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Interesting dynamic in your particular workplace. My corporate world is about 180 degrees different.
I've yet to have an online meeting where a quorum was all on the WebEx at 2PM sharp -- their 1PM is either running late or they had some other excuse why they were a couple minutes late. On that same thread, there's also a lot more meetings in my day now precisely because I can't catch someone in the hall or their cube. Many of those quick hallway chats become scheduled meetings when remote.
I spoke with a manager earlier this year who told me the average response times for even getting an initial response from a chat with employees is around 10 minutes with remote versus near instantaneous in-person.
I see this as the leading reason why hybrid will work in most cases: it gives some remote time to help people escape the 'i hate being in the office' dread mindset, while still giving some blocks in the week for the quick catch-ups that get dragged out in the remote world.
i do notice that many people seem to leave their computers for prolonged periods of time during the workday. It does sometimes take certain people all day to get back to my pings. There are also the handful of people who will seemingly always be "running over in the last meeting".. The meetings start without them.
maybe it depends on the personal work ethic aswell. I use my lunch hour to get a run in, which is something that's just a huge pain to do at the office compared to at home (treadmill in the building, shower 30 feet from my bed) I usually take this around 2 or 3pm depending on my meeting during the day and other team ppl know this happens. Outside of this time then I'm at my computer all day and no reason not to answer a ping or an email within seconds. Not going to say i'm 100% on task at all times, but no one is inside or outside of the office. Code takes time to run and compile, resources take time to deploy etc. But for the most part anytime 7am-7pm outside of the lunch run I'm available. Usually I'm hands on keyboard working 6 hours in the day or so and "available to help" for a few more before and after. Barely anyone ever needs anything during those hours lol but if I'm just cooking dinner or reading or something in the house anyway I don't mind answering the one off questions or whatever comes up and then people tend to be pleasantly surpised that you're paying attention to the chat
Keep in mind the conversation of efficiency isn't from an employee's point of view -- many of them will say their productivity is just fine if they're sending out chats and emails and waiting for responses. Each employee is more in control of their own time management, and that's not always a good thing.
If I'm working on something important for management and I have a quick question for 2 people in an office, I can walk to their cube and ask them, get an answer, and get back to it. If I need to get consensus from 5 people, I can hit them up for a quick huddle and get it knocked out in an in-person office setting.
While this sometimes also happens remotely, the immediacy and sense of urgency on some things vanish because everything's an email or WebEx or chat. A little red flag on an email or a flashing name in a chat box is much easier for an employee to tune out than a manager or co-worker standing 6 feet away from them trying to catch their attention. While an individual employee might actually enjoy this ability to tune out such things, it creates inefficiency.
That is what is lost with remote work -- like it or not, those (sometimes annoying) disruptions can oftentimes result in quicker results.
Exactly. That 10 mins it takes to get someone to respond to a chat adds up and can mean the difference between shipping $1mil in product, or missing a deadline and having a customer pissed at you. Right now we are in a huge supply chain crunch and tackling technical issues to get product out the door. We get grilled daily by top level procurement folks (which I dread btw) from companies you’ve all heard of.
Can’t tell you the number of times something stalled out because worker X is WFH and is needed to push something through the workflow and hasnt reponded to their chat in 20 mins at 11:14 AM. It’s frustrating at times.
Upper management knows this too which is why there is a new push to bring people back into the office. If you asked me a year ago i would have been disappointed in this move. Now I agree with it after dealing with the hassle of having critical people not in an office building. I have two open reqs that I’m interviewing for and they are 100% in office. I’m securing a cubicle for my one worker who has been WFH since March ‘20.
In terms of worker safety, we haven’t had a Covid case in our building of 300 in 6 months despite the vast majority being in 5 days a week
Remote working is great because the employee is finally measured based on their productivity, not just being there. If you can do your work in 5 hours, you now have 3 hours of time to do other things. If you were in a formal office setting you would have to be there wasting your life away for corporate BS. I can see why management doesn't like it as they are careerists and sacrificed their personal lives for their achievement at work and cannot understand why other don't think like them.
Also, remote working is great for younger employees in Boston who are priced out. If you are going to the office 1-2 times as week you can push where you live further out which makes housing more affordable.
We also don't have the problem of people not responding on chat. We use slack and msft teams. People have both on their phones too...no reason to take a while to respond.
Remote working is great because the employee is finally measured based on their productivity, not just being there. If you can do your work in 5 hours, you now have 3 hours of time to do other things. If you were in a formal office setting you would have to be there wasting your life away for corporate BS. I can see why management doesn't like it as they are careerists and sacrificed their personal lives for their achievement at work and cannot understand why other don't think like them.
Also, remote working is great for younger employees in Boston who are priced out. If you are going to the office 1-2 times as week you can push where you live further out which makes housing more affordable.
Good workplaces don't have a rigid time one must be butt-in-seat in the office (excepting positions like receptionist where butt-in-seat is the job). I like to think of most positions as project-oriented, and one is paid for getting the job done promptly rather than spending a specific time in a seat. If the product update launched or the sprint work is completed and you have errands to run in the afternoon, great -- go have fun. Take a long lunch. See you on Monday. The days of the Office Space stereotype, must-stay-until-clock-hits-5 is a dying practice, at least in tech.
When it is crunch-time though, you're there and you're responsive.
Management wants snappy response because that's one of their responsibilities. This is particularly true if you're a publicly-traded company. The market is brutally unforgiving of uncertainty or less-than-stellar performances, and that percolates downhill. It impacts compensation, stock, and other real financial incentives for employees, and no manager wants to be the one that cost everybody else their annual bonus.
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Originally Posted by msRB311
We also don't have the problem of people not responding on chat. We use slack and msft teams. People have both on their phones too...no reason to take a while to respond.
