Comment on WebMD forcing employees back to office. "We aren’t asking or negotiating at this point. We’re informing"

Tedesche@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

• 0110010001100010@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Do you have any data to back any of that up? Cause the data, by in large, contradicts that: computerworld.com/…/why-return-to-office-mandates…

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  • BlueLineBae@midwest.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    That was a good article with lots of great sources. But my tinfoil hat is telling me that all of these large companies demanding return to office aren’t doing it because “beliefs”. They’re doing it because the people have gained too much power in the last few years and this is the strategy to put them back in their place. Lay people off in hordes while interest is skyrocketing and demand more from them if they want to keep their jobs. Make them afraid and vulnerable so we can control them better. But again… that’s the tinfoil hat talking.

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    • Big_Boss_77@kbin.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Definitely makes sense...

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  • canihasaccount@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Beyond self-reports and perception-based outcomes, most extant studies that I’m aware of have found decreases in real output. For example, a randomized controlled trial by the NBER found that productivity of employees randomly assigned to work from home was 18% lower than employees randomly assigned to work in the office:

    www.nber.org/papers/w31515

    Another study found that output decreased by around 13% when employees worked from home, even though hours worked increased:

    www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/…/721803

    Cognitive performance may also decline in remote settings:

    academic.oup.com/ej/article/132/643/1218/6445994

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    • Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Another study found that output decreased by around 13% when employees worked from home,

      Ah this paper again.

      If you look at the paper itself (especially graph 1B) and if you look at normal output levels for basically any complex job, you’ll see that this conclusion can easily be reworded as “during WFH, output reduced to levels equal to those of a year before, continuing a trend that had started months before Covid/WFH”.

      It’s basically a useless measurement, and the authors themselves even suggest they should maybe compensate for periodicity, but then don’t do that.

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      • canihasaccount@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        First, the RCT is a much stronger study. I’m not sure why you’re picking a bone with a correlational paper when there is a causal manipulation that I linked first.

        Second, did you actually read the paper? 1B isn’t the graph of productivity; 1C is. You can’t just look at a graph, either–you need statistics.

        “For Output, figure 1B, there is no visible monotonic or linear trend, so a seasonal time correction might be more appropriate here. Moreover, average output appears to be slightly lower during WFH.

        For Productivity, figure 1C, the graph is more volatile, which is not surprising for a ratio. There is no clear linear time trend before WFH, but some variation from month to month, so a seasonal correction might be more appropriate. Productivity drops visibly during WFH. Finally, figure 1D plots the log of Productivity, which drops considerably after the start of WFH.

        To quantify the WFH effect, and to control for employee and team time-invariant variables (via employee and team fixed effects), we now turn to the regression analyses. Informally, the estimates give us average differences in outcomes before and during WFH for the same employee, controlling for team effects (since employees sometimes switch teams) and time trends.

        Table 4 reports WFH effect estimates based on OLS regressions for all three outcome variables, plus the natural logarithm of Productivity, in each case with linear and seasonal time trend corrections. All estimates are in line with the visible effects in the raw data in figure 1.

        …

        Columns 5 and 6 show that both WFH effect estimates on Productivity are negative, but only the estimate with seasonal time trend is significantly different from zero. We prefer that specification, since both the plot and the linear time trend coefficient indicate that a linear trend is not as appropriate. According to this specification, productivity decreased by 0.26 output percentage points per hour worked. Given an average WFO productivity of 1.36, this estimate corresponds to a 19% drop in output per hour worked. This is economically significant: if employees worked a fixed 40 hours per week, this would imply a drop in output of 10.2 output percentage points in a week. In other words, if employees had not increased time worked during WFH, on average they would have completed only 90 of 100 assigned tasks.”

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    • FlyingSquid@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Cognitive performance may also decline in remote settings:

      Your claim is you’re stupider when you work from home? And you’re basing that off of online chess tournaments?

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      • canihasaccount@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        No, it isn’t; performance != ability, and it’s not clear that cognitive performance declines at all–hence the word “may” mean to you?

        My claim is that

        Cognitive performance may also decline in remote settings

        Nothing more.

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  • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    *buyin’ large

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    • synae@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      fuckingcapitalists

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• scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  People always say there are tangible benefits, but then rarely ever give any actual evidence.

  Covid forced anyone who could work remotely to work remotely, and the economy went through the roof. Tech especially had some of their best years - ever.

  I also want to call out that a lot of employees that were hired during the pandemic were hired out of region - in other states, across the country. Most “return to office” mandates are veiled layoffs hiding behind the need for employees to be in person for arbitrary reasons. By forcing them back in office they get to claim employees failed to show up for work, neglecting the whole “They work in Arizona and the job is in Tennessee” bit.

