I have been hearing and reading more and more about companies demanding their employees who have been working from home return to the office. While work-from-home became de rigeur for many office workers during the panicdemic, a side effect of the lockdowns and over-the-top precautions. Now that the lockdowns have ended, many office workers have been reluctant to return to the office.
For those with a long commute this makes sense. Some don’t mind returning to the office on an as needed basis or only being in the office for only part of the work week. For others the thought of returning to the office does not fill them with joy. But some employers are giving their work-from-home employees no leeway and are demanding their return to the office. For some companies work-from-home has made their office space look like a ghost town. I know this has been the case in places like San Francisco and New York City where millions of square feet of office space has a lot of empty desks and conference rooms, something the companies still have to light and heat/cool even if no one is there. It has also had another side effect, that being a lot of businesses that served the needs and desires of those now absent workers are struggling, if not closed down.
The oldest WP Sister had to deal with traveling into the office once a week even though she was never together with the rest of her team, meaning they still had to video conference even though they were in the same building complex. She always said it defeated the purpose of coming back into the office, particularly in light of the fact that they no longer had assigned offices. Now that she is retired she no longer has to deal with that problem.
My job required me to be in my employer’s hardware engineering lab two or three days a week during the panicdemic for the mere fact that it wasn’t possible for me to haul $200,000 to $500,000 worth of electronic and optical test equipment home. Also, the WP Mom wouldn’t let me set up that $200,000 to $500,000 worth of electronic and optical test equipment on her dining room table. So I split my time between working at the lab and working from home. At least my employer decided to extend the hybrid work-from-home system after the panicdemic was over and I and my fellow engineers have been making the best of it. I work at the lab three of four days during the week and work from home on the other days, usually dealing with the paperwork that goes with all the lab work.
Employers seem to be of two minds about work-from-home. Some see it as a good thing, a recruiting tool and a means of retaining present personnel. Some see it as just the opposite because they can’t keep an eye on their employees every second of every work day and don’t trust that they’ll get their work done. The argument can be made for both points of view.
Elon Musk, for one, has disparaged work-from-home employees, calling them “detached from reality”. He brings up some valid points. But he also ignores others which validate some work-from-home positions.
One such occupation that lends itself to work-from-home? Coding.
My company has quite a few programmers who work from home. It makes sense because some of them are in other parts of the country and others are in another country. How would they ‘come into the office’ when the nearest office is hundreds or thousands of miles away?
It will take time, but work-from-home will shake itself out, with some companies leveraging it to keep existing employees and recruiting others. Others won’t or can’t embrace work-from-home, perhaps to their detriment. Only time will tell.
