Working From Home/remote working does not cause otherwise productive people to be lazy.

It only exposes existing problems with management that were there all along.

A lot of managers - bad ones - tended to associate productivity with time spent in the office. I can guarantee you people were goofing off looking at their phones, browsing online shopping or applying for other jobs. But they “looked” busy.

The fundamental issue is that idiot managers were looking at inputs - hours worked- rather than actually measuring outputs, or productivity.

I personally could not give 2 chits if my team do their work sitting on a beach somewhere with a mai tai (provided their screens are not visible to anyone). If their work is on time and top quality that’s what I’m judging them on. And they’re available to answer questions if I need.

Of course, it’s easy to monitor hours worked and harder to monitor productivity. You need to set ambitious but achievable and clearly defined targets and ensure they don’t distort incentives. And you need to build capacity across the team and within individuals, which requires you to know your work and communicate with people on how to improve.

Which can be done in person or remotely. Provided you’re a good manager to begin with.

INB4 stupid counter-examples like construction where people need to physically on-site.

Repped

What the hell kind of supervisor measures productivity by hours worked???

Every single idiot that is opposed to remote working

Partly because it exposes how bad of a manager they were all along

Yeah agreed output is the most important measure.

When I had staff working from home and they could get their work done in 2-3 hours a day (time spent on computer was monitored) it was perfect. I could send them way more work to do and downsize the team.

Real talk

nobody works 8 consistent hours, that would be ****ing stupid and you would be burnt out in a short time

wfh cuts through the bull****, I get my work done and **** off to do other stuff

Imagine thinking that sitting in an office to work is more efficient than working from home. And that this doesn't represent primary school disciplinary requirements, lol.

Lol what would I be angry about

I was the one who send my team home in the first place

Side note: now that the bad managers have been exposed, it makes it easier for good managers to recruit good talent

The one exception is when my son was too young for daycare. I found it easier to actually go into the office, at least on days where there was a task I needed to focus on. But that was a specific scenario and I went there by my own choice.

Now I’m probably there a couple times a month for meetings.

I’m not even aware of anyone in any industry who measures productivity by hours worked. I think you’re making that up.Yeah just base the performance standards of the team on the highest productivity individuals.

A reasonable productivity expectation will quickly be ascertained, to which everyone will be held.

Realistically, it’s not feasible to physically witness every iota of work performed by every employee for obvious reasons. This isn’t even taking into account work that the supervisor needs to perform which prevents this.

Thus, we could take existing productivity standards and expect them to be met while at home.




Could it be that some people require on-site supervision in order to perform, regardless of the manager? Do you envision the possibility that an employee may try to steal time, or shirk responsibility, or take advantage of working from home?

Workers who only produce results when someone is looking over their shoulder are not the ideal employee.

If they stop producing results when away from the office then sack them. On the basis they are not doing their work. Which is obvious if you are a good manager because you set clear targets which were not met.

jfl

enjoy it while it lasts boyos


youre all being replaced by ai in a few short years

Pretty sweet that you work in an industry where you have so many candidates to pick from that you are able to put together a team full of nothing but ideal employees.

It’s a mixture of
-being a manager of choice
-making work a good place at which talented people want to stay
-competing both on salary and conditions (including flexible working arrangements)
-taking talented but inexperienced people and building their capability

It’s pretty rare that we can afford to get the “right” person off the shelf

I don’t always get it right though, and have had to show plenty of people the door when they have repeatedly failed to deliver

That’s what add meds are for I have adhd anyways so extra productivity is just a bonus


I actually got more work done from home because no one to talk to

Last wfh job I had I was only doing help desk run off stuff for a 3rd party company

Or as 3rd party for extra help desk run off


Everyone who called in was asking me by name

I didn’t have any other focus but work, because I was by myself

I worked for 10 hours and then wrote papers and **** for my brother while I was off

When I’m on adhd meds all I can think about is doing work

So when I’d get off? I’d have to find other work to do just to keep busy because fucjibg off was unbearable on meds

A lot of people out there made a living in middle management basically walking around making sure other people were working and then go back to their boss like "see nothing would have gotten done but I made it happen" when they didn't do anything. Some of these people haven't done well since 2020 and now they want to try to get people back at work so they can validate themselves.

WFH staff will slowly continue to either be replaced by AI or off shore companies offering the same service and productivity and a fraction of the cost.

Last thing I'd be trying to do at the moment as convince my employer my job can be done from my couch at home.

But what will happen to those managers that put together these teams of “highly productive” employees who work from home?

Will they now be hiring workers from Gujarat?

b,b,but the in office collaboration!

This is true. But it's also true that 90% of corporate managers suck, and that the loss of production has hurt both our economy and quality of life.

I have a friend who works in claims for Farmers insurance. Since the start of WFH, the number of claims a given rep handles successfully has dropped 40%.

Have a sibling who works in logistics for a Fortune 500 food manufacturer. Their experience has been largely the same.

This chit is the same thing as raising the minimum wage. It's great if you're only considering your experience as the employee. When you factor in how it impacts you daily as a consumer, it's a losing proposition.

If measured productivity has dropped why have those individuals not been sacked?

Isn’t that one of the jobs of management?

Certain jobs and certain people are better suited to WFH than others. Professional services (accountancy, law, various types of consultancy etc) have been using hybrid models for the last 20 years or so. They recruit very specific types of people and pay them well.

I started my company by working from home myself and hiring 4 other people to WFH for me. I didn't have an office to start with.

Experience tells me that maybe 1 in 7 have the right personality traits to WFH for extended periods and as the company has grown and the recruitment process become more formalised, psychological testing has become a standard part of the process.

You need goal oriented individuals. PWC, Accenture, KPMG etc were the best at this in the early days, as they were all about having a delivery mentality and only hired people who were eager to produce results.

Most people, on the other hand, will do as little as management will let them get away with. These people belong in offices, as managing them remotely results in even worse productivity than when on site, due to communication lag.

If you want to see a practical example, try dealing with any local government department since covid and it takes twice as long to get anything done, due to them being WFH and not answering phones/mails.

Side note: Mr. Sheckelberg is very happy to see you guys standing up for his best interest. Afterall, he still cries about the 6M relatives he lost in Germany. Anyways, it's the least you could do. He is already making so much money dew to keeping wages stagnant, but he could make even more.You have a point in that if you can do the job from anywhere, then the job can be done by someone else anywhere.I've seen things about people working side hustles and even second full time jobs at the same time by being able to keep up while doing both jobs or having something on the side.

This is a good question. Why haven’t they been sacked?

Last week you were saying anyone who WFH was lazy. Sounds like you had a change of heart bloatlord?

Most people who WFH are probably salary, so you can’t really steal time. My employers measure your worth by how much you’ve contributed. Doesn’t matter if it took you 30 hours or 50 hours a week.

North Carolina? No acronym?

They can't find people to fill the needed spots that have already been created by the drop in productivity, let alone if they start sacking people. Also, onboarding for an insurance adjuster is almost a year. It's not a simple job. And training it remote has almost doubled their training times.

I don’t really care about the subject I do this to pass time when I’m bored. There are no stakes involved for me as to whether or not people work from home.