Principal Financial-Remote work

[cycloneG]

not speaking for IT, but for everyone else there are repercussions for companies that do not have employees in the office. For one, there is less mentoring going on, so younger or newer people are not learning at the rate they should be or are making mistakes that if they were in direct contact with a mentor would have been avoid. The others are company culture and positive benefits of collaboration, people feeding off of each other. The happy medium is probably let employees work from home one or two days a week and be in the office at other times.

It is essential for cities like Des Moines to have a strong and healthy core. The companies want access to young talent. Yes young people like the idea of working from home, but they also want to live in cities with an active arts and music scene. It takes a strong core to make that happen. If things fall apart in the core, it makes it way harder for companies to recruit talent, they will just lose out to Minneapolis, Chicago, Kansas City, Denver etc.. Des Moines went through this decades ago, the civic leaders and business leaders recognized they had a problem in that there was a brain drain, they were losing talent to other places. So they hired a consultant who told them to reverse this trend, they had better create an environment and invest in a healthy arts and music scene. They did it and it worked.

I've been able to mentor my new employees and we're all remote. A huge benefit to hiring 100% remote positions is the much larger talent pool you can draw from. I interviewed candidates from all over the world a few months ago for an open position and had to turn down several amazing candidates.

 

[SCNCY]

If the reason for returning to office is because of loss of productivity, then that is just poor management. A manager should be able to know what their employees are working on and if its getting done. This kind of management behavior happens in the office as well; it's not going to change.

I've said this before, but so long your completing your set of responsibilities on time, it doesn't matter where you do it. If management thinks that you get paid for the time, then fine, let me know what you'd like me to do during my working hours; but they generally have little idea what your actually doing. Going in to the office isn't going to change that. It's a management problem and their lack of monitoring their teams productivity.

And as others have mentioned, cities are pushing for companies to bring their employees back in to the office due to supporting businesses. New York is pushing for this as my wife's company is trying to get people in to the office more as well.

Overall, if your leasing office space, this is an opportunity to downsize unneeded space and push that cost on to your employees. Maintain a small office for when it may be necessary, and to maintain technology infrastructure. But outside of that, I see little value in leasing large office spaces. If you own buildings, you'll be in a bind as selling that will be hard.

 

[cowgirl836]

That’s piss poor management though. Return to the office is just an excuse for poor management abilities. Competent managers can manage flexible work schedules. If people need to be in the office for something it is the managers responsibility to manage that requirement.

Does anyone have the actual new policy?

Where is the data? These companies don't make a new acquisition or major investment without poring over the financial data. They have yearly targets and hard numbers they are working with. In contrast, all these RTO (that I've seen) are based on vague notions of culture and feelings. There's never a "we saw X% negative change that we think this will address." If it were based on data about how to improve employee engagement, they'd probably be looking at a four day workweek, diversifying leadership,creating more robust benefits, and pay transparency.

And RTOs often have an extremely poor rollout plan - sometimes just a couple weeks - which totally ***** people with caregiving responsibilties, transport issues, and other challenges. A lot of the time, I think these are just passive aggressive layoffs. Which is also dumb because they people most likely to quickly leave are probably your better employees.

 

[jsb]

Husband’s work decided to let people in his position company wide go remote after Covid restrictions were lifted.

Only one person does his job in each of their facilities and they have found work from home easier to cover for each other when someone is taking time off or is ill. He finds that the dog and I interrupt him less than his coworkers and those they serve did when he was driving two hours every day.

People still call a lot with questions cause he is the most experienced person at his job, but less drop ins asking how about them Hawks?

we are supposed to 'collaborate' when we go into the office. I 'collaborate' by going to get coffee with my friends and taking a longer lunch. At home I do none of that.

 

[SCNCY]

The company I work for I'm pretty sure just loses a whole bunch of tax breaks for the commercial space they lease.

But do those tax breaks cover the entire portion of a lease? Downsizing leasing office space will eliminate that cost 100%; tax breaks I assume only cover a portion of the lease.

 

[JP4CY]

My wife says she gets WAY more done at home vs going in. She has less meetings, usually now works when she'd be commuting, and may hop online at night once in a while.

 

[houjix]

Wife works for WF and they have ben requiring 3 days a week in the office for several months now. Although they are just counting badge swipes. My wife has gone in for about 2 hours somedays and worked the rest from home and it has counted as a day.

 

[dmclone]

Principal has a LOT of real estate downtown. At least 4 buildings (not counting 801 Grand) that can hold probably 5k+ people

 

[Jeremy]

I agree - but in addition I also have a theory that the people who are promoted - especially to the C-Suite level - are extroverts (often extreme extroverts). They require the personal interaction to drive their energy levels for the day, they thrive off of it and fundamentally don't understand how anyone (us introverts) can operate without that endorphin boost they get from the personal interactions.

Absolutely agree, just shortened my message

 

[CloniesForLife]

Where is the data? These companies don't make a new acquisition or major investment without poring over the financial data. They have yearly targets and hard numbers they are working with. In contrast, all these RTO (that I've seen) are based on vague notions of culture and feelings. There's never a "we saw X% negative change that we think this will address." If it were based on data about how to improve employee engagement, they'd probably be looking at a four day workweek, diversifying leadership,creating more robust benefits, and pay transparency.

