Working From Home Megathread

AdamD

hmmm wrote: »

I can see that where you have a large group, but it sounds kind of uncomfortable for a new joiner to be sitting in a largely empty office with their manager sitting beside them for a couple of weeks.

I'm not entirely convinced that the junior staff need to be trained in-person argument holds up either. It's assuming again I think that the office is more productive, in which case why allow anyone to WFH? (I think that's the position Goldmans have taken, and some other companies would like to take). I know in the short-term we can't make some sort of huge leap, and nothing will happen overnight.

I absolutely agree that staff do have to meet up in-person, but I personally think those interactions should be built around socialising and not "work".

I'm just thinking from my own background of professional services (say Accounting/Law), having all of the new grads WFH is a complete disaster for development. I'm not saying the office is more efficient full stop, but its not black and white. The office may be more efficient for training/development/collaborative work. Whereas WFH more efficient for run of the mill stuff and for established teams.


I do also think there is learning to be had from being in the office environment around other teams and departments but I imagine I'll lose a lot of people in this thread if I go down that road..

BrianD3

BrianD3 wrote: »

A statutory right to request with WRC backup should help in situations where staff are doing the exact same work in the office as they would have done from home but are forced to attend the office because of neurotic management and antiquated thinking. With "for business reasons" and "at the discretion of management" used to justify this.

I fully support this pending piece of legislation. Employers will have to have a good justification to saying no to a flexible working request. Saying that people have to be in because of [insert some guff about team-building or water-cooler conversations or monitoring performance here] hopefully wont be adequate as a reason to decline a request

Nermal

hmmm wrote: »

I'm not entirely convinced that the junior staff need to be trained in-person argument holds up either. It's assuming again I think that the office is more productive, in which case why allow anyone to WFH?

The office is more productive for onboarding, but home is more productive for deep work.

Nermal

Nermal wrote: »

The office is more productive for onboarding, but home is more productive for deep work.

Seems like onboarding is a specific and short term ask for an employee or group of employees to come in for a day or two to in order to bring a grad or a new hire up to speed. Probably co-ordinated with a team event.

And then back to the normal flexible arrangements, whatever they are. I dont think that onboarding challenges should have a meaningful influence on whatever WFH structures are put in place

Zaney

I wonder if some companies have thought about confidentiality issues. It wouldn’t take much to read or take a photo of a screen or over hear a conversation/ meeting / presentation.

Especially if people are going to make use of hubs, that opens up a lot. I’m on teams calls much of the day, can’t see how I could work in a hub unless there was a soundproof area.

I suppose nothing major has happened over the last 12 months, but does that mean it couldn’t happen?

Curious as to whether such issues have come up.

Mrs OBumble

JDD wrote: »

We had a seminar yesterday on a pilot scheme our company is going to roll out later in the year.

One of the steps they proposed was where there was a new joiner at a junior-ish level both the new joiner and the manager would be in the office full time for an "initial period" which they expect to be 2-4 weeks. After that they are proposing that the manager and joiner open a teams call for when they are both at their home desks and just leave it open (camera's optional) for as much as they can during the day. That way the junior can ask questions whenever they feel like it, rather than having to email or call especially. They're not sure if this second step will work - obviously you'll need to mute yourself if you're on another meeting, they don't know if it will cause issues with other video calls, and you'll need to mute yourself for boiling the kettle or chatting to your spouse, but they are going to try it.

Interesting that they assume new joiners only learn from managers, and not from colleagues.

JDD

Our company have done about three staff-wide surveys during the pandemic so far, and the areas that have been highlighted by staff where they think the office is better is: socialising, teambuilding/collaboration, and onboarding/training new staff. They were overwhelmingly voted as the areas where in-office was better.

Clearly it's easy to get around the socialising/teambuilding bit. Just schedule in quarterly/monthly nights out and the odd day here and there for strategy updates and what not. It's a reality that WFH doesn't work for every scenario.

Training up a new staff member is different - it's not a "schedule in an hour here and there" solution. Certainly for the first couple of weeks you really need to be there, face to face, so the new starter can ask questions, you can dole out work with really clear instructions, they can listen in on calls which may not be scheduled ones etc. WFH is a perfectly good solution for established or even newish (say 6 months or more) employees, but new staff - especially junior ones - need to shadow an experienced staff member.

Now, it's not like there'll only be two of them in the office and everyone else is at home full time. If we have a hybrid model (and it looks like the vast majority of companies are going for that) there'll at least be a third to a half of the staff in on any given day. It means that the new employee will get to know their colleagues, face to face, much faster than they would if they were at home full time, or even the half the time.

