this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2023
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I'm not sure why so many companies are obsessed with getting their employees back to the office, not needing to have everyone within a 1 hour radius of your offices opens a lot of doors when it comes to recruitment while not affecting performance.
I'd speculate some combination of control over employees (poor management practices, etc) and making use of owned land/offices that are difficult to sell otherwise. Not much else makes sense to me, especially for tech companies where nearly the entire job exists in virtual space of some kind - no wrenches to turn.
Edit: Someone else suggested a way to "lay off" folks by having them voluntarily leave the job to avoid the return to office. That also sounds pretty plausible to me with the extent to which companies are starting to squeeze with what feels like an incoming recession period.
Using it as a way to reduce your workforce is so short sighted. The top performers are the ones most capable of getting a new job and most willing to leave over the issue. Instead of it being a calculated set of layoffs in specific areas of the company it’ll just be all the good employees leaving.
When my former employer went remote for covid, Meeting culture got worse, comms became less efficient and arguably collaboration did suffer. Defect rate in code also increased amongst the junior cohort and we determined (staff survey) it was due to senior and junior developers having fewer opportunities to connect and engage with high quality pair programming and mentoring sessions.
Half the table decided this was because remote work doesn’t work. The other half speculated that it’s because we tried to recreate the “in office” experience remotely, and that doesn’t work well. Sadly the company refused to adapt, and many were laid off. There was also a sizable tax break we got by being a large office that bought people into the city and support the local economy which likely had a material influence in their decision to layoff most remote/hybrid people.
My point with the anecdote is that I truly believe it’s rooted in a failure to adapt office culture. Willfully or unable too, it’s too nuanced to assert generally, and there’s also an entire segment of the workforce where on-site is essential and I’m not qualified to comment on.
Recent analysis of data suggests that productivity suffers when employees work remotely, and the effect is more dramatic the longer people remain away. This contradicts earlier studies conducted during the pandemic.
I'm not saying I agree.. just that this is the reason.
Do you have any sources? All I can find is articles from Forbes
Here is a recent paper that showed an 18% decline in productivity when workers moved remotely.
https://www.nber.org/papers/w31515.
Another study, originally published during the pandemic, initially found an 8% increase in the number of calls handled per hour by employees of an online retailer when they began working from home. The original study is here.
https://scholar.harvard.edu/eharrington/publications/working-remotely-selection-treatment-and-market-provision-remote-work.
Apparently new analysis of the data has shown a 4% decline instead of an 8% improvement. I can't find the revised analysis but this was quoted in Bloomberg and the Economist .. both behind pay walls unfortunately.
Because most people can't wfh. I work with many that maybe do 1 or 2 hours of actual work every day. When they're in the office, their productivity doubles. Management won't fire them because it takes over a year to fill most positions. And the pay is very high so it's not that.
That's not the results most studies show.
Yeah this. We've seen study after study showing productivity goes up with remote work.