Is WFH your new normal?

I agree. I have been working from home for the last 22 years and recently I have found out that many larger organizations and institutions have lost, turnaround time, productivity, and especially very poor communication ...being on the other end so dealing with staff I assume WFH?
I have found that I sometimes spend a quarter of a day on just trying to reach out and communicate to them about their errors, their lack of turnaround time, or even being unable to get through to communicate in timely manner if at all.
It becomes so frustrating when I am on the phone for 40-60 minutes, put through various contacts, told incorrect things, supplied incorrect information, with no central point of contact. So I have to call again and so on! General emails usually state they have been received and a reply will be supplied within 3-5 days (really?).
Just to give you some examples:
- I had to calculate a rough payouts loan figure as it took the lender over a month to provide the actual figure, so I paid more... then they had no choice but to act and contact my broker.
- An insurance company provided twice the wrong EOY Statement, with unknown people on the yearly statement that stated it was sent to ATO.
- Was on the phone for over 40 minutes, 20 minutes, etc... to many such organizations.
- Existing staff I worked with would not answer the phone on many occasions (by accident found out they went shopping to Bunnings with wife instead during working hours), and this is from a very fast competent well performing staff member.
So the issue is about managing this flexibility with productivity, as staff are tested on many issues, such as self organization, self motivation, communication, adaptability, flexibility, and so on.
Most people don't get paid for turning up to work but rather for creating the outcomes or get paid for creating value to the company, wouldn't you agree? Sitting at the keyboard or home office is not an outcome, but performance benchmarks and outcomes or solutions would be IMO. How does one rate one worker against another one WFH, where is the competiveness, creativity, how unproductive workers will be measured, many such issues arise IMHO.
I think it is very hard to balance out the flexibility with productivity of Australian workforce. If prior to covid-19 we were above average productive workforce then by all means WFH would be so bad but the statistics show otherwise, so will our shift in our mind achieve the higher productivity standard, interesting times ahead.....
Why Australia is falling behind on productivity.

 

i am sure a lot has to do with technology too?

 

Thank goodness for "office" jobs

 

Perhaps Rolm can answer this from his grave?

By the way what is work.....???

 

Yes, work in tech. I've been to the office about 3 times in the last 18 months.

 

We are getting forced back in the office - in the guise of "collaboration". Half the people I collaborate with are overseas.

There are reports generated to top management on ID swipes at the door. No one has told me what the consequence/s is/are ... Are they going to do an Elon Musk?

 

Elon Musk tells his staff to get back to the office

'If you don't show up, we will assume you have resigned': Elon Musk sends blunt warning to Tesla staff working from home

My teams and clients are interstate, WFH made many companies realise that you don't need to be in the office, especially if you were already on the road and equipped with a laptop.

 

My teams are overseas. The head honcho .. decided to spend big on a new office, and hence forcing everyone to come in to keep seats warm.

My take has always been, those who slacked off when we were in the office slacked off when we were WFH. Half the people in the company are working 2x the work, while the other half are just doing nothing.

 

I am starting to warm to Elon....no such thang as a free lunch...

Waiting for the next recession... then the whiners will be in the office at 6am sharp!

Glad I don't do office ...or work for that matter any more...

 

The ones who seem most vocal about WFH being the new norm are the ones who contribute the least. Their views arent necessarily that of their senior managers and so its inevitable that workplaces will reevaluation their staffing and in time cull numbers where people dont seem to contribute.

 

Our office is relocating too, it's now <3km from home. We halved the office expense and I still won't go there.

We don't have the expectation of having to work in the office.

 

Agree to disagree. I work in IT - and when the application is down, I sit on calls for > 15 hours. WFH for me meant even more hours. I work with US and Europe too. I sit in calls that start from 17:00 - 21:00, depending on whether we are on daylight savings or not.
The first year of WFH, I was working > 12 hour days. I was burned out.
I could not find some people - during regular work hours - and that was really ******.
I setup a meeting with AU colleagues at a decent time, and person accepted, and did not show up and said, "sorry, i was in the garden".

No - half the people are crap at their job. The other half - doing 2x the work.
And .. by the way, i am writing this during lunch break - in case you all think I am slacking off ;-)

 

My office used to be 10 min drive - they relocated so it is now a 1 hour 15 min bus ride. So yeah, I do have a lot to rant about with this office and WFH scenario.

 

Productivity is not any better by going into an office and it adds commute time! You do get to see people in the flesh though but it doesn’t have to be frequent.
I’ve gone into my office maybe 6-7 times this year.

 

I'm hoping to transition to " working " 100 % from home in the near future .
It's actually impractical to do my job from home , but I don't see that as an issue ...

Cliff

 

Yes ok. Some jobs are better off done from an external office but others clearly don't have to be. I suppose you could have a surgery attached to your home if its allowed with zoning....

 

tongue in cheek comment . Should be able to finish work soon, though might keep small amount of part time for a while .

Cliff

 

As a member of our leadership team this is something we are grappling with. Pre-COVID we were seen as a flexible organisation, then expectations shifted, majorly. We now have a policy that people are in the office 50% of the time, though this is not policed and we are not achieving that. We also have the expectation that people will perform certain tasks face to face. Eg quarterly checkins, senior managers' meeting, team meetings. WFH is definitely negatively impacting on morale, collaboration and broad organisation understanding. People feel like they're more productive at home, and they are, when it comes to ticking things off their list. But what about those 'water cooler' conversations that enable people to make connections (both personally and from a work perspective) that they would never make if they didn't have that conversation, and many other examples. How important it is that people have time in the office varies depending on their role but I feel like the pendulum has swung too far to the WFH and needs to come back a bit. Don't get me wrong, I am all for flexibility and will be taking advantage myself next year when I will move back to my favourite place on the planet and commute to the office 3 times per week but I think wholesale WFH is not universally beneficial.