Amazon WFH Policy

depends on the kids :)

ive seen several examples of people saving on child care by bringing kids home from school and then proceeding about their working day leaving them on ipads. Or they dont proceed about their working day and juggle minding the kids and work, not doing a great job at either. Neither scenario is great imo. Maybe saves money but at what cost?

I currently work for a relatively large MNC in the Midlands that recently announced something similar - an "office-first" mindset. Reading further in the announcement, they are looking for a 60-40 split between office vs WFH (3 days per week being in the office). This is coming from upper management not based in Ireland.

As expected, they seem to be getting quite a lot of push-back from employees. They state that it's to improve communication & collaboration, and gave some spiel about "brainstorming around the coffee dock". Everyone knows that the decision is probably due to one or more of the following reasons:

1. Micro-management
2. Attempting to justify the office space
3. Reduce head count

Now, they say that they are open to exemptions, but this will be a case-by-case basis, with the norm being 2 day WFH. They also stated that it will be 'phased in', and that we'll hear more in the following weeks/months. I have discussed with my manager that I can definitely be in atleast 1 day a week, and 2 days a week every 2nd/3rd week. They seemed quite open to this. (I live ~100km from the office).

I feel that a more fluid approach should be taken, and not a hard "you must be in Tue, Wed & Thur" approach. Give employees the flexibility. WFH is easily worth 20% of my salary, in my opinion.

The problem with this is that some people have down right refused to come to the office, ever. Even people who live within 5-10 minute walk of the campus. This includes some mandatory onsight days when WFH was the norm over the past year or 2 post-COVID.

Companies tend to give the standard spiel about caring for employees mental & physical health, and general well-being, but we all know this is complete guff.

With this new mandate, many employees are going to again have large commute times (3 hours per day). These commutes will have significant impacts on mental and physical health. Long, stressful commutes can lead to burnout, increased fatigue etc. Financial costs will rise due to seeking childcare, petrol/diesel/electricity. Employees with mortgages will find it difficult to relocate closer to the office, if they wish to do so. Funnily enough, this was a suggestion by my manager when I mentioned to him the long commute.

why would anyone pick a job outside Dublin and have a 3 hour commute, how many people actually have this kind of commute, doesnt sound credible. You see people taking a dublin job and living in wexford fair enough but not the opposite.

It was only a joke, I dont have kids..

Older primary kids I'd say. In the last couple of years of primary, on the days I WFH, my kids would make their own way home from school, let themselves in, grab a snack, do their homework etc. (and occasionally even bring me up a cup of tea). They weren't quite the age where they needed to be 'minded' as such, but also not quite old enough that I would have been comfortable with them letting themselves into an empty house. To be fair, they were also very good at knowing that I was working and shouldn't be disturbed other than an actual emergency. In fact, I find them less disruptive than a former workmate who was constantly either popping into me "for a chat" or standing outside my office having those chats very loudly with other colleagues.

On my WFO days we had an arrangement with a granny of a friend of theirs, who was also a childminder, where they would do similar at her house until one of us was free to get them.

Much better for them than being in a creche setting after school (which was where they were pre-covid, and loved it, but were definitely feeling "too old").

Yeah, as they say "This is why we can't have nice things"

Some people are better at WFH than others. Sometimes by someone being WFH it makes things harder for people on site, plenty of examples where I am trying to get a record hard signed by 5 people. If on site I could door step them. Have it done on 10 minutes of lucky. With half them working from home I am scanning, emailing. Waiting for them to scan etc.

We are 4 years later and there are still people who don’t have a printer to facilitate print and sign from home. Incompetent either on purpose or unknowingly.

Everyone's experience is different depending on the industry and role so we're all probably talking at cross-purposes. I've worked for irish companies in the past and presently over a decade in a MNC in Ireland.

I keep my eye on the job market and no Irish companies offer close to my salary, maybe 20-30k below. Most MNCs do, some a little more than what I'm on.

In terms of my "best working conditions"

1. Subsidised restaurant-quality food in the canteen. Maybe a fiver for what you'd spend €15 on in a restaurant.
2. Flexi-time - come and go as I please so long as the work gets done and I attend meetings (in person or online)
3. Generous holidays
4. Generous bonuses and things like One4All vouchers
5. Clothes and other swag (it's branded with company logo, but it's still quality stuff)
6. International travel to conferences and trade shows
7. Bring your child to work and other CSR events which are well appreciated.

