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If you were to ask me how many hours a day I work in the office, on average, it wouldn't exactly be one, but it wouldn't be four or more either. The office I work in has two problems, inconsistent work volume, and lack of clearly defined job functions. In my case, the reason I only work 3-4 hours a day on average isn't due to lack of work ethic or whatever, it's because on an average day there is only 3-4 hours of actual work to do. Yeah, sometimes you get swamped with projects or meetings, sometimes you just see a higher volume, but it's difficult to balance having a productive workforce, without periodic or permanent layoffs, or relying heavily on temps.
I suppose how I could see how it might become an HR nightmare for a lot of companies wanting to avoid claims of disparate treatment, but as long as it was fair and uniform amongst job titles, I don't really see where anyone would have a leg to stand on.
The argument I see most frequently against remote working is that working face to face with other people allows more face to face interaction, teamwork, and group dynamics, which may be true in some fields like marketing, but is a bunch of crap for a lot of other fields. For me personally, 90% of the problems I have with my job and in the office are the morons I work with. If I didn't have to go to the office every day and see these people, I would probably be twice and productive and 10x happier. I think a lot of people are in the same boat.
But this is the problem. Not everyone can work from home. That sounds simple, but it's not. I worked for a company that allowed people to work from home. Everyone started out great, and then a percentage of them were less and less responsible. You'd call their business line during the day and would leave a message and they would return the call two hours later. Working from home isn't for everyone - it takes a lot of discipline. People can be highly effective in an office environment and then lack the discipline to work from home.
It's one more way for companies to leave themselves open to complaints, accusations of discrimination, etc., so they just deny everyone. That seems unfair, but it's the easiest thing for many companies to do.
And the other issue has already been brought up. The CEO of yahoo (can't recall her name) rescinded the policy allowing people to work from home because while they were effective, they were not collaborative and she found the result to be fewer creative ideas.
In some companies, it works very well. But it doesn't always, and many companies just don't want to mess with it.
Not to mention companies need to ensure there is secure and reliable IT infrastructure in place. Plus there are unclear issues of liability/worker's comp if someone is injured in their home office. SO many issues and things to consider.
But to be honest, I think for most companies they don't trust their workers to be productive unless the employee fears the manager walking by their cube.
Of course that's silly because these same employees are trusted to speak to customers, use the corporate credit card responsibly, only call out sick when they're actually sick, etc. etc.
I've seen more people wasting time at the office than I ever personally did when I worked at home fulltime. I always felt like I had to prove myself and my output when I was at home-based. I'd venture a guess I worked harder when I was at home than when I physically was present 8 hours at the office.
Agreed with most of what's been said, though I think managers are just not finding effective ways of ensuring people are actually working remotely for enough hours.
Maybe employers actually care more about productivity. If you can get what you need to get done within a few hours, remotely, what's the issue?
Agreed with most of what's been said, though I think managers are just not finding effective ways of ensuring people are actually working remotely for enough hours.
Maybe employers actually care more about productivity. If you can get what you need to get done within a few hours, remotely, what's the issue?
Well that's always been my point of contention. Far too many employers hold steadfastly to the concept of the 40 hour work week, when the reality is that technology and efficiency has made it so that most jobs that used to take 40 hours a week to accomplish can now be done in 30 hours or less. So if I can get my work done in 30 hours but you insist on 40 hours of production, than either A. You need to lay people off so I can pick up their work load, B. Be upfront about the fact that I'm probably over qualified for what it is that I'm doing and either work with me to try and find a new position that better fits my skills or C. Just admit that there simply isn't enough work volume and give me some separation papers so I can collect and look for a new job. Good luck finding an employer willing to do that however.
At my job, a wasteful non-profit, other than the production workers in the factory, if you strip away the clique conversations, doing useless paperwork, drama created by managers who would never cut it in any private sector job, and other random distractions, anyone might only be doing about four hours of work a day on average. We are on overtime now, and it would be totally unnecessary with proper management.
Conversely, when I freelanced out of my house, I might have worked 8-12 hours, non-stop in a day to meet my deadlines. I know that will never apply to all, but for me, focusing more on outcomes rather than when the time spent getting those outcomes was, would show I did more work from home in the end.
From a risk-management standpoint, not managing remote workers' activities tightly opens up a can of worms.
Let's say the remote worker occasionally sneaks out of the house for a couple of hours during the workday to run personal errands. One day when he does this, he gets into an auto accident in which he is at fault. It happened during what were supposed to be work hours and someone in another vehicle got seriously injured. The employer could get sued for activities about which management was blissfully unaware.
But it really depends on the position as much as the person. My group is almost 100% remote because we can be, and because it's kind of hard to tell people they are responsible 24/7/365 without giving them something in return, such as the choice to work all evening instead of all day. My group's productivity drops about 40% when they work in the office, because people come in with cocktail napkins all day long wanting to "socialize" ideas (their words, not mine). OF all the abjectly stupid reasons, that has to take the top position. We can meet among ourselves one day per quarter and accomplish what takes people in the office 3 months to get together, because they get into these obscenely long "planning" sessions where nothing gets done. Then they have another meeting to fix the last one.
Also, there are some people who just can't understand how work gets done unless they can SEE IT taking place. These peoples' days are numbered in white collar work--they just don't realize it yet.
obviously, they want to know you are actually working. That's the simplest answer.
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