I'm all for it. I want to WFH three days a week, but if I got a new starter assigned to me, I'd have no problem going in full time for three weeks to make sure that new starter is bedded in properly, and we build up a rapport - which of course we can then build on when we are both WFH.

zebastein

JDD wrote: »

Clearly it's easy to get around the socialising/teambuilding bit. Just schedule in quarterly/monthly nights out and the odd day here and there for strategy updates and what not. It's a reality that WFH doesn't work for every scenario.

My opinion is that socialising is something that happens brick by brick, step by step.
If you start to get to know some people by chatting 2minutes at the coffee machine every now and then, when a social event is organized you are more likely to join it, be happy to see these people again and stay longer.


If you have no good relations with anyone because everybody is working from home and contacting people only for work-related tasks, then why would you be happy to take your car and drive to have a piece of pizza and a beer with people you don't know ?


When I was part of the Social Committee of my company in a pre-covid world, we already struggled to have people interested by social events (except if you throw a lot of money/goodies but then people don't come for the social part and the event becomes a BIK). People attend these events if they have already socialized. You see it when people ask their colleagues about the events: "are you going to the event ? Well if you go I'll go as well, otherwise no".



You can throw pizza/beer parties every week in the office and still have not a great work atmosphere and team bonds.

Antares35

zebastein wrote: »

My opinion is that socialising is something that happens brick by brick, step by step.
If you start to get to know some people by chatting 2minutes at the coffee machine every now and then, when a social event is organized you are more likely to join it, be happy to see these people again and stay longer.


If you have no good relations with anyone because everybody is working from home and contacting people only for work-related tasks, then why would you be happy to take your car and drive to have a piece of pizza and a beer with people you don't know ?


When I was part of the Social Committee of my company in a pre-covid world, we already struggled to have people interested by social events (except if you throw a lot of money/goodies but then people don't come for the social part and the event becomes a BIK). People attend these events if they have already socialized. You see it when people ask their colleagues about the events: "are you going to the event ? Well if you go I'll go as well, otherwise no".



You can throw pizza/beer parties every week in the office and still have not a great work atmosphere and team bonds.

So we need to have people in the office so they can have coffee machine chats BEFORE they are comfortable attending social events? If you're avoiding social events designed to meet people at because you haven't already met them in an informal setting then there are problems that perhaps aren't the company's.

zebastein

Antares35 wrote: »

So we need to have people in the office so they can have coffee machine chats BEFORE they are comfortable attending social events? If you're avoiding social events designed to meet people at because you haven't already met them in an informal setting then there are problems that perhaps aren't the company's.

There is no "need" for anything. Social events have existed before WFH, will exist after. Attendance has never been 100% (not even close), and will never be.



I am just saying that you can throw whatever events you want to compensate, but you'll never reach the level of socializing and team building that you would find in a full office setting. It is not a new trend, I am sure you can find pre-covid plenty of examples where it is more difficult to have people on board and interested in company events if they rarely go to the office and barely know their colleagues. Sales people, consulting people that spend more time on client site than their own office, they usually have less engagement in company events.


There are plenty of reasons for that. The level of efforts is higher if you have to drive 2h to the social event compared to just going to the pub next door when you are at the office. Big events like Christmas party will be attended, but the smaller ones which are more regular will be more difficult to organize, especially if you have people who are working full WFH and relocated far from the office.



Now I am not saying that it should be taken into account when an employer decides if they want to set up a WFH policy. We just have to accept that WFH has different characteristics (some better, some worse) and not try to get the exact same way of working and same relationships.

Antares35

zebastein wrote: »

There is no "need" for anything. Social events have existed before WFH, will exist after. Attendance has never been 100% (not even close), and will never be.



I am just saying that you can throw whatever events you want to compensate, but you'll never reach the level of socializing and team building that you would find in a full office setting. It is not a new trend, I am sure you can find pre-covid plenty of examples where it is more difficult to have people on board and interested in company events if they rarely go to the office and barely know their colleagues. Sales people, consulting people that spend more time on client site than their own office, they usually have less engagement in company events.


There are plenty of reasons for that. The level of efforts is higher if you have to drive 2h to the social event compared to just going to the pub next door when you are at the office. Big events like Christmas party will be attended, but the smaller ones which are more regular will be more difficult to organize, especially if you have people who are working full WFH and relocated far from the office.



