Working remotely has been a constant topic over the past few years and grew massively due to the Covid19 pandemic. This has been a constant topic in tech companies for over 30 years which has is now a mainstream issue for companies throughout the economy.
Many companies have struggled to find the right balance and many have organically grown to a place where a combination of policies, practices and guidelines exist that work against each other and place too much emphasis on where work is done and not enough on it actually getting done.
Probably the biggest mistake I have observed in this area is the combination of setting a “minimum number of days per week in the office” combined with ‘”no set schedule for which days”. The latter being seen as being more flexible and considerate to employees.
This leads to frequent situations where a person will commute into the office, with all the associated time and cost involved, only to then have video call meetings during the day with co-workers who have chosen to be remote on that day. This is also not inclusive for introverts who, for specific activities (typically highly technical one such as programming) often crave the solitude and lack of distractions that power their focus and productivity.
These situations make the reasons for coming into the office – the human contact and work productivity reasons – contrast starkly to the ‘need to see butts in chairs for control’ model.
If the benefit of coming into the office is better collaboration and in-person shared experiences (both of which I am a huge fan of!) then setting a schedule for everyone for those days seems an obvious step that both employees and employers will benefit from.
This certainly presents challenges for traditional office buildings as it can led to crammed offices on some days, followed by mostly empty offices on others. This requires thought and planning into how to manage that. For example it can help to have specific groups or combination of groups all come in on certain days and other groups set to other days. This requires cross-company communication an collaboration and it one of the ‘new workplace’ skills that directors and managers should grow their competency in. A benefit to direct employees is a known and predictable schedule ahead of time which many find easier to then manage their private lives and families around.
TechTimes 