Amazon WFH Policy

The attitude to work Matrix can be funny one person said to me today that as long I'm one up from whoever is at the bottom of the pile I'm grand with that.

Yet one of mine always says they are not interested in going above and beyond but only want to be one level below that mainly for the pay rise and perks but they are also very conscientious about their work.

I was in a complicated customer service call recently and in the background, I could distinctly hear a child hammering on a door and calling their mother didn't give a good impression of the financial institution.

It doesn't make you right either. We all know how averages work.

All you're doing now is doubling down on your position that anyone who says that they have a long commute or can be as productive (if not moreso) at home as in an office, is an outlier, (or a liar). Well, you can believe that if you want.

And yes, I did actually turn down a promotion recently, as I now value my work/life balance - and my physical and mental health - more than a few extra quid in the bank at the end of the month. Something the pandemic opened my eyes too.

Again, you're missing the point.

They can monitor in-office work. Not perfectly, but they can monitor it more effectlvley than if you are working from home.

You can't watch netflix in the office or check out holiday sites for half an hour without someone in the office noticing.

Much easier to do either of the above from home and without anyone noticing.

Not speaking from personal experience here as I am not a manager, but I can understand why managers would prefer the office work in this example.

"... 37% of Americans admit to watching TV and movies at work…"

The stats suggest people aren't being "noticed" at work. There's was even a fraud case that revealed someone taking hundreds of photos of their work screen in an open plan office without getting caught. We used to block the crossword sites at work in the early days of the internet so many people used to be on them.

The people you think are watching others in the office simply are not.

Ultimately you can simply block all these things from the computers then monitor productivity and output. But then you can also do this with remote staff. So that's a catch 22 for that argument.

Not that it's matters. if you are ordered back to the office there is nothing you can do. Other than leave of course.

"Most" posters on this thread have not said they have commutes at the extreme end.

Not much credibility in making personal attacks about mental health.

"…57% of people would be willing to reject a promotion if they believe it will have a negative impact on their work-life balance – which was the top influencer of job satisfaction..."

Meet a lot of people these days who don't want to sit in more meetings, or feel promotion is no longer worth the trade offs.

Indeed when they tried to do salary sacrifice or block or offer promotions to get people back to the office it failed. So now it's the ultimatum of dismissal.

I'd say most can read between the lines on this return to the office mandate.

I doubt this is about remote working.

attacks about mental health? Behave

And I don't really have time for this nonsense about declining a promotion personally but hey that's just me!

Absolutely

Everyone is different and there is no correct answer to the question of whether WFH or in office is better.

But my point is that "forced" hybrid is bollix.

Why force someone who works better from home into the office for the sake of it and why force someone out of the office if they don't want to.

I can tell you that if 4 out of 10 staff watched movies in our office, it would most certainly be noticed; but sure, give it a go if you think nobody is looking.

Your constant talk of "if" productivity was digitally monitored is irelevant, because it is not digitally monitored.

Your one correct point is that if you are ordered back to the office, you have no choice.

I have heard of employers insisting on 100% office attendance and trying to soften the blow by saying "We have no issue if you want to log on from home during the evenings or at weekends."

The only catch being that they don't pay overtime….

Where I work, which is very hybrid and flexible, with thousands of employees, we run semi-annual polls which consistently show that the clear majority want to maintain the flexible and hybrid approach.

However the many managers and directors I've talked to with few exceptions have either a preference to go to the office or feel pressured to be there.

Not demonising management, but if we took a straw poll among employees and a separate poll among managers regarding office attendance - I guarantee two different results.

So ironically, you yourself admit to working harder, longer and being more productive for your company when you were WFH, but don't trust anyone else to do the same.

From reading the above, it's the controlling micro manager style that people don't want to work with, and will look to leave companies for. .

Full disclosure, I'm guilty of "putting the dinner on" while working from home. It takes me about 30 seconds to walk to the fridge, take out a chicken, and another 30 seconds unwrap it, and put it in the oven. (Please let me know how much I should reimburse my employer for).

(eta) Also, where I work the "you allow one, you must allow all" rule does not apply. WFH is awarded based on the type of work being done, not the person doing it. If you're assigned to a role or a unit with the type of work that can't be done from home,(e.g. public facing) you won't be granted WFH, even if Mary in Accounts can WFH 3 days a week.

Some companies have measurable goals and metrics, many do not.