Now I am not saying that it should be taken into account when an employer decides if they want to set up a WFH policy. We just have to accept that WFH has different characteristics (some better, some worse) and not try to get the exact same way of working and same relationships.

Fair enough I suppose. I wonder how people would take to them being mandatory attendance, or if that would even be allowed. Perhaps it could be a condition of the WFH flexibility. I think for a lot of people it just depends on where they are in life too. Even when I was office based, there were some who would always be up for a few pints after work, and others who would only do the special occasions Christmas parties etc. Maybe there'd be more appetite for it if people were WFH more. Sometimes when you're with the same people all day the last thing you want is to go socialising with them after work. But if it has the novelty factor it might be different.

hmmm

zebastein wrote: »

I am just saying that you can throw whatever events you want to compensate, but you'll never reach the level of socializing and team building that you would find in a full office setting.

I can only speak from personal experience, but for younger employees systems like Slack have replaced the water-cooler as the place to build those informal relationships. I fully agree however that you need more emphasis on social gatherings to compensate for WFH.

_Kaiser_

Antares35 wrote: »

Fair enough I suppose. I wonder how people would take to them being mandatory attendance, or if that would even be allowed. Perhaps it could be a condition of the WFH flexibility. I think for a lot of people it just depends on where they are in life too. Even when I was office based, there were some who would always be up for a few pints after work, and others who would only do the special occasions Christmas parties etc. Maybe there'd be more appetite for it if people were WFH more. Sometimes when you're with the same people all day the last thing you want is to go socialising with them after work. But if it has the novelty factor it might be different.

It absolutely depends on where you are in life, as well as the location of the office:

- 20s and single, living and working close to town/pubs.. always up for the pints
- Office in a business park.. harder as people need to drive/get home after
- Settled/older (with kids).. you'll have commitments/other interests you'd rather be doing

My experience anyway

Antares35

Antares35 wrote: »

So we need to have people in the office so they can have coffee machine chats BEFORE they are comfortable attending social events? If you're avoiding social events designed to meet people at because you haven't already met them in an informal setting then there are problems that perhaps aren't the company's.

So is it being proposed that social events become compulsory for those WFH? If outside of normal working hours, I hope their employers are prepared to pay for those extra hours.

I don't go to work to socialise, and I stopped attending social events in my twenties, when I had my own family to go home too. I'll leave the BBQs and pub quiz and friday night drinks to those who either don't have kids or a life outside of work, or are avoiding going home for some reason.

I get on very well with everyone I work with, and am friendly to all, but I don't need to know what they did last weekend or what they watched on Netflix last night to get along with them. I certainly don't need to go to the pub with them.

I've onboarded a couple of new admin hires over the last year and did not need to physically attend the office for any of them. All done over zoom, phone and email. They're all flying, working away and doing grand.

Antares35

[Deleted User] wrote: »

So is it being proposed that social events become compulsory for those WFH? If outside of normal working hours, I hope their employers are prepared to pay for those extra hours.

I don't go to work to socialise, and I stopped attending social events in my twenties, when I had my own family to go home too. I'll leave the BBQs and pub quiz and friday night drinks to those who either don't have kids or a life outside of work, or are avoiding going home for some reason.

I get on very well with everyone I work with, and am friendly to all, but I don't need to know what they did last weekend or what they watched on Netflix last night to get along with them. I certainly don't need to go to the pub with them.

I've onboarded a couple of new admin hires over the last year and did not need to physically attend the office for any of them. All done over zoom, phone and email. They're all flying, working away and doing grand.

No I don't think that's been proposed, I was just replying to the idea that people won't go to social events that are organised (or will be less likely to) because they haven't met the other attendees in person yet. I think people will either go to the events or they won't. I agree work isn't for socialising, and I certainly can't see it being a justification for bringing everyone back in.

RebelButtMunch

Deleted User wrote: »

I don't go to work to socialise, and I stopped attending social events in my twenties, when I had my own family to go home too. I'll leave the BBQs and pub quiz and friday night drinks to those who either don't have kids or a life outside of work, or are avoiding going home for some reason.

Quite a negative post; Don't forget to mention the people that actually like those events for fun sake.

RebelButtMunch

RebelButtMunch wrote: »

Quite a negative post; Don't forget to mention the people that actually like those events for fun sake.

Off you pop.

I'm not standing in the way of anyone else or stopping them from attending whatever event they want to attend. Have at it.

But I won't be giving up any of my own time to attend social events just because other people like them or feel like they need them.

