substance, WFH is not the only culprit but it's definitely one of them, and employers will at least reduce it.
American worker productivity is declining at the fastest rate in 75 years—and it could see CEOs go to war against WFH
BYJANE THIER
May 6, 2023 at 2:11 AM GMT+8
A rebound in productivity will be key to solving many of the economy’s current issues, economic expert Gregory Daco said.
It’s been a rough three years. The globe effectively shut down as a once-per-century pandemic claimed millions of lives, while on the business front, the U.S. saw a layoff wave incomparable in modern history. Working our way back to a relative baseline has come with hiccups, like a huge shift to remote work, and then a semi-return to normal. As a mark of what a long journey it’s been, the World Health Organization just today declared COVID is no longer an emergency, after more than three years. But for a while there, amid the panic and tragedy, workers were somehow more productive than ever. Not anymore.
The U.S. has now had five consecutive quarters of year-over-year declines in productivity, according to research from EY-Parthenon, using data from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. That has never happened before, in data going back to 1948.
To figure out why this is happening, Fortune spoke with Gregory Daco, chief economist at EY-Parthenon, the global strategy consulting arm of one of the “Big Four” accounting and consulting firms. Daco has written and spoken extensively about remote work and the pandemic’s effect on the labor market. He said the low productivity reflects our current environment, defined by high inflation. Remote work is a real thing to consider, Daco said, but it’s not the only factor.
The drop in productivity, Daco tweeted Thursday, is exacerbating compensation pressures and pushing up unit labor costs. “The difficulty is that there is no magic productivity wand,” he wrote. “And cost-cutting via layoffs and wage growth compression is often ‘easier’ and faster to execute.”
Breaking down the numbers
U.S. productivity plunged 2.7% in the first quarter of this year compared to last year, EY found. That’s a 0.9% year-over-year drop. Concurrently, quarter-over-quarter output grew slightly (0.2%), and hours worked grew 3%. That means people are working longer hours and barely putting out more products, because they just aren’t as productive as they used to be.
“When you have an environment in which output is outpacing labor growth, that’s an environment of stronger productivity,” he explains to Fortune. “When you have the opposite, when output growth is sluggish but labor growth is strong, you have a weak productivity environment.”
A rebound in productivity will be key to solving many of the economy’s current issues, Daco said, as that would lift supply and thereby reduce inflationary pressures.
Over the past five or six quarters, he says, economic activity has been sluggish, even as the country has seen a resilient labor market and continued job gains. People are working longer hours, he adds, so labor utilization has also been higher. Unit labor costs grew 6.3% this quarter, while compensation grew 3.4%. That combination has created conditions for the perfect storm: Weak productivity for five quarters straight, for the first time since post-World War II.
Daco acknowledged hearing from clients that remote work could be making employees, well, work less hard. “From our clients across sectors, we hear similar stories of reduced productivity because of the new work environment,” Daco says. He acknowledged that imperfect hybrid arrangements could be a possible cause of the productivity plummet.
CEOs such as JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon and Salesforce’s Marc Benioff have argued that in-person workers are simply doing more work, better than their remote colleagues. Dimon says long-term remote work just doesn’t work for most employees; while Benioff says workers in the office consistently perform better. Both the bank and the tech giant have waffled on return-to-office mandates, but both have yielded to a hybrid plan—at least for now.
Daco, however, highlighted another factor, which he says economists often underestimate, is that, over the past 18 months, the churn of labor has been “tremendous.” He points to recent BLS and JOLTS reports, which have found that the number of job openings, hire rates and quit rates have all reached record highs.
“That tells you it’s been very difficult for employers to, essentially, train their employees and bring them up to par with the productivity levels that would have been deemed normal pre-pandemic,” he says.
When the pandemic hit, it brought a combination of early retirement, a mass exit from the workforce, and an avalanche of job-switchers, a phenomenon alternately called “the great resignation” and “the labor shortage.” Taken together, it created a dearth of productivity.
“Because people were job-hopping so regularly, there wasn’t really a chance to bring them up to the speed, or productivity, that a former worker would’ve had,” he says. In other words: the outsize rate of churn has been a key, if under-appreciated, factor in sluggish productivity.
Nonetheless, he’s optimistic numbers will trend towards normal again this year.
“Productivity is the key out of this mess we’ve been in,” he says. He characterizes the current environment as one of constraint: supply-chain constraint, labor constraint, and capital constraint. Increased productivity would alleviate each of those concerns—as well as cost pressures.
“One of the reasons sluggish productivity hurts the economy is not just that it limits supply; it leads to inflationary pressures,” he says. “Think of it like: a working employee has a cost. They have to be paid. That wage is offset by their productivity. What matters to an employer is how much they’re paying per unit of output. That’s unit labor cost.”
