Remote working - the future?

Perceptions of "effective" are highly skewed. Yes, people sitting in a room together will form stronger bonds than those in remote meetings. However, the ability to actually get things done is greatly diminished in F2F contexts - interruptions to workflows are common. Actions that should not be prioritised get priority because someone can make enough noise about it. On top of that, stats show that absenteeism/illness is more common.

I work in a revenue role and post my best numbers when left to row my own boat (interruption free)

There is a risk that people who don't want to do remote meetings, will only release information via face to face meeting, making it face to face a necessity. In the same way some places and people never answer the phone forcing you to track them down in person, or get them in a f2f meeting. As such you can steer the culture of communication in an organization.

Funny how no one's ever had a problem with with a projector, laptop, someone missing the meeting due to traffic, flights. Never happens.

But yet there's always that one guy who has a problem with everything every time. Lost the charger, lost the file, spilt coffee on the keyboard. Dog ate the flash drive.

Then there's the guy who makes it work....

Anecdotally I've had hundreds of meetings in post-pandemic years and I'd say less than 1% of them had an unfixable internet issue with one of the presenters. This is in a corporation with thousands of employees, including representative offices across the world, all of whom were working 100% from home for 2.5 years. In a critical industry.

Yes there are always some hitches and issues, even within the office, but it's not enough to impact the work.

If anyone has a connection issue, they often just quickly switch to their phone internet. It's second nature now.

I've seen more of it than I'd like to be honest but I put it down to people not ensuring their home networking set up is up to scratch, you'd imagine people would have figured that part out by now.

I find the people most desperate to have everyone in the office are largely senior management* who have nothing to do when people are WFH and self-sufficient without them and are worried about their jobs. Most ICs, team leads etc. largely feel more productive and happier at home.

*I also want to mention grads and people in their early/mid twenties who can be stuck living at home and find the office a more comfortable place to work - for me those are exactly who it's most useful. But most people I know in their late twenties/thirties with their own home and a young family much prefer being at home, understandably. Ultimately they've done the whole office and p*ss-up scene in their twenties already and have no desire to return to it.

For me the main main difference is

• people who WFH are largely understanding of those who prefer the office and don't criticise them
• people who are incredibly pro office tend to be critical of WFH and try talk it down all the time and say it's not good - and I don't know why. Maybe it's an insecurity that they are in the office while others are happily working at home? it's just bizarre

i find that people who think senior management have nothing to do and that think everyone merrily working away from home are self sufficient and dont need senior management are ill informed.

Because the behaviour is the same, no matter what the technology.

If it's mixed (some people in-room and some remote) then the in-room people communicate among themselves. Subtleties of body language don't show on camera. In one meeting I was at recently, our local goals were deliberately written on the whiteboard behind the camera.

The process flows better if everyone is remote, and committed to the purpose of the meeting. Certain things (viewing shared material) are easier. But it's harder to control what happens to it -you cannot stop people making screenshots. And some people are "multi-tasking" (best case working on something else, often browsing the web of whatever) instead of listening + contributing.

high five

Darts are busy again, town is busy 5 days a week, most people are hybrid from what I can see 3 or 4 days in 1 or 2 days from home.

Christ that brings back memories. Trying to get a meeting room that has the capacity to host 20 people and a projector for a presentation. Negotiating with other teams could they move to other rooms. Then one hour before the meeting you get told the room is being taken over for a Senior VP that is in Dublin for the day

Wednesday is the busy day on my train, next busiest is Thursday, the other days are quiet. By quiet I mean its no problem to get a seat. Car traffic seems worse than ever, both in the city and on the M50. I avoid having to drive anywhere neat peak times in the car. Bicycle cage at work is full a lot of the time now. So a lot more cycling. You see food markets etc open on a Wednesday, but the rest of the week I'm seeing local shops reducing their food choices and the amount, there just isn't the demand.

I think as the summer kicked those wanting to get everyone back in the office took a break from it. I'm sure come Sept, Oct the pressure will return. Still an internal tug of war in management between those who want everyone in the office and those that don't.

I think the dilemma for some, is hard to argue that people have to come in for meetings, if you don't actually have that many meetings and/or your meetings don't include everyone.

I know if the office I work in decided everyone had to work in the office full time, half of us wouldn't be able to get parking. It's difficult enough to get parking as it is even with most people doing a 3 - 2 blended work week.

I'd be interested, are there still efforts going on to get people into offices? A young fella I was talking to is only required to do two days a week in an office, but he says a lot of the staff just say no and don't turn up. Crazy that they can get away with such an attitude, but he says that's what happens. If he can't go in for one of his office days he says he doesn't even tell anyone, but they're happy with him because he generally does both days and that's not true of a lot of his colleagues.