Art obviously by HappyRoadKill, beware the rampant NSFW furry art though
this post was submitted on 15 Apr 2024
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I don't understand why so many businesses are against remote work. If I was a CEO and was told that there was a way to decrease expenditures on rent and increase employee morale I would be asking "how fast can we switch?", not pushing back against it.
There’s 20 years worth of science on the benefits of remote work. It’s really clear-cut.
It’s just stubborn, ignorant, old, rich people who think they know better and simply reject any science that doesn’t jive with their own preconceived biases.
But sometimes it’s because they are futilely trying to protect the value of their unnecessary real-estate.
Little bit of everything but a lot of it comes down to “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” kind of thinking. Even if you see other businesses doing it, if it isn’t popular in your sector then it’s better to leave everything as is until you see negative effects from keeping it the same.
It’s that and, well, they have power over you in the workplace. At home you aren’t their only team as much. At that point it highlights how BS most of your job is and they don’t like that.
And lastly it’s also for legitimacy for investors. Many investors treat companies with no or little physical spaces as lesser.
They also don’t like letting employees have much free time, because it allows us to find other jobs, or work on something that could become a replacement income and leave.
At least anecdotally I’ve heard multiple managers taking about it.
I was listening to a podcast recently where a billionaire was talking about their upbringing and values, and when the host pivoted to remote work, this is the sentiment I got that probably reflects what most "stubborn, ignorant, old, rich" people think:
From what the billionaire was saying, office space allows opportunities for workers to perceive and speak with people in the company they don't directly engage with through their work. To the billionaire, this meant that the walls between different departments and divisions could be broken down and crossed, with the hope that workers from other departments/divisions would naturally get to know each other and learn about the functions, rewards, and struggles of their respective roles. Perhaps this might lead to greater empathy, cohesion, and loyalty to the group of people composing the company. People on Lemmy call this "water cooler talk".
But the breaking down and crossing of invisible departmental or divisional boundaries doesn't just include the working class: to the billionaire, this also includes the leadership class. The idea is that office space can allow for relationships to begin, platonic ones or mentorships or otherwise, and can help suspend the idea of a separation of classes (and departments) in a corporate setting. I'd imagine that the sorts of tactics like pizza parties are also attempts at equalizing company hierarchies.
Does this actually happen in practice in real office spaces? I'd probably say it still comes down to the type of person in the office. Extroverts will push past social boundaries because they have the confidence to do so, whereas introverts uphold social boundaries because it's easier to do so and maybe not as much social confidence is there.
Can the same be achieved in remote settings? Maybe. I've seen conversations on Lemmy recently point to open call channels, akin to what you might see in Discord channels, where employees can join the channel on their own and allow opportunities for spontaneous conversation and visiting with others. I've never been with a company that does this, but I can imagine that it only takes some IT configuration to accomplish.
I think the ideas behind RTO are noble in that the aim is to remove the inherent (and perhaps false or maybe perceived) sense of hierarchy in companies, and equalize the power field so that more people feel comfortable working. I think this is achievable in WFH settings, but I still think it very much comes down to the individuals and their specific personalities in either case.
That is exactly how it works, assuming the company is using a tool like Slack to facilitate it. All those things that the "billionaire" are problematic in person because of stratification... nobody is going to cross those barriers unless they already have an "in".
A tool like Slack, where people can lurk on conversations, or actively jump in, or start new ones... organized into topical channels (both public and private) allow for that kind of organic socializing without the barrier of - for example - business casual plebes and senior managers or execs in tailored suits being intimidated by one another's appearance or work location. These tools allow for much more collaboration, socialization, and breaking-down-of-barriers than a purely physical space ever could.
From there, the trick is to build on that by providing opportunities for those remote people to meet up in person at least once per year (see: "Team Building Events").
And if you need to meet face-to-face or "look over a shoulder" at something... that's what tools like Zoom (or Slack Huddles, or Teams Video, etc) are for! You can do it on the spot without walking to a different area, building, or campus... instantly.