  The brass tacks is that:

  • Employers pay sometimes by the decade to rent office space and are annoyed that it’s sitting empty and
  • Bad managers don’t know how to manage if they aren’t micromanaging their employees. Good managers have no problem managing remotely.
  • It’s an easy way to cut costs by forcing people working out of state to quit while claiming they were never fired.

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  • AFKBRBChocolate@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    As a manager, here are my observations. They’re qualitative, not quantitative.

    • When my folks are working on something independently, most are more productive at home, as long as home has fewer distractions and not more. They don’t get sucked into hallway chatter, there’s no walking to conference rooms, etc.
    • When they’re doing something collaborative, they’re more productive at work. People will yell over the wall or drop by to ask things that they won’t make a phone call for, or even an instant message. And the communication is better and faster in person.
    • Collaborative stuff isn’t just more productive in person, it’s better. People get into a riff of bouncing ideas back and forth and the end result is better.
    • In my opinion, the results aren’t so stark that everyone needs to be in everyday. Productivity and quality is at least adequate when people are remote, and there are other benefits. Some of my people commute like an hour each way, so a 9 hour day becomes an 11 hour day, and that’s a big difference. Some also do things like walk the dog at lunch, connect with their kids, and other things that improve their quality of life.
    • Most (but not all) of my people will choose to work from home when they have a choice. That being said, I’ve lost count of the number of times people have said something like “I’d forgotten how much I appreciate connecting with people in person to solve problems, or even just chat about the weekend.” The balance might be in favor of work from home, but for most it’s not all good.
    • I’ve noticed that when I’m on site, employees drop by to talk about things that they almost never do when one of us is home. Even though I personally also prefer working from home, I don’t do it as much because I think being a manager is more effective when I’m there.
    • Overall, I think a hybrid arrangement makes the most sense for the work we do. You can debate what the right ratio of on site vs off is, but I think some in person collaboration mixed with some affordance for people working from home works best overall.

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    • clayh@lemmy.ml ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Thanks for the anecdotes.

      Unfortunately in most sectors the data disagrees with whatever bullshit you decided to make up for the sake of argument.

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      • AFKBRBChocolate@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Wow, what an ass. I’m telling you my experience leading an organization. I said it was qualitative, not quantitative. What makes you accuse me of making shit up?

        So give us the data if you have it.

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    • scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I actually really agree with you on these points. I’m hybrid right now and it works well for me. In office I get to socialize, I do have better meetings, and I do feel like we come out with good ideas. But then the other days I’m at home, and those are my heads-down get shit done days. I get more done at home, but we come up with better ideas on what to do in office.

      I’m in software, so I push for our scrum process to allow for that. I schedule meeting days in office, where we have sprint close, sprint plannings, retros and everything in office - and then you can go home for the rest of it.

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      • AFKBRBChocolate@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Yeah, that’s it exactly. My organization is also software, by the way, but embedded real time control stuff in a very engineering-centric company.

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    • slaacaa@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Finally, a sensible comment. Also a manager for a bunch of years, and I completely agree. The best is a hybrid setup, and my team comes into the office together on the same agreed days. I think this is a good balance, and I personally wouldn’t want to work in a fully remote role, as it makes collaboration an informal human connections very difficult.

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  • downhomechunk@midwest.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I don’t think I’m a terrible manager and I’m definitely not a micromanager. One problem I had managing a remote team was how to deal with people who were clearly not working when they should have been. I could never prove it so I could never do anything about it.

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    • WFloyd@lemmy.world [bot] ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      If they are “clearly not working”, why can’t you prove it?

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      • downhomechunk@midwest.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Not are, were. I no longer work for that company. I’m typing up more details in my reply to OP.

        I never met the burden of proof that my HR team said was required if I wanted to write someone up. The company did not have appropriate spying tools to definitively prove that an employee had not actually typed anything in two hours even though their teams status was showing active. There was always the hypothetical, “I was at my desk but my phone was ringing non-stop with customer calls and that’s why I couldn’t answer this customer’s 5 urgent e-mails over 3 hours.”

        I’m not saying that I wanted that kind of babysitting spyware installed. I absolutely did not. I don’t believe in that sort of thing and wouldn’t have wanted something like that installed on my computer for my bosses to spy on me.

        To answer your question directly, I’m not an idiot. I’d call an employee’s cell to ask why certain things had not been actioned yet and hear background noises that clearly did not come from a home office (traffic noise, wind, PA announcements, etc). My best guess is they would stop whatever they were doing, pull out their laptop for a few minutes to do whatever I was bugging them about and then disappear again. I’d call them out on it, but they knew there was nothing I could actually do so it didn’t matter to them.

        Most of the team were honest and diligent. They worked just as well at home as they did in the office and we never had any problems. But there are always people who know what they can get away with and will try to get away with as much as they can.