EDIT:

8. double matched pension

9. Salary sacrifice share scheme.

At the end of the day, I could get a job in an Irish company for worse pay and worse conditions. Maybe they'd care about me more as an individual. But if that means a worse standard of living and working till I'm 67 then forget about it.

I'm a fan of WFH, but if my company mandated 5 days in the office then I wouldn't kick up a fuss. I would still be better off in the long run.

Digital signatures.

Also if an employee needs a printer to print / scan / sign documents, it is the employer who should provide them with it.

We’ve definitely seen the best days of WFH fulltime behind us now- 2-3 days mandatory in office will be standard fare. I know of a few Irish large Irish companies struggling to get people into the office even a few times a month - but I predict even they will turn up the heat - it’s always better to be seen in the office voluntary a couple of days a week rather than waiting on a 4-5 day mandatory order - that should be the thinking of all good manages right now - get your entire team into the office at least once a week - it may keep senior management “happy” - if you don’t , then expect a non negotiable demand for many more days in the office. Companies follow each other like sheep - WFH good yesterday - bad today

digital signatures are useful but there are loads of scenarios where they dont work.

Zurich did that. The had leased laptops for WFH. When the following Christmas (2nd?) lockdown came around loads of staff got Covid and all the laptops had gone back. Their customer service was FUBARed for months, during their busiest time of the year.

Yes. Disciplinary action for being AWOL

The reason we are inching to 5 days back in the office is because companies are coming to the realization that hybrid is bollix.

It was always bollix, companies trying to show that they were progressive and employees pretending that they were happy that post lockdown they had a bit of flexibility.

But it just upsets routines and work flows.

You start out Monday at home, then you have to up sticks on Tuesday, back home Wednesday, gone again Thursday and home Friday, or whatever.

Every location change takes a little bit of adjustment, not much, almost a micro adjustment, but enough to make you less productive than if you were in the same location.

100% WFH or 100% in office were always better than hybrid.

The best hybrid offering would have been a week in three weeks at home, thus the disruption is less, but this idea of certain days in , certain days home was just arbitrary.

So now companies are realizing this and because it's easier to bring everyone back than to allow or deny WFH on a individual basis they are getting everyone back.

Completely disagree with this. Have been on a hybrid model for a few years now, 3 days per week in the office the same for everyone. Zero adjustment required to WFH on the same days you WFH every single week. I don't like the office environment, open plan offices are too noisy, distracting, and frankly pretty overwhelming at times. I think a lot of people who have never worked for a large company would be shocked at the working environment, a lot of the time it's akin to working in the middle of a shopping mall. At the same time I appreciate that there are some benefits from being around your colleagues face to face each week, its better for relationship building and when highly collaborative work needs to be done.

I organise my week so that tasks that require deeper focus are done on WFH days where possible so that I can get in the zone and get through them efficiently.

A hybrid model where you can choose when you go makes no sense to me though, better to have everyone on the same routine so that you can plan accordingly for best days to have team meetings etc.

I organise my week so that tasks that require deeper focus are done on WFH days where possible so that I can get in the zone and get through them efficiently.

But the only reason you have to organize the week and do these this deeper focus tasks as you call them on certain days is because your company has arbitrarily decided that you have to go into a office environment you don't like on certain days.

Why not let you stay WFH all the time and you could do those tasks any day of the week.

Equally anyone who preforms better in the office can go to the office every day.

I realise this may not apply to most folks who WFH but one of the main arguments I have against going into the office now as well is the lack of facilities in it. I've 5 monitors including an ultrawide screen so I'm very capable of solving multiple problems at once and I can tackle issues far more effectively than I can with my tiny laptop screen and inevitably only half the monitors in the office are working. Ironically as well, when in the office and I need to join a call, I found myself unable to find an available room in the office to join said call. I have a dedicated office at home so that's never a problem there.

Stipends were given to set up remote offices and like some, I invested more of my own money as well to make myself more effective. The result is a far superior set up at home to anything I'm going to have in an office