Working From Home

[viper37]

And a hundred years ago you could beat your wife to death with a broomstick. I don't really care what the law says.

Really?  Quebec is fucking weird.

One hundred years ago, Zoupa's ancestors were living in France.  1924 France was a weird place.

[crazy canuck]

Sure, but you also brought up changing diapers and doing errands.

Yup. And what I'm saying is that doing occasional errands is thought to be fine, whether you're WFH or WFO. And if you take 15 minutes to change a diaper or 15 minutes to go grab a coffee across the way, both are fine.

Because conversely, sometimes the work greatly benefits from people deciding to put in some extra hours to meet a deadline or to unblock someone or something critical - meaning the employer is looking for flexibility from the employee. In my experience, that works best long term when it's a two-way street.

The concept of judging people only on their deliverables makes good sense for people who are contractors.  Contractors do not owe a legal duty to work set hours, or in the case of salaried people, to devote all of their "time and energy" -  that is the phrase that comes from the cases - to their work during working hours.

The fact that employees seem to be want to be treated like contractors in terms of flexibility but also get all the benefit of being an employee is legally problematic.

Thank you for the legal insight

If things break down, it's good to know what the legal baseline is.

One note though - you seem to assume the flexibility is driven by employee demand. It is not really, it is applied by the employer based on what appears to provide the best results for us in our business. That we legally could be much stricter is good to know, I suppose, but isn't super relevant.

You seem to be framing the conversation in terms of who is entitled to what and guarding against one side taking advantage of the other. For us, if we're engaging with our employees in that framework that's already a failure state.

Nope I'm not assuming the basis upon which flexibility is given.

I think you might be misunderstanding the point I've been trying to make.  It is perfectly fine, and I would argue good business for some employers to provide flexibility.  My firm certainly does it.  my assistant works from home 2 to 3 days a week and I find that her work is unaffected.

The point I am trying to make is that employees cannot determine that flexibility for themselves.  Employers must first agree to it.  If employers don't agree to it, then that is where the angst over work from home comes from.  For employers, who demand a workday with only the the minimums required by the employment, standards, act, employees who decide on their own, that they are going to have flexible workday, or in fact, in the eyes of the law, committing time theft.

The second point I've been trying to make is that the employers that are in that position are ones that have work, which requires employees to work a full workday.  Many of the people here work in a very different environment.

That is why I always object here to broad generalizations that employers that don't allow work from home are misguided or evil.  For a lot of employers, it really doesn't make any sense to allow employees to do it.

[Iormlund]

In my experience employers who are sticklers for time "served" at one's desk inevitably breed employees who are sticklers for leaving right on time, whether the company is on fire or not.

[crazy canuck]

In my experience employers who are sticklers for time "served" at one's desk inevitably breed employees who are sticklers for leaving right on time, whether the company is on fire or not.

There is a couple of retorts to that. You haven't spent much time in an actual workforce. If you haven't noticed that people do actually leave on time.  You also haven't spent much time in a unionized workforce where it's mandatory to leave on time.  And you haven't spent much time in a workforce heavily regulated with strict overtime rules where it is. Also mandatory to leave on time.


A lot of people here, working in the tech related to industry worker protections are few or nonexistent and I think that is what is impacting much of the discussion in this thread.

[Syt]

https://www.yourtango.com/career/study-reveals-remote-workers-lose-22k-from-paychecks-staying-home

Study Reveals How Remote Workers Lose $22,000 Of Their Paychecks Each Year By Staying Home
There are definite trade-offs to going back to the office.
By Alexandra Blogier
Written on Apr 08, 2024

Working from home has provided major benefits for employees' work-life balance. Remote workers save time and money by not having to commute. They can eat lunch in their kitchen instead of going out and throw a laundry load in if needed. There's an overall sense of simplicity and peace of mind that comes with remote work.

Yet, many companies have issued return-to-office mandates, forcing workers to go back to an antiquated way of working, one they thought had gone by the wayside.

While working from home offers a lot of flexibility, the decision to stay remote can cost people a significant chunk of their income.

A study revealed that remote workers lose $22,000 of their paychecks each year.

Data collected by ZipRecruiter showed how salaries have shifted since 2023, according to whether a worker is remote or in-office.

In 2023, the average in-office salary advertised in job postings was $59,085. A year later, American companies are offering higher paychecks to people willing to come to the office, advertising an average of $82,037 for in-person positions, a 33% increase in income.

