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I love working from home, and I have a very enlightened employer but I do have some sympathy with the companies that have a chunk of employees who just don't wo
by rkangel 5y ago
I love working from home, and I have a very enlightened employer but I do have some sympathy with the companies that have a chunk of employees who just don't work when they're at home.
The situation in my company is simple to manage - we hire good people who are very capable and then trust them to get on and do the job. That works with the sort of people we hire and the sort of work we ask them to do. If they're at home we'll generally work just the same, because we're pretty well motivated.
Not all companies are like that though. My partner worked for a charity where maybe 2/3 of people worked exactly the same during the pandemic, but a good chunk (mostly of the lower level admin staff) didn't. Some of them were very unsubtle - they'd never answer Teams calls, and would return them half an hour later and never produced any output anyway. Some were more subtle like the colleague who'd log into Teams first thing and then go back to the Playstation for a few hours of the morning before actually starting work. Having these people in the office WOULD result in more work being done.
What we need is for these employers to be focusing on output rather than hours in the office. They are stuck in a mindset and approach that barely worked in the past where if you had someone in an office for 8 hours a day you'd probably get something out of them. If they focused a little more on what they were getting (and I don't just mean some basic metrics with no human insight) then we wouldn't need bums on seats and the people not doing anything at home would be pretty obvious.
- fcatalan 5y agoIt's the same here as in your partner's place. Even the proportions. This is government work: hiring practices are bad by design and "firing practices" unexistant. No one is ever fired. This means that the place is perennially understaffed in practice and depends fully on the goodwill, personal/professional ethics and patience of those that will do the work. But since they can't fire and we all have to live together somehow, management likes to keep the illusion that everyone is the same. So sometimes they will design promotion schemes or bonuses that favor slackers over the guys doing the job, or punish everyone equally for the sins of a few. It's a pretty kafkian environment, but it's sort of a golden cage too: Pay is good, benefits great, stability rock solid. I'm used to a freedom of agency and independence that I'm afraid would go over badly in a normal place. So I stay.
- rkangel 5y ago> I'm used to a freedom of agency and independence that I'm afraid would go over badly in a normal place. So I stay. I think you're underselling the rest of the world a bit. Many if not most companies aren't great, but there are a good chunk that do empower their employees to do their job properly and that's how you get the most job satisfaction. Of course, this is without knowing your sector and role - it does vary. You're in a great position that you're in a job you're largely happy with. You should use that as allowing you to carefully choose your next role, rather than as an excuse not to. It's also great in salary negotiations - you can pick a large number because in the worst case you go back to your perfectly reasonable job!
- progmetaldev 5y agoI've been at the same company since 2007, and although this isn't government work, it sure works that way. For anyone to be fired, you need solid evidence that the company has lost a good sum of money. That creates an environment where there's little trust among the lower end workers and the higher tier ones. I stay because I make great money for where I'm located, the job is stable, and if I need to just take off for a doctor's appointment, there's no issue as long as I get my work done.
- prepend 5y ago> Having these people in the office WOULD result in more work being done. I disagree as I think those people did no work while in the office and kept doing no work outside the office. I worked in a building where one person had a personal laptop open, daytrading all day. Instead of working. Of course they should have worked, but they didn’t. People will shirk work in the office and outside. I think it’s silly to assume someone who would log into Teams and then play PlayStation wouldn’t just close their office door and play games on their iPad for hours.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]