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    • FMT99@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      People had no tangible tasks? Wouldn’t the proof be that their work was not getting done?

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      • downhomechunk@midwest.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        It wasn’t so black and white. You’ll see what I mean if you want to read my replies to other commenters.

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    • scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      If you can’t prove that someone isn’t doing anything then that’s on you, the manager. You shouldn’t punish everyone else because of one person not doing their job.

      Real talk - There are many metrics you can use to gather info on what your team is doing. That’s your job, to know if they’re working or not. If they aren’t, it’s your job to prove it and carry out the punishments. If you can’t do that then that’s your failing, not the team’s.

      For software I hold my teams to their point commitments. If they commit to so many points of work then that’s my metric. Teams will always slip, and miss targets, but there are obviously people who only get one or two points done a sprint. That was my job to collect those metrics and make a case.

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      • downhomechunk@midwest.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Oh wow, I wasn’t expecting to get so many passionate replies on a sub-comment. I’ll provide some more context now that I’m not on mobile. TL/DR: I’m not the clueless asshole CEO you may think I am from my original comment.

        My job is not in software, coding or similar. It’s customer service for international logistics. Our field was hit especially hard by the pandemic rebound. Remember when you couldn’t buy anything? I was on the front lines of that and it was insane. The current problems in the Red Sea are triggering a sort of PTSD. There are already shortages of empty containers in Asia because they’re all on boats going around Africa. Shipping rates from Asia are growing geometrically the past couple weeks, and things will get a lot worse if ships can’t safely transit the Suez Canal again soon.

        Being customer service, the expectation is that we are available to customers during normal business hours to quickly process requests and resolve problems. There is nothing preventing the job being done remotely if you have the right people. We didn’t have all of the right people. But to be fair, they weren’t hired for a remote role. Like many jobs, we were full time in the office until March 2020.

        I was not upper management setting policy. I was middle management. And I’m not pretending I’m the best manager. I was promoted from operations to build and lead a specialized team for our company’s top accounts. My style leans toward hands off / lead by example. No task is beneath me and I back the team up 100%.

        The stress and non-stop intensity of that job wore me down. I switched companies earlier this year to a role that was closer to home, less responsibility and a nearly 25% pay increase. When I called a meeting to let the team know I was leaving, I was shocked to see the stunned looks on their faces. A couple of them cried which I was absolutely not prepared for. I’m not trying to toot my own horn, I’m just trying to say I guess I was doing something right to elicit that kind of reaction.

        My bosses knew about the problems I had with a few employees taking too many liberties working at home. Other department managers had the same problem with some of their staff, this was not unique to my team. The company didn’t have any kind of spyware installed on employee computers to monitor activity, and it’s very easy to manipulate teams to make it look like you’re at your desk when you aren’t. I’m opposed to that kind of monitoring anyway. All of my employees were salaried, so there were no cases to be made for cheating on a time card. Also, the company did not issue VOIP phones to remote workers. I had a company paid cell phone, but my reports were expected to forward their desk phone to their personal cell phone on their home days. For these reasons and a few others, HR would never approve the write ups I wanted to do. I could only have phone calls followed up with e-mails.

        I’d see a few urgent e-mails come in from a customer to someone that weren’t getting answered. I’d poke them with a teams message and get no reply. So I’d call and could tell that they weren’t at home by the background noises on the call. They’d apologize for not seeing the e-mail, power up their laptop, deal with it and disappear again. This was just a couple problem children btw, most of the team were professionals and doing what they were supposed to do. These few employees knew they had the upper hand and frankly took advantage of it. It’s not what I would have done, but I can’t blame them. I can just look back and whine to strangers on the internet about it.

        My managers told me I should force these employees to come in to the office every day, but I refused to do that for a few reasons. First, this went against the company’s official pandemic emergency social distancing policy. The hybrid schedules and desk assignments were set up so that the cubicles around you were empty on your in office days. Second, it was extremely hard to hire people during that time. Demand for workers in my field exploded once everyone started making money hand over fist when shipping rates skyrocketed. Forcing them to come in unfairly like that would have led them to quit, and there was no shortage of companies out there willing to snatch them up. Then their desks would fall on me and the rest of my already over-worked team.

        Lastly, I was hybrid too. So I’m going to force someone to come in every day when I’m only there 2 or 3 days per week? For what? The solution proposed to me by management was that I should come in every day. Mind you this was in the alpha / delta days. I had a 2 year old and a severely asthmatic wife at home. I wasn’t about to come in and sit next to someone I knew wasn’t social distancing based on the phone interactions I mentioned above. Masking policies weren’t enforced I believed in the science and took that sort of thing very seriously in those days.

