Remote working vs back to the office: Benefits are clear, but there could be trouble ahead for some:
It's clear that remote working has become a pretty popular option for many people, and some new research shows just how widespread that's become.
The latest edition of McKinsey's American Opportunity Survey queried 25,000 Americans in spring 2022 and it found that over half - 58 percent – had the option of working from home at least one day a week.
One in three said that, if they wanted, they could work from home five days a week. And when workers are given the option of remote working, 87 percent of them will take it.
"This dynamic is widespread across demographics, occupations, and geographies. The flexible working world was born of a frenzied reaction to a sudden crisis but has remained as a desirable job feature for millions. This represents a tectonic shift in where, when, and how Americans want to work and are working," the researchers said.
Unsurprisingly according to McKinsey, the "vast majority" of employed people in computer and mathematical occupations report having remote-work options, and 77 percent report being willing to work fully remotely.
The researchers noted that even those industries with lower overall work-from-home patterns "may find that the technologists they employ demand it". And once one part of the workforce is allowed to work remotely it becomes harder to say 'no' to the rest.
Still, it's not all positive news about hybrid working. After all, for most workers it's still a new model and has plenty of issues to be resolved. McKinsey's research found that those working in a flexible model were most likely to report multiple obstacles to getting things done - followed by those working fully remotely. Those working in the office were least likely to report problems.
Still, it's also clear that new ways of working aren't limited just to the US.
A new CIPD survey of 1,000 UK employers also suggests that the experience of working through the pandemic has led to a shift in attitudes.
It found that six in ten (59%) respondents thought business leaders are more likely to trust people to work from home and be productive following the pandemic. Previous CIPD survey data suggests that the shift to more homeworking had increased productivity rather than decreased it.
Some bosses are still looking at reducing pay for remote-only workers.
As the CIPD notes: "A potentially divisive issue for the future of hybrid working is whether those who have to attend the workplace should attract a pay premium to compensate for additional commuting costs".
The CIPD believes there are significant inclusion and equality risks associated with differentiating pay for hybrid and office-based staff, because it can risk indirectly discriminate against people with disabilities or long-term health conditions and those with caring responsibilities, who are more likely to be women and older workers.
It will also potentially widen existing pay gaps and make it harder to recruit people who don't live locally, which will restrict the talent pool that employers can tap into, the HR body warns.
(Score: 5, Touché) by Opportunist on Tuesday June 28 2022, @07:18AM (8 children)
Their real estate value plummets if they can't stuff warm bodies into their offices. And before they have to figure out how to keep their estates from becoming worthless ghost towns, they'd rather make you suffer.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by mth on Tuesday June 28 2022, @08:49AM (7 children)
Most companies I've worked at rented their offices rather than owning them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 28 2022, @11:59AM (4 children)
the, literal, rent seekers want you back at the office.
Working from home, I can spend my dollars within my suburban neighborhood which has supermarkets, retail, clothing shops, restaurants plus bars and nightclubs for after-hours.
Why would *I* want to spend an hour commuting to a central business district to a windswept wasteland of skyscrapers, contributing to someone else's municipal bottom line?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Mykl on Wednesday June 29 2022, @01:14AM (3 children)
Because it's not about that.
Companies would drop the office and work remotely in an instant if it provided economic benefit to them. The thing is, there is actually a lot of benefit in having people work in a physically co-located environment. I know I'm talking to the wrong crowd here, but many people do their best work when working with other people.
Your individual anecdotes are fascinating I'm sure, but research over the past two years continues to show that you get better creative and innovative outcomes (rather than just producing what you're told to do like an offshore code monkey) when people are working together in the same space.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Thursday June 30 2022, @05:12PM (2 children)
Yeah, I absolutely miss the open plan office with a noise level of at least 80dB where I get to hear one half of a phone call. That really improves my concentration and lets me do my best work.
Care to present those "studies"? Because I frankly can't see any way that this kind of office could in any way improve anyone's work.
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Thursday June 30 2022, @10:47PM (1 child)
One of the most comprehensive, and therefore quoted, ones is this one about 60,000 Microsoft workers [nature.com]
There are a few other articles that are much lighter on numbers. Those tend to present two findings: first, that workers are happier with a hybrid environment. Second, tasks that require a high level of collaboration and/or creativity suffer when people aren't co-located.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Opportunist on Monday July 04 2022, @02:30PM
I think whether and how much it suffers depends on the work and on the tools available to compensate for the lack of co-location. I currently conduct pentests together with people who sit in other offices (or at home). We do share a common "virtual" space, though. We wear headsets and we have a constant option to talk with each other, with the added bonus that it's trivial to simply drop out of the conversation if you have to make a phone call without disturbing the others, or to disconnect yourself from the rest of the team if you need to concentrate on something. That's one advantage you simply don't have in an office.