If my employer wants me to attend social events, they can run them on their own time, not on mine.

Frank Bullitt

Mrs OBumble wrote: »

Another "yeah right". I'm hired specifically to support managers by having certain detailed tools and processes in place. Managers delegate showing the specific details of these with their staff. For example, the manager doesn't need to know how to allocate a payment across multiple cost centres, they just need to know that it can happen, and that their staff know how to do it.

To put it another way - if a staff member says "no one can hear me on calls" a manager would likely to send them a new headset. Whereas I find out if the issue is the headset, or that they've pressed the mute-key on the laptop, messed with the device settings, misunderstood the headset-controller mute, not plugged it in properly etc. A manager won't have the time or mindset to do that. [A made-up example, but the tech we use has similar options.]

Doing this well requires me to watch how the staff understand / interact with the tech components, and vary instructions and diagnostics depending on what the staff member understands. A lot harder to do with off-site working.

Have you heard of an instruction manual?

Patsy167

No full-time return to the office for over a million

Almost all of 50 of the UK's biggest employers questioned by the BBC have said they do not plan to bring staff back to the office full-time.

Some 43 of the firms said they would embrace a mix of home and office working, with staff encouraged to work from home two to three days a week.



https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56972207

RebelButtMunch

RebelButtMunch wrote: »

Quite a negative post; Don't forget to mention the people that actually like those events for fun sake.

After almost 18 months without any social contacts with my colleagues, a works booze up is long overdue.

AdamD

Deleted User wrote: »

So is it being proposed that social events become compulsory for those WFH? If outside of normal working hours, I hope their employers are prepared to pay for those extra hours.

I don't go to work to socialise, and I stopped attending social events in my twenties, when I had my own family to go home too. I'll leave the BBQs and pub quiz and friday night drinks to those who either don't have kids or a life outside of work, or are avoiding going home for some reason.

I get on very well with everyone I work with, and am friendly to all, but I don't need to know what they did last weekend or what they watched on Netflix last night to get along with them. I certainly don't need to go to the pub with them.

I've onboarded a couple of new admin hires over the last year and did not need to physically attend the office for any of them. All done over zoom, phone and email. They're all flying, working away and doing grand.

Such an awful attitude. You realise people can enjoy socialising in work whilst still having a healthy social life outside of work too, right?

Frank Bullitt

JDD wrote: »

Our company have done about three staff-wide surveys during the pandemic so far, and the areas that have been highlighted by staff where they think the office is better is: socialising, teambuilding/collaboration, and onboarding/training new staff. They were overwhelmingly voted as the areas where in-office was better.

Clearly it's easy to get around the socialising/teambuilding bit. Just schedule in quarterly/monthly nights out and the odd day here and there for strategy updates and what not. It's a reality that WFH doesn't work for every scenario.

Training up a new staff member is different - it's not a "schedule in an hour here and there" solution. Certainly for the first couple of weeks you really need to be there, face to face, so the new starter can ask questions, you can dole out work with really clear instructions, they can listen in on calls which may not be scheduled ones etc. WFH is a perfectly good solution for established or even newish (say 6 months or more) employees, but new staff - especially junior ones - need to shadow an experienced staff member.

Now, it's not like there'll only be two of them in the office and everyone else is at home full time. If we have a hybrid model (and it looks like the vast majority of companies are going for that) there'll at least be a third to a half of the staff in on any given day. It means that the new employee will get to know their colleagues, face to face, much faster than they would if they were at home full time, or even the half the time.

I'm all for it. I want to WFH three days a week, but if I got a new starter assigned to me, I'd have no problem going in full time for three weeks to make sure that new starter is bedded in properly, and we build up a rapport - which of course we can then build on when we are both WFH.

Would have to disagree on this, mainly because not all jobs are the same and not all companies use the same onboarding. I started a new job in October, fully async (so you work the hours you want, basically), and it was the smoothest well thought out onboarding I have done in my career so far.

At the same time as I started, a new dev started straight from college, he is well integrated into the work and team, and he has had no issues with onboarding or working as part of our team. Comparing that against the last company I worked with, which had a week long, in a room, bloated onboarding, it just felt like a massive waste of time with no real value or worth added to it. It just spoke broadly of culture etc and how to fit in.

That to me was a bad sign, especially when compared to this new remote job which which sees what you can add to the culture, as opposed to how you have to fit in.

