Regarding return to office policy, I hear many speculations and reasons hypothesized. Mostly by employees who don’t really know and who had no choice in it.
I would like to know is if there are any lemmings out there who have been involved in these talks.
What was discussed?
How is something like this coordinated amongst others businesses even rivals.
What are the high level factors that have gone into the decision?
Bonus points: is it even possible for employees to prevent or reverse these policies at this point?
I’ve been in discussions regarding returning to the office for my group, whether other groups should return to the office, and whether to keep the days in the office or add more.
For returning to the office, a lot of it came down to collaboration. My team does not use online communication tools to the quantity that it can substitute for in person communication. I advocated for a return to office for most staff, in part to benefit junior staff who weren’t communicating and needed mentorship. That meant the entire team had to show up on the same days, but I let them pick the days and changed those days on their request. The intent of the in person days is for them to talk to each other and coordinate.
One group resisted coming into the office far longer than mine. They were pushed into coming into the office, along with a change in reporting, because that group was blowing budgets and missing deadlines. I said you can bring them into the office, but you have to change their group culture to be more collaborative and talk to each other. It has been an issue working with members of that group because they’ve gotten used to a lack of coordination and communication, which created poor work quality.
When asked to go full RTO or increase days, I’ve pushed back. My group is mostly meeting deadlines and I see diminishing returns for more days into the office. I’m also aware it is a perk for staff, and not one I want to pull away. However, the gap in online versus physical interaction is still there.
If you’re going to fight back against coming into the office more, then you’re going to need to argue on the basis of coordination and collective productivity. I’ve seen a lot of people claim individual productivity, but that included a lot of rework that could have been avoided with some five minute conversations. Not emails, conversations.
On the flip side, if coordination isn’t a big deal, don’t expect raises any time soon. At that point, you’re a more easily replacable cog whose work can get pushed to places with lower costs of living.
I really dislike that a handful of people who can’t get their shit together to communicate over zoom are dragging everyone else (and the environment) down.
I’d also wager that some of those people also communicate badly in person, but at least do communication shaped activities so it gets a pass.
Like at my old job, there’d be long meetings both in person and over zoom where nothing would be accomplished. The problem is not if we’re in the same room or not. It’s that people don’t know what the fuck they’re doing at any level of this task. They don’t understand the system, and they don’t know how to run a meeting. The few times I just seized control and ran it like a D&D session went better. eg: "It’s not your turn. Please wait to speak. That’s an interesting idea but the
game we set out to playmeeting is about [topic], so we’re going to stay on topic. No,the rules say you can’t do thatthat’s not an option in a web browser.That worked fine in person and on zoom. The problem isn’t the medium. The problem is people.
Yeah, but the problem of management is people. And I’ve pointed out that management aren’t always the people who don’t communicate. And issues with communication are made worse when everything is pushed to text where nuance is lost and everything is archived which can be used against you.
There are probably some teams that can work well remotely, but a lot of teams can’t. I generally find the best people who work remotely are highly competent at their job. Most people aren’t highly competent at their jobs.
There’s some truth to this, but also video chat is commonplace now. That can be recorded too, but so can anything. Some of my coworkers started using Signal for out of band communication even though zoom/slack said they didn’t retain any recordings.
If they can’t work remotely, they should be leveled up. Stop dragging everyone else down.
And again, if you can only communicate in person you’re probably bad at communicating in person, too, without realizing it. I think a lot of CEO types think they’re amazing because they walk into a room and everyone’s like “yeah boss got it that’s great feedback”, and they don’t realize they just said a bunch of garbage and people just agreed because he’s the boss.
I bet. I also wouldn’t be surprised if the CEO gives direction, hears “can do, boss!”, but it doesn’t actually get done because there isn’t a triggered deliverable to verify. You may have junior staff doing what they’re being told, but it isn’t what the CEO wants because it is going through several layers of telephone and, because everyone is remote, it is harder to identify where the problem is.
When I worked an old job in the office, the game of telephone from the CEO down was so bad. People would get in their head that some things were MUST HAVE, but if I sneakily just asked the CEO directly he’d be like “no that’s not important”. But the designer thought he wanted it so she told the product lead it was important so our team product guy was told this was “straight from the top”.
Sooooo the highly competent people will go work at remote offices and the ones that force in office work will have the others?
Except there are problems with training. Companies are going to need to train more competent staff. How do companies train competent staff without competent staff in the first place?
That’s not “except”, that’s “and”.
Sounds fair to me.
Do you believe such conversations are impossible by telephone?
One thing I’m learning as the company I’m at grows is that there are a lot of people who simply suck at communicating. they don’t know how to do it by messaging, they don’t know how to do it by email, they don’t know how to do it by phone call, and they need somebody right there in front of them to point out their bullshit and drag out what they’re trying to say
I noticed this morning that it sometimes feels like I’m talking to fucking AI. somebody asked me to review something with no context, says they did something, I point out hey didn’t you actually do this and not that, then like a dumb AI chatbot they just agree with me and say yes you’re right it is that and then don’t elaborate. this is not a conversation that you can have remotely, because the person on the other end is a fucking idiot that can’t communicate. this conversation goes slightly better in person, because you are more likely to take the lead in it
Sounds like people have been put in positions which do not fit their skills. This should be fixed by either developing their skills or putting them in a position that fits their abilities, not by other people doing their job for them in person.
Not impossible, but 80% of human communication is non-verbal. When we converse, we’re not mere robots passing data back and forth.
Video call then?