        Real talk: I did my best to take a hard look at my own strengths and weaknesses as a manager at that job. I wanted to learn from my mistakes and do my best to not repeat them in my new position. The new job is 100% in office, work from home is by exception only. I know this is not a popular opinion around these parts, but I prefer it this way. Our job is fast paced and customer facing, and I’m in the process of re-writing and re-training the team’s entire workflow. All of this is easier to do when we’re in the same physical space and can call quick, impromptu huddles. I can hear problems brewing on the floor and coach everyone on how to solve them then and there. We all worked remotely today due to a snow storm and there were no problems.

        The challenges I have with my new team are different because, honestly, they’re kind of a shitty team. My predecessor picked some real duds. I’m actively trying to manage 3 of them out for one reason or another (constant Friday/Monday flu, direct insubordination, refusal to complete assigned tasks, failure to meet deadlines, etc). So now I’m learning and growing in a different way. I’m forced to be more punitive and micro-managing than I want to be. I’m alienating the staff I don’t want to lose trying to weed out the bad apples and trying to figure out how to keep them motivated. I also have a few recent new hires I like that I don’t want to get the wrong impression, but I can’t give anyone a reason to claim that I’m picking on them when that’s absolutely what I’m doing. I’ll take tips if you have any! (no /s)

        Long term, I don’t want to manage an operations team or have a ton of direct reports. I want to move into a product or commercial role and work on bigger picture stuff. But I have to prove myself in my current role first.

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    • calypsopub@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Then your real problem is you don’t have an effective way to set and measure goals.

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      • downhomechunk@midwest.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        I don’t disagree with you. I changed jobs earlier this year. I took a hard look at my successes and failures at the last job. I really wanted to learn from my mistakes and be a better manager. I think I’m a lot better now at setting expectations and holding people accountable, or at least I’m trying to be.

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• _number8_@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  why should people’s lives be drastically worsened just so organizations benefit (in nebulous, bullshit, business school ways)?

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• Anticorp@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  There are zero tangible benefits to coders reporting to the office. They are less productive, less happy, and more frequently interrupted.

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• forrgott@lemm.ee ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  False. The vast majority of office jobs can be completed more efficiently via remote work, with less personal cost to the employee, too. I can’t actually think of any office job that can’t be done just as well, if not better, working from home.

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• FlyingSquid@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I worked a hybrid schedule at my last job. There was not one single benefit for me to come into the office half the week. I achieved nothing there that I didn’t achieve at home because all I needed was a computer, an internet connection and two monitors, and, despite it being open plan, we still did all of our communications on slack and all of our meetings on zoom. I just wore noise-cancelling headphones all day. I was interrupted maybe once a week at most and usually by someone who wanted to know where someone else was.

  It didn’t even benefit the company because it was an office in a large industrial space and they could have removed the offices and put in more equipment if they just made all of us, not one of whom needed to be in the office to do our work, work from home.

  And if you tell me that socialization is a benefit, you can fuck right off. I already have friends and a family if I want to socialize. If I make a friend at work, fine, but if they’re all just polite acquaintances, I’m happy to live with that. I can count on my fingers the people I’ve worked with in the past who I’ve lost touch with that I’d even remotely care about if they got back in touch with me.

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• guacupado@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  There are a whole host of tangible benefits (for both companies and employees) from coming into work and I don’t see a problem with a company insisting on it.

  There’s nothing backing this. Just a bunch of CEOs saying they’ve “noticed” productivity. Which they have to say. The only actual study I’ve ever seen said there was zero benefit partly because having to host all the workers and provide amenities for them counters any benefit that could possibly happen, with company annual performance not showing any increase.

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• pseudonym@monyet.cc ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  The tangible benefits:

  • Riffing
  • Hallway banter
  • ??

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  • Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Free (bad) coffee

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  • thanks_shakey_snake@lemmy.ca ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Vibes you forgot vibes

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• squiblet@kbin.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  There are plenty of benefits from remote working too, as well as drawbacks from office work, and it hasn't been decisively shown that at-office work is always better. For some management styles, sure, I guess. The sort of work they do - website development, I'm guessing? - has been shown to be amenable to a remote work style. Advantages include being able to hire people from all over, not have to spend big money on an office, employees can save money on housing and cost of living (don't have to live near a city center) and automobile (don't have to pay for gas to drive in or maybe even have a car) and time of commute - rather than get up, shower, drive for an hour and park, they can just start work. If the employer makes tasks and time flexible, also child care, which can be crucial for some people (it can be very expensive). And if the employer really wants, they can pay people less and save those costs themselves.

  Of course, some employees like it, some don't - there are people who work better remote and some prefer being around colleagues. I agree the choice of offering remote work belongs to the employer.

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• circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Can you list those tangible benefits?

  As someone who has worked remotely since 2016 (well before covid), I don’t see them for a company such as WebMD.

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