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An interesting article over at PCMag that is worth the read as this brief summary cannot do the topics justice. It discusses the issues with getting employees back into the office after two years of working remotely.
[...] The 2022 Microsoft Work Trend Index reported that 50% of mid-level managers said their companies are making plans to return to in-person work five days a week in the year ahead, but 52% of employees are considering going hybrid or remote.
[...] While the pandemic has exposed the many challenges of working remotely, it has also made the benefits clear. People are unwilling to lose hours of their day to the things they find most frustrating about work, such as commuting and the drudgery of office life. [...]
[...] While offices are a collective place of work, they're experienced individually. And for some individuals, that experience is not as welcoming as it is for others. This is reflected in women, people of color, members of the LGBTQIA+ community, and those with disabilities being less inclined to want to return to the office than others.
[...] In-office employees have found themselves spending time commuting only to sit in an office and spend the day not interacting with anyone there and having a Zoom meeting or two. Meanwhile, those still working remote can feel ignored when they're logged on to a Zoom meeting and see their colleagues in a conference room having side conversations that they're not a part of.
[...] There have been some unpleasant new realities faced by those returning to the office. Lots of workplace perks have disappeared in the pandemic. Fully stocked kitchens are a lot barer since they have to feed a much smaller fraction of a workforce. Free gym memberships didn't make much sense when gyms were closed and the benefit at some companies didn't return when their doors reopened.
[...] But there are some perks that have evolved into ones more suited to remote work. Companies, particularly at the beginning of the pandemic, set up stipends to outfit home offices. Childcare, which has always been a concern for working parents, became more of one. And benefits have expanded to include longer paid leave for parents, more flexible schedules, backup childcare services, and even tutoring stipends. [...]
[...] Companies would do well to set up an outreach system for employees of all levels to really check in on their individual needs and concerns. Forego formal surveys for a more human touch of a one-on-one chat by phone or Slack. Because no matter how remote we might be from one another in our workplaces at present, we've all lived through a trying time and could benefit from some connection.
Have your working environments changed, and if so, has it been for the better or worse (or neither)?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday May 10 2022, @02:09PM
It is the job of ALL management to enable their direct reports to do their jobs as efficiently as possible, and when their direct reports are middle managers it is upper management's job to enable those middle managers to enable their employees: removing obstacles, providing required resources, ensuring timely communication of necessary information, blocking irrelevant concerns from affecting their people.
A tiny fraction of the management job is helping to nudge employees away from distractions onto the higher priority tasks - but that's better described as "micro management" and often will backfire in terms of overall productivity. Managers frequently can't tell the difference between irrelevant distractions and productivity.
I have been saying this since the 1990s, but until 2020 most people still insisted on drudging into the office 5 days a week for "core hours" to do most communication, and without effective communication an organization falls apart. The first job I interviewed for that said anything along the lines of "you don't need us to give you a desk to sit at, do you?" was an ultra-small startup in about 2012. Before that, investors couldn't conceive of getting return on their investment if they couldn't go to an office and see the bees buzzing.
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