The Office is Dying: Its Time to Rethink How We Work

[brooklynite]

Over the past year, many places have returned to something approximating a prepandemic normal. Restaurants are filling up again. Airports and hotels are packed. Even movie theaters have made a comeback. But that hasn’t been the case for the office. Only about a third of office workers are back in the office full time. And that isn’t likely to change dramatically any time soon: Recent surveys asked executives about the share of their workers who would be back in the office five days a week in the future. In 2021 the response was 50 percent; now it’s down to 20 percent.

But the alternatives — remote and hybrid work — come with their own problems. In many cases, remote work has become synonymous with meeting fatigue, the collapse of work-life balance, overwhelming amounts of email and Slack messages and awkward attempts at social connection. And hybrid work setups often represent what some have called the worst of both work worlds: long commutes to half-empty offices, just to sit on Zoom calls all day.

That leaves office workers in what feels like a work purgatory: The office is dying, but a new, viable model of work has yet to be born. And that liminal space raises all sorts of new questions: What is the office actually for? What will the postoffice future of work look like? And if the future of work means working from home in some capacity, how do we make that future better for everyone involved?

Those questions are at the center of Anne Helen Petersen and Charlie Warzel’s book, “Out of Office: The Big Problem and Bigger Promise of Working From Home.” Petersen is a longtime culture writer who writes the newsletter Culture Study; Warzel is a veteran technology reporter who writes the newsletter Galaxy Brain for The Atlantic. In “Out of Office” they argue that the core problem with current remote and hybrid work setups is this: Workers have left the physical office, but they have taken the broken culture of the office with them. The result is widespread dysfunction but also immense opportunity: If we take this moment to rethink not only where we work but also how we work, then the possibilities are endless.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/16/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-anne-helen-petersen-charlie-warzel.html

[Mme. Defarge]

1. This is horrifying.

The Rise of the Worker Productivity Score

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/08/14/business/worker-productivity-tracking.html

We really do need a constitutional right to privacy.

[brooklynite]

3. You don't have a right to privacy when working on someone else's clock.

[questionseverything]

4. On the clock or off, workers bodily functions are a private matter

[Mme. Defarge]

6. Thank you.

It’s a form of assault, in my opinion.

[Mme. Defarge]

5. Not yet.

Last edited Tue Aug 16, 2022, 03:36 PM - Edit history (1)

Surely there need to be limits on how invasive an employer has the right to be.

[Bettie]

7. It also penalizes workers who

can do their work efficiently.

I had some downtime when I worked as an admin to a large group (30 direct support, 60 secondary). Some days I'd be looking for more work by about 2, because I had finished everything on my desk and usually done some for others as well. I finished everything, on time, and it was quality work.

There was also downtime while I waited for corrections, if I had done all the routine daily stuff.

I was good at my job.

Now, I guess I'd be fired even after getting all of my work done and half of someone else's due to being able to do it quickly and correctly.

[Sympthsical]

21. I blatantly go grocery shopping during meetings.

I'm mostly WFH, although I do go in sometimes when various things have to be done in person.

Our meetings are camera optional. If I'm running a meeting, yeah, I'm at my computer so I have lots of various materials or the ability to look something up at my fingertips. But if I know it's a meeting where I am literally there as a warm audio body and don't have to give any input unless specifically asked, I'll totally bounce around. Pop the ear buds in and go run an errand.

However, what I am is efficient. I'm usually up by 4:30 or 5, do gym stuff, then clearing out mails, filling out and filing things, and generally doing various tasks that I know need to be done that day. I'm often done with the rote stuff by 9 am. The rest of my day is just answering various things, phone calls, meetings, etc.

I oversee employees, and my philosophy is always, "I don't care what you do as long as what needs to be done is done. And don't call or text me after 6pm unless there's a body."

It's allowed me to go back to school full time. Because I do so much before actual office hours, a lot of my day is just me sitting there doing my homework. I love it, and my boss has never complained that something wasn't completed properly.