In the way that WFH doesn't work for everything or everyone, making people go to an office will not solve larger issues involved in the day to day running of a company or team. Insisting or implying that being in an office has more advantages over WFH again misses the mark, if your onboarding or training is flawed, being in an office or WFH will make no difference to the real issue at hand.

Equally, I see an issue with a hybrid approach in that it can create tiers of workers that come to an office and those who are very comfy with WFH. How this can manifest in a bad way is that communication can happen away from the ears of your workers. Example being you pass by someone in an office, you get the classic water cooler talk and a decision or direction has been made, those that are WFH do not get involved with this and miss out on this information. Communication breakdown can have a compounded impact on the performance of a team overtime which can lead to disgruntled team members not being involved in important discussions.

I see WFH having an advantage over that in that if you schedule a meeting, it comes with a prescribed agenda. You know what you need to talk about and who is there, you can also record it and share with your team so no one is missing out on this.

Mrs OBumble

[Deleted User] wrote: »

I've onboarded a couple of new admin hires over the last year and did not need to physically attend the office for any of them. All done over zoom, phone and email. They're all flying, working away and doing grand.

So do you know how they're feeling about the place? What their actual strengths (not the ones they tell you, but the ones you observe) are? Which ones are caring for dependents, so may need you to be more understanding re time off? What hobbies they have that might cause work related injuries? What their career aspirations are?

Anonymou

AdamD wrote: »

Such an awful attitude. You realise people can enjoy socialising in work whilst still having a healthy social life outside of work too, right?

Person who attends work social event = loser with no other social outlet.
Source: person who actively avoids engaging with work social event.

Only some types of socialising are acceptable :pac:

Quin_Dub

Mrs OBumble wrote: »

So do you know how they're feeling about the place? What their actual strengths (not the ones they tell you, but the ones you observe) are? Which ones are caring for dependents, so may need you to be more understanding re time off? What hobbies they have that might cause work related injuries? What their career aspirations are?

What has being in the office or being remote got to do with being able to understand any of the above??

All of the above information comes from working with the people or asking questions/talking.

Being physically next to them is not relevant to the above.

AdamD

AdamD wrote: »

Such an awful attitude. You realise people can enjoy socialising in work whilst still having a healthy social life outside of work too, right?

How much socialising do you need in your life?

I work to live, I don't live to work and I don't depend on my workplace for my socialising needs.

I'm friendly enough and will chat away with anyone who is around during my lunchbreak, but that's my limit when it comes to "socialising" at work.

When my work is done I log off and go home. I have what I consider to be healthy boundaries between work and home. See you on Monday.

Frank Bullitt

Mrs OBumble wrote: »

So do you know how they're feeling about the place? What their actual strengths (not the ones they tell you, but the ones you observe) are? Which ones are caring for dependents, so may need you to be more understanding re time off? What hobbies they have that might cause work related injuries? What their career aspirations are?

Why does any of this matter though? If they are flying, as the OP said, and by that I assume he means they are happy and delivering results, why do you need to observe them at all?

This is a very Big Brother mentality, you can learn pretty much anything about an employee without having to "observe" them.

Really baffling.

irelandpride

Deleted User wrote: »

So is it being proposed that social events become compulsory for those WFH? If outside of normal working hours, I hope their employers are prepared to pay for those extra hours.

I don't go to work to socialise, and I stopped attending social events in my twenties, when I had my own family to go home too. I'll leave the BBQs and pub quiz and friday night drinks to those who either don't have kids or a life outside of work, or are avoiding going home for some reason.

Wow, I go to the big events myself for the free pints and food and get on well with my team but that doesn't mean people who attend them have no life outside work. What does kids have to do with going out with work colleagues?


Are you under the thumb? I'm generally baffled at that statement.

Frank Bullitt

Deleted User wrote: »

How much socialising do you need in your life?

I work to live, I don't live to work and I don't depend on my workplace for my socialising needs.

I'm friendly enough and will chat away with anyone who is around during my lunchbreak, but that's my limit when it comes to "socialising" at work.

When my work is done I log off and go home. I have what I consider to be healthy boundaries between work and home. See you on Monday.

A great comment I heard in the past year.

"For some, work is here they go. For others, work is what they do"

irelandpride

Mrs OBumble wrote: »

So do you know how they're feeling about the place? What their actual strengths (not the ones they tell you, but the ones you observe) are? Which ones are caring for dependents, so may need you to be more understanding re time off? What hobbies they have that might cause work related injuries? What their career aspirations are?

You take work way too serious. Live a little.