Regarding return to office policy, I hear many speculations and reasons hypothesized. Mostly by employees who don’t really know and who had no choice in it.
I would like to know is if there are any lemmings out there who have been involved in these talks.
What was discussed?
How is something like this coordinated amongst others businesses even rivals.
What are the high level factors that have gone into the decision?
Bonus points: is it even possible for employees to prevent or reverse these policies at this point?
I happened to be involved in such a meeting this morning.
The conversation around the general policy was mostly supportive. The main concern is that we do not have an official policy in place and various teams are setting their own rules, which is occaisionally resulting in collaboration issues.
The other main issue, unsurprisingly, regards what we can do to make sure that people are actually working when they are at home. For the most part, people are getting their work done, but there are always going to be people trying to take advantage and we discussed ways to track that without getting too “big brother” across the board.
Sounds like we are going to implement a 2 day wfh allowance coordinated within teams, based on their schedules so that we have at least half of each team in the office each day, with exceptions for people with extenuating circumstances.
We are not going to put any kind of tracking software on their machines, but we are going to monitor overall output.
So
Someone needs to be fired. Pick the guy who talks about ‘organic conversations’, as if water cooler chat and constant interruptions are the true medium for knowledge sharing, or the sexist git who forces Linda to shop for office clothing where Gavin skates with khaki and a polo, and raise the average EQ with a quick meeting.
I never understand places that dont have some sort of work management methodology.
In technology, we often use agile. Its complicated, but one key part is that the individuals determine what needs to be done to get an overall effort completed, creates the individual tasks in an application, schedules them for completion and makes notes about status as they go.
Its a little micro, but it ends all questions of “is this person working”. Either theyre getting stuff done or they aren’t. We have regular sessions to check progress and reports are generated on an ongoing basis. If someone is dicking around it shows up real fast.
I can’t imagine that places still just raw-dog all the work. What is Joe doing. No clue. When is he going to finish? Dunno. How is the project going? Beats me. Are we staffed appropriately? Good question.
I gotta be honest- sounds weird you weren’t already tracking output already.
Like was output before wfh just “theyre in the office today”?
We are. Just not with software that checks keystrokes, mouse movements, etc.