My partner is also mostly WFH and attends work meetings while driving, and I hate that so much.

Productivity meters remind me of the Black Mirror episode with Daniel Kaluuya, where everything was measured by how long you pedaled aimlessly on a bike to earn money.

[Johnny2X2X]

8. Yeah, this isn't going to fly in today's labor market

Workers right now have more power than they've had in decades. Good luck hiring or keeping good people if you're going to start this nonsense.

[Mme. Defarge]

14. The problem is that

so many major employers are invested in this approach, which gives them way too much leverage. It seems like it may be an anti-trust situation. At any rate, there needs to be a major update to our outmoded wage and hour laws which provide protections to workers who are paid for their time, whereas exempt employees (meaning exempt from the protection of the Fair Labor Standards Act) are paid to do a job, in accordance with a job description and company standards.

[Johnny2X2X]

16. The office environment has changed a lot in my time in office work

25 years with a desk job now. It's really about creating the best environment that gives you a competitive edge. Most productive doesn't mean most hours, industry leaders already know this. Most output doesn't equal least time off, in fact, most output equals well rested employees with a better work life balance. This stuff has been known for decades now, it's not theory anymore, it's fact, teams that work 40 hours a week will produce more than teams working 50 hours a week over the long run. Workers with a better work life balance are more efficient and cost less in health care than overworked ones.

The top firms in each industry are the top firms in large part because they have accepted the science around how to treat your workers to get the best out of them. Google became a global force due to hiring the most talented people and giving them the best work environment in the industry to foster creativity and innovation. GM/Ford/Chrysler rebuilt their office and professional environments to rebuild their companies after they all got in trouble.

If your company wants to be on top, invest in its people.

[SWBTATTReg]

2. This will be another big issue in the future to come. As electronic networks evolve, as ...

intelligence is pushed outwards from the old offices of the past and back into the offices of workers remotely working, many new rules, new ethics are being established or need to be established. Worker and/or boss relationships need to be strengthened or enhanced to allow this new environment to work in the new age of worker/boss relationships. Trust also needs to be there, for some bosses are still in the old mentality of everyone must be in the same room so I can / we can keep an eye on things. Also, personal relationships may suffer as less human contact / less face-to-face time results in fewer positive business results, e.g., "Hey, George and I were talking the other day about this problem X you had, and we have a solution Y over here that might work!", etc.

[Johnny2X2X]

9. Adapt or fall behind

We did full WFH for 2+ years, and the managers saw an increase in productivity, not a decrease. But there was an element of mentorship and team building missing that would have showed up over the long term. Now we've gone from a hybrid model, 2-3 days in the office, 2-3 days at home. I absolutely love it. When we started back to the office, I immediately remembered the collaborative parts of the office that I had missed.

As it is now, I am home on Mondays and Fridays, but in the office Tuesday through Thursday, with once or twice a month I stay home on Tuesday or Thursday. Best of both worlds. I plan my high concentration tasks for the days I am home, I schedule meetings or learning sessions for when I am in the office. The work week is so much easier. Thursday feels like the new Friday. Monday is no longer a slog.

And we let people apply for full WFH, 13% of our work force did and it's been good for them too. Know several people who moved away when they went full WFH, they moved to be back near the places they grew up and their families that stayed there. How awesome for them. I do think that the WFH folks will probably be the first to go on average if our industry has a downturn.

Something is missing right now with WFH, waiting for the first company to really develop a model for best leveraging it's benefits while minimizing it's negatives. Some innovative company will set the standard and then it will spread.

[SWBTATTReg]

10. Wonderful in how your office/business readily adapted to the WFH environment. Especially if you're

in a field such as IT or such, that allows it. And you are right, talking w/ your work buddies you might happen to chance upon a solution w/o even knowing it! The most negative thing I had w/ the WFH was the constant presence of the laptop/terminal link to work, there 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. But the most positive thing, was that if a system went down or something happened to a job I was running in the data center, I could (at home) simply logon and figure out the problem, fix it, and restart the process, all w/o having to get fully dressed again, go drive downtown, logon, fix and restart the whole process. It's a time saver.