And RTOs often have an extremely poor rollout plan - sometimes just a couple weeks - which totally ***** people with caregiving responsibilties, transport issues, and other challenges. A lot of the time, I think these are just passive aggressive layoffs. Which is also dumb because they people most likely to quickly leave are probably your better employees.

Yeah my wife's company just rolled it out out of nowhere.

 

[Rabbuk]

But do those tax breaks cover the entire portion of a lease? Downsizing leasing office space will eliminate that cost 100%; tax breaks I assume only cover a portion of the lease.

I'm assuming the breaks themselves are negotiated more often than the lease term but idk for sure. The buildings I'm talking about are huge so I'm guessing the leases are pretty long.

 

[madguy30]

If someone doesn't want to do their job making them come into the office isn't going to change that. People can **** around and be unproductive in the office too. I've seen it plenty.

When I worked in an office I would schedule my appointments around others' to avoid interacting with them because they would interrupt me often. I actually liked working on Saturday mornings when it was closed, to get paper work done in a timely fashion.

Some of those folks may have been in the office 9-5, but that doesn't mean they were working their fingers to the bone the whole time. That was more for customer availability so I didn't care but this idea that someone can't get a job done if they're not getting after it the whole day is a farce.

 

[CloniesForLife]

When I worked in an office I would schedule my appointments around others' to avoid interacting with them and actually liked working on Saturday mornings when it was closed, to get paper work done in a timely fashion.

Some of those folks may have been in the office 9-5, but that doesn't mean they were working their fingers to the bone the whole time. That was more for customer availability so I didn't care but this idea that someone can't get a job done if they're not getting after it the whole day is a farce.

I know plenty of people that are in the office and seem to "work late" but don't get nearly as much done and I know they **** around a lot in office

 

[ClonesFTW]

I tend to think it is more of, "Well we're paying for the lease for this building so we're going to use it" attitude. The thousands of TikTok videos of remote workers bragging about doing nothing certainly doesn't help. I've worked both remote and in-office, doesn't affect my productivity either way but it does for some.

 

[cowgirl836]

Yeah my wife's company just rolled it out out of nowhere.

Which to me is then the giveaway that this has nothing to do with improving productivity, employee engagement, culture - any of it. Because that is not how you do change management.

I'm actually not against hybrid schedules. If it's well-structured, strategic, and rolled out thoughtfully.

 

[madguy30]

I'm less productive in an office.

The distractions are impossible to keep out. Our company has a policy saying we are not to attend meetings if we don't believe there's a benefit and it's acceptable to leave the call if it's not beneficial.

How many goddam meetings have we all been stuck in because of obligation even when there's nothing in it for us? Stuck sitting there trying not to yawn.

Just had dinner with someone last night who's company did the math on how much money is wasted on mundane acronym filled meetings and they decided to cut them out of the regular schedule. I think if people really need to meet, they figure out a time to do it.

 

[madguy30]

I tend to think it is more of, "Well we're paying for the lease for this building so we're going to use it" attitude. The thousands of TikTok videos of remote workers bragging about doing nothing certainly doesn't help. I've worked both remote and in-office, doesn't affect my productivity either way but it does for some.

Are they doing nothing or just showing themselves with nothing to do after getting the needed work done that they're paid to do?

It's Tik Tok which is full of people with too much time on their hands as it is so I'd guess the former haha.

 

[madguy30]

I know plenty of people that are in the office and seem to "work late" but don't get nearly as much done and I know they **** around a lot in office

The person I avoided was my supervisor who could take ANYTHING simple and create a crisis that would last well into the afternoon/evening.

I was at my best if I could just go in, do my job, and let that mess sort itself out.

 

[SCNCY]

Just had dinner with someone last night who's company did the math on how much money is wasted on mundane acronym filled meetings and they decided to cut them out of the regular schedule. I think if people really need to meet, they figure out a time to do it.

Exactly, if I need to get a hold of someone, I call them. My company gave those of us in corporate functions phones, so there is no excuse for me to not get in touch with someone.

 

[isucy86]

On this topic I get a chuckle out of people who take the approach:

My Company is entirely remote, so there must be something wrong with management at companies that choose to have employees on-site.

All businesses are different. And even within a business certain roles lend themselves to remote work more than other roles. Heck even within a role, some people have the discipline to work remotely and other workers don't.

So then the response is, if a worker gets all their work done who cares!

Some truth to that. But I have never been in a job or worked with others whose job had a finite amount of work. So I think managers feel they have a better idea who can handle more when people are on-site.

I worked remotely for a couple years and I feel it is tougher to create a cohesive corporate culture when the majority of workers are remote. I think it is natural to take a more individualistic/selfish approach when working remotely.

And there are people who abuse remote work. I won't ever be convinced someone can "multi-task" and watch TV while doing their job. Or someone can be entirely engaged in a meeting while shopping at Target.