Collaboration is fairly easy with screen sharing and virtual whiteboards. We all have tablets now, too, so we can "draw" on that whiteboard with a "real" pen instead of having to do with the mouse, which absolutely helps a lot here. So yes, you can compensate for not being in the same physical space, if you want to. Wtihout any of the drawbacks you would have to deal with if you were in the same room.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by sjames on Tuesday June 28 2022, @12:12PM
The company does, but look at the board of directors, executive suite and major shareholders. Some of them are probably double dipping by having the company rent properties they directly or indirectly profit from.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 28 2022, @02:07PM
I think it's largely retailers that own their own locations, or at least they did before venture capitalists destroyed that. Buying your own property, even now, is often a solid investment into the future as the actual tax bill on the property and maintenance are a lot less than rent. But, that assumes that the business isn't located in a dying region.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Tuesday June 28 2022, @09:53AM (4 children)
What trouble? They are a bit vague on that part. It's something something pay etc. Seems more like they want to create future trouble for themselves for some reason. Clearly for most people if the percentages given in the article are so high there are no problems, or at least less problems, with working remote. So unless they can prove somehow that productivity have taken a massive drop they really do have nothing. What they are doing is creating problems for themselves if they want to force people back to the office for one reason or another. There seems to be vague ideas about "productivity" and the "corporate culture" and that middle management have problems managing or something. Which are well not my problems.
If they own a large office building and think they are not getting value for money if they don't stuff it full of office drones then that is once again their problem. Do something else with the space. Get less space. Or just imagine how much money they save on utilities.
>> "It will also potentially widen existing pay gaps and make it harder to recruit people who don't live locally, which will restrict the talent pool that employers can tap into, the HR body warns."
On the other hand by not require people to move to some place and drive into another place each and every day they have technically also massively increased the pool of candidates. Do they somehow ignore that aspect of it?
But if I was paid less for not being in the office they would only screw themselves. That said I guess they already do pay me to come to the office since they pay for tickets and other costs if I have to travel to meetings and such.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by deimtee on Tuesday June 28 2022, @10:48AM
The major "trouble" is that PHB's can't justify their jobs if they don't have a bunch of people in the office to "supervise".
No problem is insoluble, but at Ksp = 2.943×10−25 Mercury Sulphide comes close.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Tuesday June 28 2022, @11:19AM
Nor are your problems, vague or not, their problems. The whole point of employment is that it's a mutually beneficial trade. The worker undertakes the problems of the business and gets paid, thereby addressing problems of the worker. So it's not very relevant that the problems of the business, vague or not, are not your problems. Their workers are being paid to care.
Or pay people who will show up, if that really does matter to them. I'm sure they'll figure it out somehow or go out of business.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday June 28 2022, @11:33AM
Another aspect that I'm quite certain management isn't considering: commuting to an office can kill your employees [bigthink.com]. And even if it doesn't kill them, it might leave them so disabled they can no longer work. Which even if you don't give a damn about your employees' well-being, will have negative impacts on your labor productivity, recruitment costs, and what it costs you to offer disability insurance benefits.
As far as I can tell, the main reason some managers want employees back in the office is that they like the feeling of strolling around watching the worker bees and experiencing the rush of being able to order them about. They'll make up other justifications for it, but that is fundamentally the reason. After all, that was the point of going to business school - to get paid well to tell other people (who know better than you do) what to do. If you'd wanted to do something useful for a living, you'd have become a doctor or engineer or scientist or something like that.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by OrugTor on Tuesday June 28 2022, @12:43PM
I started working remotely some 16 years ago when the facilities people decided our group of 7 was not worth the cost of our low-rent office and told us we would be working from home. 2 of us are still working remotely, both programmers. More recently the company built a huge divisional HQ that houses thousands. Most of the people who call it home have the post-covid choice of office or hybrid. Some people had the additional choice of full-time remote.
What all this tells us is that facilities groups can make shitty decisions to save a few dollars and execs can make shitty decisions on facilities that squander millions. The dominant factors in facilities management appear to be 1) hubris/abuse of power 2) profit pressure. Good luck analysing why corporations do what they do.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 28 2022, @10:18AM (6 children)
As someone that worked from home for more than a decade, I can tell you that I prefer the office and am now am office based employee. The main issue with home office are psychological issues that take YEARS to materialize but they result in isolation, burnout, and terrible work/life balance, mainly due to lack of separation between the two spaces.. So, unless you have a dedicated office in your home that you can only use for work and no one disturbs you there, and you are prepared for this isolated working environment, you are probably heading for disaster down the road.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 28 2022, @12:04PM
To an extent but I think flexibility is the key.