And even if a team does have metrics & was hitting their numbers, a lot of managers still wouldnt want their staff watching netflix; maybe yours does, good for you. But many do not.

Most businesses would want their staff to hit higher numbers with the time they are being paid to work.

People tend to cite their own working example and apply the logic to all businesses, forgetting that all businesses do not operate in the same way.

There's always that person who you can never get to do anything. But thats the same in the office. WFH didn't invent them. They are outliers though. At least where I've worked.

But on the flip side there's always reliable people who get work done when ever you ask them, that's regardless of whether they are in the office or at home.

Doesn't really matter though they can just drag everyone back for no reason and nothing you can do about it. We still have some senior people who want WFH.

But we've lost quite a bit of flexibility, and I can see people pulling back on their own flexibility.

While all of the above may be true the most important issue trying to provide child care whilst working which should not be happening except in an emergency.

it's not your job to sort it out as a manager you job to make sure people do there job by supporting them to their job.

if they are not doing there job start disciplinary procedures that's it, you appear to be way over involved in you job.

Honey, I've been management for a looong time.

But you keep up with the little passive aggressive digs! They show everyone who you really are. 😉

I am all for supporting people and for flexibility but nobody should be supervising children while WFH while you are working it's the same as being in the office you not available to supervise children.

Thats the sort of issue that put employers off providing WFH.

I’d guess that awkwardness is based on resentment from the office based staff rather than diminished social skills from the WFH staff.

Lets be honest though, the resistance to this is giving off the same sort of vibes that we hear of happening when unions fought to get weekends off, and upper management screamed and shouted that it was a massive dent in productivity.

But the reality is that it makes for better society. Working continues to evolve with new technologies to further enhance productivity and people who rail against WFH may very well be the people 30, 40 years ago who railed against computers coming into offices as it's different and would enable people to now play solitaire at their desk instead of work.

The trick here, as said before, is getting the process in place to enable performance tracking remotely. Employees want flexibility, and are searching for it actively. Companies that invest in the ability to offer this are going to get first pick of a lot of candidates.

Those fighting WFH are starting to smell a little of "we have worked this way for the last 20 years, why change?!" but change is how you evolve and those that don't change inevitably eventually collapse.

Yes people who WFH can go and put the washing out or go and pick up kids from school, but ultimately, if the work is getting done, that's what should be important. These "perks" again are no difference from when computers arrived and people all of a sudden could access the internet and you can be certain that folks do access the internet in work for leisure but you can be certain that overall, it improved productivity with the ability to send email, look up information, interconnected systems etc. People are more effective, even with access to things management are afraid of.

We had a sales exec dipshit in last week talking about coming onsite to do their job and how they wanted everyone onsite. Sure why you're travelling home you can call into a customer on the way home and make a sales pitch.

I was just looking at them thinking what a bunch of dinosaurs. Within 10 years big companies won't even have sales execs since it will all be done via AI.

You'll simply have an AI with guidelines on sales prices, your customer AI will contact yours and other hardware companies with a quote for 3000 laptops, 500 storage servers, 500 AI servers and whichever one gives the best price will get the deal. All done within seconds. No need to be paying millions out sales execs, or in bonuses.

And I work in AI..you'll still need developers, intent programmers, prompt engineering etc but the top level sales execs..they're gone but they don't see it yet. They only see the bottom feeders but you can be sure that the CEO's etc all see this in their heads already. Hell with how fast technology is changing it could be 5 years.

More and more of these massive companies will become more automated.. execs and senior management are severely at risk and they know it. Its one of the reasons they're mandating RTO as well.

1. to force people to leave and reduce separation costs
2. to keep themselves in jobs..

Yes, I did. Strangely, people turning down promotions happens all the time.

Do you always try to belittle anyone who turns down a promotion?

When Covid came the company I work for naturally mandated that we all work from home. That was grand. The job got done but my oh my, what an eye opener. It gave me so much more time to spend with my young daughter. I wasn't spending hours in the car each day commuting (almost 1 hour each way).
I eventually changed company and the one I work for now has a fully remote contract which I'm on. My plan is never to go back to the office full time. My job can be done remotely and done well, there is no need to have the team in the office full time. Having the ability to drop my daughter to school and collect her is immeasurable to my well being. Working from home was an eye opener onto how much I was missing out.
We still have the occasional day in the office and everyone gets on grand and enjoys being around their teammates but most look forward to being back at home the next day.