Generally, it’s difficult to ascertain how flexible work will impact productivity, and in turn, unit labor costs. But “the whole idea of remote work and flexible work is to allow people to be more productive,” Daco says.
Granted, that hasn’t always worked out according to plan. Workers have been using flexible hours to do things they otherwise wouldn’t have time to do during the workday—like laundry and grocery shopping—or would have had to delegate to someone else—like childcare or elderly care. Those are circumstances Dimon and Benioff would point at to argue remote workers are less productive because they’re doing chores instead of, well, working.
Now, Daco says he’s optimistic that workers and bosses are coming toward an equilibrium, where all sides are trying to be as efficient as possible to get work done in their desired amount of time. That would mean a gain in productivity, he adds.
Addressing the trust factor
The problem with flexible work is, Daco says, it all comes back to trust.
“Do you trust your employees to be working and producing the same as they would be if they’d been in the office?” he asks. “Some leaders believe that. Whether being in the office is more efficient depends on a number of things—your sector, the population you employ.”
But for a lot of white collar jobs, unlike manufacturing jobs, the fact is inescapable: the office isn’t essential. Work can be done remotely. The question is, he says, is there trust that employees are actually working?
The answer may be vital. As the labor market cools, employment growth diminishes, and the broader economy slows down, “that will gradually transfer bargaining power back towards the employer, and away from the employee,” Daco says.
As it stands, Daco said he thinks a hybrid arrangement will likely remain, but in-office cohorts will come out on top.
“We’ll probably see more weight towards three to four days in the office, rather than one or two, if the labor market slows,” he says. “I don’t think it will be all or nothing, necessarily.”
That will have big implications for the Fed and monetary policy, he says. “All else being equal, we’ll have high inflationary pressures, so the Fed will likely be more hawkish.” The rumbling banking crisis underscores the hazards to the economy of a hawkish Fed.
Productivity, in Daco’s view, is the missing part of the puzzle, because it will relax inflationary pressures. “In the absence of that productivity growth, we’ll see the Fed act more hawkish than doveish.”
@liongalahad: Dear lord, the amount of holes in this lazy clickbait article, where do I even begin…
Poorly written article, blindly blames wfh for decreased productivity. It does not provide concrete evidence for this, nor does it adequately acknowledge multiple co-related factors I mentioned earlier, going on in the same time period—most notably, the pandemic and industries that are still in recovery phase from it… in the middle of a whole slew of economic issues and a possible recession. You simply cannot compare productivity from when things were 'normal' to the current 'economic climate'… that too blindly with no concrete research.
The article's issue around trust is odd. It kinda suggests that workers can't be trusted if they're not in the office, which isn't true. Plenty of companies manage to trust their remote teams just fine. Remote workplaces existed long before the pandemic (The fact that you confidently clim "no one, or near no one, will offer WFH anymore" DESPITE this fact is odd. It shows you just have something personally against wfh workers and don't care about improving productivity). Many employers are able to measure and monitor employee output and hold feedback sessions if improvements are needed (we do this at our workplace… so far we've only had productivity issues with 2 out of ~100 employees. One improved, the other quit after several write-ups.). Again, people can pretend to work in the office too. We've had similar issues with on-site employees being unproductive too. Being able to see their faces in person didn't make a difference in both cases.
Remote work has benefits for both employers and employees. CBD LEASES ARE BLOODY EXPENSIVE, we saved $600k py on our lease when we went full wfh and moved to a smaller optional co-working space. Investors were beyond happy. Employees enjoy the work-life balance, less time stuck in traffic, and actually work better in their home environment without distractions (proactive workplaces actually MEASURE this and make changes accordingly to remote workflows instead of running to axe wfh. People can be unproductive in an office too.) The article pretty much glosses over all of this.
The article links high inflation to remote work, which odd af. There are so many other factors, like supply chain issues and government spending, that have a major role in inflation.
How are these people measuring productivity? When they say people are "working more but producing less", that's a bit too simplistic. Not all work is about cranking out widgets per hour. There are a lot of jobs, like creative roles, where productivity isn't as easy to measure.
The article (and you) seems to think we'll all end up back in the office most of the time. As long as competitors exist that have sold their leases and now operate fully remote this will never happen. Also, our workplace for example, like many, have moved to hiring from other states as well. Do we ask all these workers to fly into the office for just 2 days a week? Do we fire them? Do we force local workers to unfairly be the only ones to come into the office and risk having them walk to a competitor? Forget that, what about companies that were already fully remote before the pandemic? The article mentions none of this. It's not an all-or-nothing situation.
The article doesn't mention how tech can help with remote work. There are so many tools out there that make collaboration and communication easy, even if you're not in the office. There are also tools fore EASILY measuring performance and output.
The article quotes some big-name CEOs saying that office workers do better. But that's just a couple of opinions. It doesn't mean that's true for everyone.