I go in for the camaraderie and break room conversation. Productivity wise, I find I get more stuff done without interruptions from casual conversations and am less exhausted from lack of commuting which wastes 90 mins a day.
1-2 days in the office, 3-4 days at home seems to strike a balance.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday June 28 2022, @01:20PM (2 children)
You say that you had a lot of problems, with work/life balance etc., and attribute them to working from home. Or at least, that working from home made those problems worse. Doesn't seem warranted.
I've done the daily commute grind. It sucks. The drive takes 50% longer thanks to rush hour traffic, and you arrive at the office stressed from the sharper and more aggressive driving characteristic of the morning rush, yourself having contributed to that in order to compensate for the delays and arrive at work in good time. Then you're pressured to keep your nose to the grindstone by the sort of narrow manager who thinks every minute away from the desk is a minute wasted, and whose mentality is that of a slave driver, constantly hovering about, sure the drones are just waiting to slack off the moment his back is turned. It's ridiculous that we've had to formalize such things as bathroom and smoke breaks, to name just one problem with offices.
Commuting is more of a burden than most appreciate. Americans particularly are prone to think nothing of driving, and too willingly accept an arrangement in which the commute is an hour or longer, one way. Turn an 8 hour work day into a 10 hour work day, ugh. With those extra 2 hours not only uncompensated, but expensive and that expense entirely shouldered by the worker. Your compensation could work out to $250 per day, and now, at $5 per gallon, the gas for the commute could be $10 per day. That's not a trivial hit to your income. Throw in the wear and tear on your car, and you're looking at the commute lowering your income by 5%.
If you're only 5 minutes from the office, then, yeah, it makes a lot more sense to go in. If only it was so easy to arrange that your commute be that short!
(Score: 3, Touché) by Opportunist on Tuesday June 28 2022, @06:58PM
I'm literally a 5 minute walk from the office.
And even I would take a pay cut just to never have to share the same room with another human again ever.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 29 2022, @04:51PM
I'm the original AC here and, well, I literally moved across continents to avoid commuting! From North America to Germany. I now have 15 min to office by bike (used to be 20 min walk, but we moved). So yes, commuting 2h each day is a very strong incentive to get a dedicated work environment at home. I hear you.
I guess it also depends on your work environment. Open office layouts would be a no-go for me either. But thankfully here I get a real office, with a door and a window that opens. I do share it with 1 other person - benefits of human contact ;)
So maybe it's just me, but for me office has some importance. On the other hand, a cube-farm or open space or 2h commute, those would be a big incentive to make home office work too... BUT, the psychological consequences are real and one has to be prepared for them. The work-life balance is huge. Even if you turn off your computer at end of the day, it still feels like nothing changed.... that you are still at work... because looking around the environment is the same. I think that people are just not prepared for this and potential consequences 5+ years down the road. YMMV though.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by stormreaver on Tuesday June 28 2022, @02:29PM
I am the other way around. Every day I commute to the office, I feel isolated from my wife and kids. Sitting in the office away from my family builds a sense of burnout that I just don't get when I'm working from home. I work a hybrid schedule, where I'm required to suffer in the office 20% of the week. That 20% of my week is emotionally terrible (commute, isolation from the people I love, lack of amenities I only have at home, etc.).
I have never understood the claims of a bad work/life working from home. I connect to the VPN at the start of the work day, and log off and the end of the work day. I don't even mind if I have to work a little late from time to time (it's rare, but it happens).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 28 2022, @04:19PM
I have a work laptop and home desktop, both connected to the same usb-c dock/port replicator. "Unplugging" from work is as simple as shutting down the laptop, removing the laptop from the dock and reconnecting my desktop. My phone is also personal, it's not connected to the work environment in any way. I gather that does a lot to maintain a healthy work/life balance, but then again I'm in Europe where even the employers understand the need for a personal life.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by crafoo on Tuesday June 28 2022, @12:32PM (2 children)
we used to have the most annoying workplace harassment lawsuit baiters work from home. Couldn't fire them obviously, even though they regularly ran work off the rails with their activities and generally harassed people.
We were able to get rid of one of them when they made the stupid, stupid decision to falsify documents rather than admit their incompetence. STILL DIDN'T GET FIRED. Transferred/promoted to head up a quality dept. for another site.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 28 2022, @03:49PM
Ah, so he was given something like The Montgomery Burns Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence and "promoted" to QA? That's not the first time I've heard something like that, so whenever I get something and see a QA sticker on it, I always wonder how good an inspection it really got.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Thursday June 30 2022, @05:15PM
Had he only be a bit more incompetent, he could be CEO by now.