Data from 2024 shows that, on average, fully remote workers are paid $75,327.

Some employees prefer working on a hybrid model, going into the office a few days a week, yet data shows that their income also takes a hit for that decision: A hybrid worker's average wage is $59,992, which is about $22,000 lower than someone who has an in-person role.

Workers who've moved from fully remote work to being in-office full-time got a 29.2% pay bump.

Employers are offering more money to in-office workers as a way to compensate for the loss of flexibility that comes from giving up remote work.

The chief economist at ZipRecruiter, Julia Pollak, offered her take on the reasons behind such drastic changes in pay.

"Employers who cannot compete on flexibility will have to compete more aggressively on pay," Pollak stated.

Because employees would rather stick with remote work, bosses have to sweeten the deal to get them back in the office.

"The conclusion is that people demand higher pay increases for fully in-office jobs," Pollak said.

Workers have placed a premium on the flexibility that working from home provides, while employers seem to be stuck in an outdated mindset that people are more productive when they're physically in an office.

"Among some employers, there can be a perception that remote workers are less productive," Pollak said, adding that many bosses want people back in the office because they're "psychologically and financially invested in their corporate real estate."

There seems to be an ever-widening gap between what employers want versus what their employees want. It's not surprising that most workers want to avoid the office, especially since they've seen how beneficial working from home can be.

Offering an increase in pay is one way to smooth over workers' discontent at being required to go into the office, though one has to wonder if the money is worth the trade-off for the ease that remote work provides.

[Josquius]

Weird framing there. Surely its the people moving back to in office getting a pay rise rather than the people working from home losing?

I have to question the assumptions being made here too. If you switch from remote in city A to in office in city A then fair enough - but one of the big advantages of remote work is being able to live in different, often much cheaper, places.
From switching to 100% remote my income has doubled- southern rates, northern living.

[Tamas]

Yeah clickbait title. Well done to those able to demand more money for commuting into the office. They will need it for travel costs. 

[Threviel]

I just switched job to an employment where I'll have the opportunity to work from home a bit less than 50%. It's a soft policy and not something outlined in the contract, but I have no reason to suspect any shenanigans.

As an embedded developer there's plenty of jobs, but they are mostly located in the big city (Gothenburg) an hour away, more locally there are very few employers and my new one is 35 min away instead of 45 min. I interviewed for a few places and most of them seem to have a 49% work from home policy. In practice I interpret it to mean that I can do whatever I want, but I need to be present when presence is needed so to speak.

With Covid I had hoped that work from home would take over and that it would mean that big city wages could be had for me in the countryside. In practice it rather seems that work from home has increased and countryside employers have taken to it, most notably in my field Husqvarna (lawn mowers and stuff) that seems to employ all over Sweden with full work from home, which is something of a rarity in the embedded world. It also seems that wages have gone down to countryside levels in the cities rather than the other way around.

So some new opportunities, but not as good as could have been hoped for.

[DGuller]

If the study is described accurately in that article, then it doesn't sound like a high quality study.  No controls for anything, just calculating the averages.  Then again, the tone of that article doesn't make it sound like a high quality article, so maybe the study is more nuanced than what is described.

[garbon]

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/nov/19/starling-bank-staff-resign-after-new-chief-executive-calls-for-more-time-in-office

It continues.

Starling Bank staff resign after new chief executive calls for more time in-office

Staff have resigned at Starling Bank after its new chief executive demanded thousands of workers attend its offices more regularly, despite lacking enough space to host them.

In his first major policy change since taking over from the UK digital bank's founder, Anne Boden, in March, Raman Bhatia has ordered all hybrid staff – many of whom were in the office only one or two days a week, or on an ad-hoc basis – to travel to work for a minimum of 10 days each month.

But the bank, which operates online only, admitted that some of its offices would not be equipped to handle the influx.

"We are aware that in some office locations we may not be able to accommodate 10 office working days per month for everyone right now. We are considering ways in which we can create more space," an email sent by Starling's human resources team and seen by the Guardian said.

Starling has 3,231 staff, the vast majority of whom are in the UK with some also in Dublin. However, the Guardian understands that the bank has only about 900 desks, including 260 at its Cardiff site, 320 in its London headquarters and 155 in Southampton.

The bank has a further 160 desks in its newest site in Manchester, where it has signed a 10-year lease to occupy the fifth floor of the Landmark building, which also houses Santander UK and HSBC staff.

