New study says 1-2 days in the office is the optimum workweek

[Johnny2X2X]

https://finance.yahoo.com/video/two-days-office-optimal-workweek-210501583.html#:~:text=A%20new%20study%20finds%20that,office%20is%20the%20optimal%20workweek.

The results are overwhelming, productivity and worker satisfaction says 1-2 days in the office for the work work week is optimal.

I've posted about this several times, this is a revolution that hit at the perfect time. Covid demanded WFH, the worker shortage made workers demand WFH be made permanent. Firms are still trying to make sense out of all of it, the ones that adapt the best will have a massive competitive advantage. The ones that resist will fall behind.

The implications to work life and career options are limitless. This is the way it will be for office workers from now on, it's truly a revolution.

[BlueTsunami2018]

1. My livelihood is building office towers and the like.

The businesses around these towers, like restaurants and food carts as well as retail outlets and such, depend on office workers to stay afloat. I mean, yay for getting to work in your pajamas and all but no workers in the towers is death for a lot of other jobs. Many of us don’t have that luxury. I don’t see why it’s such a hardship to go into work and I don’t see this as a cause for celebration.

Just an outside perspective.

[femmedem]

2. There are pluses and minuses for sure. But this is great for climate change.

Less commuting equals less carbon emissions.

Maybe one way around it is to have more office buildings with more apartments upstairs. People could toss on their sweats, walk downstairs to the office, and have a bit of work/life separation without the commute. And more people living in these buildings would be even better for the retail stores and restaurants because people would be there even on the weekends.

[applegrove]

7. Fast fashion, fashion and clothes use up 6 to 8% of fossil fuel. If people are in their

Pajamas every day that is a good thong. 8% is more than air travel and ships combined.

[jimfields33]

3. I hope everyone gets back to 5 days a week.

I hated doing remote work. And the VTCs were even worse then meetings in person. I’m happy for normalcy again.

[Johnny2X2X]

4. Office towers are being abandoned

And those businesses that support office workers are going to suffer too. Other industries will see upticks though, IT services for at home work for instance.

And it's a cause for celebration for several reasons, not the least of which is it's much better for the environment for millions of workers to no longer be commuting daily. Better for the environment to do away with these wasteful massive office buildings too. And it gives workers power by having more options, they can look for work across the country without moving with WFH being the norm. More power is leading to better pay and benefits.

Buddy's employer just opened a $300 Million state of the art office before the pandemic. But it's a very forward thinking company who has quickly realized they can't force their workers to come to it anymore, so they're incentivizing people to show up 1 day a week with free lunches and entertainment.

Bottom line though is productivity, workers are more productive on average at home, companies who force workers to the office are literally hurting productivity as well as generating more cost. This was going to happen eventually, Covid just pushed us forward a decade or two in time.

Giant office buildings are just wasteful relics now. Companies with stubborn executives who cling to them will fail. Offices have been changing for decades with technology. So you have people sitting in their cubes attending meetings remotely anyways, that's what happens at the office right now, a bunch of people sitting there with head sets on because meetings are now mostly on Webex/Teams/Zoom etc. Note taking is easier this way, screen sharing has replaced white boards and projectors. Going back to some old way is going to be folly, the new way makes us more competitive.

Maybe industries who convert these giant office buildings into affordable housing can pick up the slack economically.

[relayerbob]

5. Going to depend on the industry

Going to be hard making computer chips, as I do, from the garage.

[BumRushDaShow]

6. Before I retired, I was on that kind of schedule

3 days WAH and 2 days in the office. Although full WAH would have been preferable, that was a good compromise.

And as a note as my agency (and I expect others) had been "experimenting" with different ideas of what they dubbed "flexible work schedules" and "flexible workplaces" for years, there was (and still is to some degree) the concept of "hoteling" or "flex space" where shared workstations were setup for the times when an employee was "in the office". I.e., no one had their "own cubicle". There was an overlap of those in and out so you always had someone "there" to justify use of a space. In addition, there were times when there was some "mandatory" meeting and/or "in-person" training scheduled and everyone came in.

My office didn't have "hoteling" - that was a headquarters thing, but then down in D.C. metro, it made all the difference in the world as anyone who lives/works down there or even saw what happened with the fiasco of that "trucker convoy" mess, knows (or will come to find out) that commuting in that area (including on the Metro) can be a daily hassle. And whenever I had to travel down there and stay for whatever amount of time, I brought my laptop and just plugged into an "empty" cubicle at the office I needed to go to, in order to work. Depending on the building, I either drove there and parked or hopped on a shuttle to get there.

The distaff side that some who didn't like the arrangement would correctly point out, was that this puts the onus on the employee to use their own (unreimbursed) utilities to do this.

But in any case, the only way this could have ever been done (and I and many others "lived through" getting to this point) - businesses, schools and government had to put in the necessary network infrastructure, otherwise it was awful. Nowadays, it can be bad enough with the slow network connections and disconnects, etc., but the "before" (dial-in to the office network) and "after" (VPN from your home internet into your office's network), has been like night and day.

[marmar]

8. I honestly prefer going in to the office.

I find that I'm less productive working from home. I'm a social creature, and enjoy lunches with colleagues, taking walks around downtown during breaks etc. It's much harder for me to focus at home. I HATED the work-from-home quarantine period.

[Johnny2X2X]

9. Everyone is different

What you're going to find though is the office environment is much less social, because most of the staff isn't there. We've been trickling into the office more and more, and I was excited to be back, but I quickly realized that it's not the same, just a lot less people even though we've been hiring like crazy.

And another thing working against offices is their push for more collaborative environments. Work for a large engineering firm, decades ago we all had our own offices with actual doors. Then that moved to 8x8 cubes with 6 foot walls. Then that moves to 6x6 cubes with 4 foot walls. There was talk they were moving to long tables with little clusters of teams with no walls at all soon. Compared to what most people have at home, it's not as nice of an environment to occupy for 8 hours. At home I have a 13x 12 office with nice views out the windows, and my dog's bed in the corner so she can hang out with me. People aren't enthusiastic about leaving their nice home offices to sit in a small cube where people walk by all day long.

But the loss of collaboration isn't lost on me, it's a problem that needs some creative solutions. Companies who come up with the best solutions will have a competitive advantage.

[marmar]

10. No. My office is back to normal.

[Johnny2X2X]

11. Good luck attracting new talent

We're short workers, new hiring is what was the final straw for our organization. We'd spend time and money finding qualified candidates who then only wanted WFH.

[sl8]

12. And the other days are spent out on the lake, right? That seems optimal. nt

[Johnny2X2X]

13. Power to the workers

We're seeing this right now, I am get head hunted by companies from both coasts offering full time WFH. I'm not the only one. We're understaffed, the workers have all the power right now. My company recognizes all of this and is offering better bonuses to retain people. They're entertaining stock offerings to sweeten the pot. They have to, because while I live in West Michigan, a Silicon valley company might not pay me Silicon Valley wages to live where I live, but work for them, but they're surely going to be offering more than West Michigan wages.

And it helps my company too, the pool of qualified aerospace engineers is much larger if we can search the country without asking people to move.