Thanks for your feedback and the best to ya!

[Johnny2X2X]

12. Aerospace Engineering here

The solutions you learn just listening to people talk around you, or in having conversations is really needed. But concentrating at home is easier than in the office too.

As far as never being away from work, I log off when it's time and don't think about work again until the morning. If I have a late meeting with people on the West Coast, I will log off for a couple hours and get some things done around the house and then log back on. WFH to me doesn't mean any more hours at all.

Bottom line is that companies that don't adapt WFH at least hybrid are going to miss out on the best talent right now. If you want to compete in technology, you need talented workers. So the firms that are hanging onto the old school office environments are going to find themselves at a competitive disadvantage soon enough and then they'll be forced to adapt.

When I hear of companies on one hand talking about instituting draconian measures to track "productivity" and then also complain that they can't find good help on the other, I know that that is a company that is not going to be competitive in the very near future.

[Arazi]

19. Yup. WFH is now a mandatory "perk" for me

The ability to live anywhere in the world and do laundry, open the door for the pandemic puppy to go out (and in) at any time, start something to defrost for dinner etc etc are now non-negotiable. Besides, I’m over the cost of commuting in time and $$

I’ve watched folks I know in other industries draw that line and walk away from their company rather than going back to the office - particularly people in commuting hellscapes like LA or NYC. They moved to Utah or Oregon or Costa Rica (and for one couple I know they bought a land yacht and travelled the entire 2 years of the pandemic) and they’re not going back to that full time (or at all in a couple cases).

My division has a get together 2x per year for team building weekends and that’s enough. We don’t even have an office anymore.

[Orrex]

11. Companies will gladly sacrifice productivity in favor of authoritarian control

It absolutely galls employers to think that their team might be working from home in comfortable clothes in a comfortable chair, instead of laboring under soul-killing lights in an office veal pen.

In addition, a great deal of management’s time is devoted to counting bathroom breaks and making sure that employees aren’t smiling between tasks; if you get rid of the need for such pointless oversight, how will you justify those management jobs?

Before anyone says “that’s not how companies work,” I’ve been in the workforce for over 30 years, and that is exactly how companies work.

[Johnny2X2X]

13. That culture is toxic

We cannot find people fast enough to do the work we have under contract. We would literally go out of business if our managers decided to start doing things that make talented people not want to work for us.

[ripcord]

15. Sort of on sort of off the subject

But can someone explain to me why people are complaining about being fired because they got caught using a mouse jiggler?

[Johnny2X2X]

18. Mouse jiggler.

Mouse jiggler? So something that keeps their mouse and screen awake? Brilliant.

All this technology that allows managers to spy on and closely monitor their employees to me is just a sign that you have lazy managers. Good managers know what work their people are getting done, they support them in doing it.

Everyone works differently, some people just lock in and power through something, other people need frequent breaks and side projects to work most efficiently. Judge people based on their performance, not how often their mouse is moving.

If I was an owner of a company and my managers came to me with spying software they wanted to use on the workers, I'd strongly consider finding new managers, or I'd tell the managers to let me test it on them first.

Crazy that employers are doing any of this BS right now with workers having so many options to find jobs. We're looking for ways we can make work more enjoyable for office workers right now so we can retain and attract staff.

[shrike3]

17. I went independent contractor in 1995.

Best thing I ever did.

That said, independent contracting is VERY different from being an employee watched constantly re productivity quotas and bathroom breaks.

[Johnny2X2X]

20. I'm always curious

What companies out there are counting bathroom breaks for office workers?

I mean, I know there is a total thick line between how office and production workers are treated, but why the heck would anyone stay in an office that was treating them like that when there are companies literally begging office people to come work for them right now? There are people I know right now absolutely raking companies by rejecting their first and sometimes second and third offers to get a better salary. Know a lady who kept saying no until they gave her 60% more than their initial salary offer.

Production? Totally different story, they're asked to do more and more and production environments seem worse and worse.