You're absolutely right that there's no reason not to answer a Slack message dinging on your phone...but it still happens all the time with remote workers.
Strange. Honestly can say I respond to messages immediately and my messages are responded to right away as well. I think there is probably more fear now of looking bad if you don't respond right away.
Keep in mind the conversation of efficiency isn't from an employee's point of view -- many of them will say their productivity is just fine if they're sending out chats and emails and waiting for responses. Each employee is more in control of their own time management, and that's not always a good thing.
If I'm working on something important for management and I have a quick question for 2 people in an office, I can walk to their cube and ask them, get an answer, and get back to it. If I need to get consensus from 5 people, I can hit them up for a quick huddle and get it knocked out in an in-person office setting.
While this sometimes also happens remotely, the immediacy and sense of urgency on some things vanish because everything's an email or WebEx or chat. A little red flag on an email or a flashing name in a chat box is much easier for an employee to tune out than a manager or co-worker standing 6 feet away from them trying to catch their attention. While an individual employee might actually enjoy this ability to tune out such things, it creates inefficiency.
That is what is lost with remote work -- like it or not, those (sometimes annoying) disruptions can oftentimes result in quicker results.
I can kinda get that but there's a difference between what you say is results and what I see is compliance.
On the northshore I was practically handed a job until they noticed I proposed it being hybrid and then then said they had people with "quick questions" it's been months and eventually they hired someone but he had to move.
You have to have employees in charge of time management because frankly much is tied to it. I was at a place where nearly everything was grant funded. As a result it had to be accounted for. So yeah you bet your behind they had to keep track of everything for billing. Walking into an office for a quick question isn't really respecting someones time. That might be ok for lower level jobs but meetings are meetings and doors exist for a reason. I worked at a place where an admin assistant literally went full on Hulk at a door while we were having a meeting to interrupt for something not vetted. She was ultimately let go.
People are used to responding to email. Yes I'm hybrid but at the same point attendance at meetings is still pretty mandatory. All that we ask is that the place be quiet. We can share screens and show things that have been done. Like it or not not all offices can work for all people. I'm not sure if my building even has an elevator so that's an ADA violation right there. I don't think anyone knows sign language so having deaf employees in the office still means messaging.
Word of mouth doesn't have that much of a legal backing which is also why office phones are dying. Many states put limits on recording conversations and voicemail systems are very hard to work with vs email and software. If someone gives me a voicemail I have no clue what it is about until I actually go into the office and listen to it. Yeah I can google the number but people can read much faster than they can hear. More importantly I deal with documentation and due dates. Yes there's some meetings that must be in person but that's pretty rare (a few times a year). If we just worked on things verbally without documentation and email backup most of our projects would be gone and we'd probably be brought to court. You have to have documentation for why things are the way they are, polices, rules, procedures etc Where I am you still can get called to a meeting with as little as a half hour notice. Meetings are pretty prompt. I turned down a small business opportunity because my meeting is 2pm sharp and I can't move it and they said it might be over and hour..o well.
I'd argue open offices don't really work. People still want the sense of a cubical wall to concentrate and if it goes open it's harder to control. Work for me is quiet to the point where I listen to streaming music and podcasts while working this isn't that odd. Sometimes when offices doors are closed it isn't so much privacy or discipline but just quiet. I know of an employer in boston that had a downstairs neighbor that was a lawyer who had a legal strategy of just raising his voice One place I was at had a housing resource above us which meant kids and that meant a playground. A coworker literally had a 2 year old having a tantrum six feet above his head!
If you can do your work in 5 hours, you now have 3 hours of time to do other things.
It's not realistic to expect that in every industry though, especially one where a worker is part of a team and other folks are counting on you to make things happen. If you are a logistics person working remotely, you really can't wrap up your work in 5 hours and call it a day at 1PM. You are still expected to work those core hours that you would be working if you were in office considering the folks on the floor are working a full 8--hour day and may need your help at any point (especially end of day).
In that example, there frequently arises end of day issues where someone in charge needs to give an answer as there is a truck waiting on a piece of equipment or questions about how to ship product to a customer who was expecting it yesterday. It's frustrating when that person who needs to make that call is WFH and not responding to a chat or email because they are in a meeting, or on the phone with someone else. Before, you could simply walk to their office (or call them out of a meeting) and give them a heads up on the situation and they would jump on it.
As more and more of these situations arise and sometimes cost the company a lot of money, upper management then makes the decision to work to bring more and more of these folks back into office, at least part of the time.
I'm not saying this it the case in every single industry working remotely, but it is the experience I've had over the last 18mos or so. Obviously all our specific industries are different, so it's interesting to read sometimes how life is in other offices.
You have to have employees in charge of time management because frankly much is tied to it. I was at a place where nearly everything was grant funded. As a result it had to be accounted for. So yeah you bet your behind they had to keep track of everything for billing. Walking into an office for a quick question isn't really respecting someones time. That might be ok for lower level jobs but meetings are meetings and doors exist for a reason. I worked at a place where an admin assistant literally went full on Hulk at a door while we were having a meeting to interrupt for something not vetted. She was ultimately let go.
It very much happens in upper-level positions as well, probably more-so as they are the decision makers and they tend to be very backed up in emails/chats. You figure out which things need to jump the queue and get immediate action and which can linger in an inbox or wait for a meeting. This may be different in different occupational circles.
The base unit of work in my world is a team of individuals. Nobody works in a silo and nobody is doing something that doesn't require parts from others (and vice versa), so the concept of 'respecting' someone else's time (PTO excepted, of course) infers that you should impact the whole team for one person. To borrow the quote, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.
This is also the scenarios where open offices work well.
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One place I was at had a housing resource above us which meant kids and that meant a playground. A coworker literally had a 2 year old having a tantrum six feet above his head!