The announcement led to a flurry of complaints from staff on the company's internal Slack messaging channels, with many highlighting the lack of desk and parking spaces, as well as disruption to their work-life balance.

Some staff have already resigned over the "rushed" announcement, while others have threatened to do so. One staffer, who has handed in their notice, told the Guardian: "I've worked for Starling for years, and have done my job effectively while working almost entirely from home.

"Being asked without warning to take on the time, expense and life disruption of returning to the office for half of the working week is not something I can personally understand or accept, so I made the decision to resign."

One aggrieved staffer posting in Slack, with more than 100 likes, said the changes had been "rammed down everyone's throats despite their legitimate concerns".

They also accused Bhatia of trying to create a "bland grey corporate hellscape filled with dead-eyed zombies who care about nothing more than doing the bare minimum, clocking off and collecting a paycheque".

Bhatia hit back in a company-wide email, saying he was "surprised" to hear that the policy was unexpected, and that he had spoken about getting staff back in the office two or three days each week "over the last few months".

Bhatia said "the leadership team has been thinking for some time about how to operationalise this because we share a conviction that working in the office is important for creativity, collaboration, problem solving, performance and engagement".

The online bank, founded in 2014 by Boden and backed by Goldman Sachs, has grown rapidly from 43,000 customers in 2017 to 3.6 million in 2023. Over that time, its workforce increased from 279 to more than 3,200.

The return to office announcement came a month after the Financial Conduct Authority hit Starling with a £29m fine after discovering "shockingly lax" controls that it said left the financial system "wide open to criminals". That included failures in its automated screening system for individuals facing government sanctions.

Starling's new policy puts it among a growing number of companies attempting to get staff to return to the office more regularly, after the pandemic caused an explosion in home working.

Goldman Sachs became one of the first major employers to get employees back in five days a week in 2023, setting a precedent for companies such as Amazon, which has asked staff to return full-time from January.

The supermarket chain Asda has also toughened its stance, making it compulsory for thousands of workers at its offices in Leeds and Leicester to spend at least three days a week at their desks from the new year.

Starling said in a statement: "Starling recently formalised a longstanding practice in which colleagues were encouraged to work in their local office for two to three days a week. By bringing colleagues together in person, our aim is to achieve greater collaboration that will benefit our customers as we enter Starling's next phase of growth.

"People managers are able to provide additional support to colleagues with wellbeing and other personal needs. Those with fully remote or flexible arrangements in place already remain on those terms."

[garbon]

Of course, it is also quite bullshit.

We are going through a similar thing at my work where those of use based in London used to be expected to come in two days a week. That became more lax as my boss moved into the suburbs - and most average about once a week. Recently HR moved us over to a system where they can monitor our key card access and now CEO is in a tizzy about office attendance (as part of system move, we moved to a smaller office costing 1/3 of our previous). When CEO/HR made the announcement they made similar statements around the belief that creativity and collaboration can only flourish in the office.

My division is made up of 3 teams (all doing fairly different tasks so we can't mix and match and rarely work together): 1) has half its team London based and the rest outside the UK, 2) has half staff in London rest either fully remote in UK (including head of team) and rest outside the UK, 3) is the team I head where I'm the only member of my team in the UK.

When recently asked what sort of in-person collaboration/creativity sessions could take place, our CEO was flummoxed when reminded of our team structures. However, he insisted that in-office collaborations were nevertheless vital.

[Josquius]

Creative collaboration definitely does go better in-person.
But this generally isn't the sort of thing you're doing every day. Not even every week.
As far as general day to day tasks go I think it depends on the person and role, as I've said before I do think in-office is generally "Better", much easier to quickly catch up with people and get ad-hoc sessions going, but this isn't by enough of a margin to make up for the appeal of WFH.

This kind of enforced hybrid minimum days stuff is dumb. You need everyone relevant in the office for its advantages to be there or else everyone might as well just be at home.

[Tamas]

You guys make it sound like there is no point to commuting to the office to join your Teams calls from there.

[Grey Fox]

I think one of the downside to all of this is that we can't have good faith dicussions about WFH and it's challenges at all. Management will go for the simple solution of ordering full time BTTO. So, we endure on our stupid commute to be alone in an cubicle for a couple of hours everyday.

 

[garbon]

You guys make it sound like there is no point to commuting to the office to join your Teams calls from there.