"The great resignation" (lol): the article mentions high job turnover but doesn't consider how forcing people back to the office could make this worse. If people like their WFH flexibility, taking it away could just make them quit, which isn't great for productivity. Many people have been forced to buy homes further away form the cbd because house prices nearby are just plain cooked. Very few people are going to agree to a 2h commute just so their boss can oogle them at their keyboards while having the illusion of productivity.
Perhaps get into the habit of actually reading what you link and criticising it. You clearly just blindly looked at the clickbait sensationalised headline. Again, their site is paywalled ($29USD per month here… lol), it is in their financial interest to get people riled up with poorly researched sensationalised articles like these. This is not a reliable source.
@[Deactivated]: Geez, your response is probably longer than the article, which explains the position of a chief economist Ernst and Young whose whole job is to analyse data on the matter. Let's see his curriculum
Gregory Daco is Chief Economist at EY-Parthenon, Ernst & Young LLP, where he leads thematic research on the global economy, central bank policy and fiscal policy. He conducts frequent briefings for CEOs, corporate boards, trade associations and policymakers. Greg’s approach to macroeconomics makes him a frequent contributor to leading business publications worldwide.
Prior to EY, Greg was Chief US Economist at a global forecasting and quantitative analysis firm, where he led a team of economists producing forecasts, analysis and research on the economy. Greg has served as a member of the Economic Affairs Department of the Belgian Embassy in Australia and the Permanent Representation of Belgium to the UN and WTO in Geneva.
Greg is the recipient of the 2019 Consensus Economics Forecast Accuracy Award. He holds a Master of Arts in Economics from Boston University, and a Master of Science in Business Management from Université de Louvain in Belgium.
Greg is a former Board Director of the National Association for Business Economics (NABE), former President of the New York Chapter of NABE and a founder and former President of the Boston Chapter of NABE.
But no, le457 from OzBargain does not agree, he will not fall for the lazy clickbait from Fortune and this idiot Daco guy. In fact, Fortune should interview le457 next time.
@liongalahad: Because economist have NEVER been wrong right? People haven't been making fun of their incorrect predictions here month after month this year right? Let's not trust companies putting out REAL numbers and increases in profits, some even in the middle of this fking tanking ship of an economy(including the company that le457 works for). Let's not look at companies that have been successfully managing remote teams for years, some over a decade.
No, all these companies with their actual data and people who's jobs it is to analyse and build successful remote workplaces must be surely wrong. Someone in a field that has a track record of making incorrect 'predictions' and liongalahad from ozbargain who irrationally hates that a few extra people get to wfh and not spend 2-3 hrs in traffic or public transport per day, must be right. Company profits and people finally having some shred of work-life balance are irrelevant, liongalahad is upset so people need to come back to the office ASAP!. They should have interviewed liongalahad instead of the economist.
Thanks for the laugh. And yes, my response would seem long to people who like to read headlines and copy-paste details without critically analysing anything. Just looking at the results on this poll itself and the numbers I personally have from recruiters your predictions are dead wrong. On the bright side, you could have a bright future as an economist.
Grade A flog this bloke
The guy that was fooling around with Amber Turd while she was still married is handing out lessons in morality?
What is the reason that management want people in the office?
Is it because they don't trust their employees are putting in the hours at home? This is what I'd like to know. Why is it that upper management want bums on seats in the office. Having no trust in their employees is the only reason I can think of.
I work from home full time. I actually did an extra 2 hours work tonight, just because, well I was at home, and feeling relaxed being at home so I didn't feel it an issue to keep working. Wanted to finish what I was doing. Then jumped on the couch straight after.
They go back to old habits and want to see staff, for no apparent reason. Our team achieved more when we adjusted to fully WFH during COVID and then when going back to hybrid back to the old velocity.
All the $ and productivity metrics improved since the pandemic. The only thing they can sell is "culture". Ie they've lost control of how we got our work done (even though all metrics show we are writing better) and they want that back.
Half right imo. "Culture" to me washes out to ability to retain staff. If our office is always home we can work for anyone i.e. the highest bidder.
Exactly!
It’s to justify the multi million dollar 10 year lease on the office building
Yeah I do feel that this is probably one of the issues
Most banks have a superannuation arm. Superannuation has been heavily invested in commercial real estate, as it has always been a safe bet. Consider this an attempt to maintain that.
So by going to work you are actually helping yourself by ensuring your super returns are better?
money and/or power
Fixed mindset.
We were asked to go back 3 days a week.
I said sure and just never went in. Noone had raised a concern yet but I'd be happy to quit if they tried to enforce it.
(profanity) going back in the office for no reason.
We've been "asked" to come in once a week. I'm enjoying having our weekly meetings in person again rather than via Teams but find on the whole I'm far less productive. Too many distractions in the office.
I do enjoy taking a wander around the city at lunchtime but not enough to make up for the time spent actually getting there and home again.