The fact that people like this are completely oblivious to how this is supposed to work is horrifying. We're not talking about social isolation, here. It's 100% a leadership problem... tech illiterate imbeciles that have no idea how remote work can, does, and is supposed to work.
From my view, as a lowly worker, this is control. 100% about control. They don't trust you to actually do your job and they seem to believe that you'll just slack off and not do your job if you're not supervised.
Certainly, I have been aware of and even witnessed people who work from home simply to do as little as possible. But let me tell you this, it's a very small minority. From companies of hundreds of workers, there's maybe one or two that will have this issue.
There's another, fairly minor factor related to workers: basically some people prefer in-office work. The reasons they prefer it are vastly varied, but such matters are a factor.
The only other factors have to do with the employer and they all revolve around control. First, they want to keep an eye on you to ensure you're working. But all workers know how to "look busy" without doing very much at all. So this becomes a null sum. They also want the ability to interrupt you and ask questions if you on a whim, which can damage your efficiency significantly. For them, the trade off is fine, they can get their every curiosity and whim addressed immediately, which is valuable for them. The added oversight is a benefit to them too, at least, they think it is. Next, we have distractions, the bosses seem to think that you'll have more uncontrollable distractions at home, spouses, pets, children, deliveries, repair workers, etc. Stuff that they will have no awareness of nor control over.
The last point I want to make on their perspective is real estate. Companies invest so much money, month over month in order to have a place that they can house their workers while they do the job. In many cases, these are investments that they cannot easily change or escape from. If the building sits mostly empty, they have a hard time justifying it. Whether it's a lease on some office space in a business complex or if it's a land purchase with a big expensive building constructed on it, the place where you work represents a huge investment for the company. Even leases have several year terms that are not easily or cheaply broken, and it becomes very difficult to maintain their justification for that investment when there's nobody occupying it. That means either costly relocations to smaller spaces or simply filling the space with more workers. They don't want to give it up because they don't want to lose the space which may involve more costs if they need the space later.
There's a lot of fear in the last point.
With all of this in mind, the two places I've worked at where remote work became or was the norm, both either had no significant office, or reduced their office space significantly when moving to remote work. The locations where I've been pushed back into the office, they had spaces that for one reason or another, they couldn't easily downsize due to equipment requirements. They needed to house equipment for the job and couldn't easily move the equipment to downsize.
The factor that compounds all of this is that, forcing you to come to the office has no financial impact to the company. The company isn't paying for your time or transportation to get there. So it's a non issue for them. It's entirely left to their preference to say whether you work from the office or not. The time and money you spend getting there isn't of any consequence to them. So whether you need to walk down the street to the office or drive for hours each way to get there doesn't matter at all. That's a you problem.
In the end, the perceived benefits for them, of oversight, and the justification of their office space, often outweighs any possible benefit you might get from it. The perceived risks of either laziness stemming from lack of oversight is simply too much risk in the minds of managers and execs.
So many company's won't do it.
You don't have 50 middle managers and HR reps who are all blowing up your phone because doing that puts all of them out of a job and/or robs them of the only things that would make the kind of person who likes being a middle manager/hr rep want to do the job, getting to shoulderwatch employees and make them dance to whatever metrics they feel are in vogue that month only to reward them with an office pizza party, and even then only if they feel like they can't worm their way out of giving them that.
If bosses are bastards middle managers and hr/reps are the pitiful toadies that are almost proud of being so devoted that even the boss finds it off putting.
Management needs in person work to appear necessary.
The honest answer is that if the office real estate market crashes, so does the US economy
Broken window fallacy
Not really. In this case we have a great example of this happening: the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008. The entire real estate economy is held up by wishes and prayers and mutually assured destruction.
I believe that was more about financial bullshit games selling debt packages to everyone and their mother that were insanely toxic and when it crumbled it took almost every bank with them.
I mean I have little faith that we actually fixed that problem, but I always saw it as a greedy banker issue not a specifically real estate issue.
If you think it's like 2008, then the "crash" would have happened (or did happen) in 2020. Re-inflating it in 2009 or 2025 is the "broken window".
The more time at home, the more time to organize. It's also why they oppose 4 day work weeks.