this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2024
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People always say there are tangible benefits, but then rarely ever give any actual evidence. (Note the CEO in the video said the exact same thing and then also did not provide any evidence backing it up, unless you count someone drawing a graph on a whiteboard in an "up" direction 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:
As a manager, here are my observations. They're qualitative, not quantitative.
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.
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.
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.
Thanks for the anecdotes.
Unfortunately in most sectors the data disagrees with whatever bullshit you decided to make up for the sake of argument.
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.
https://www.computerworld.com/article/3711386/why-return-to-office-mandates-fail.html
https://www.apollotechnical.com/working-from-home-productivity-statistics/
https://thehill.com/business/4110598-remote-employees-work-longer-and-harder-studies-show/amp/
Is that enough? Should I keep going?
Did you actually read the articles you linked, or did you just search for ones with titles that seem to support your point of view?
That first one cites a number of studies that don't support your view. The first says that less that half of companies had higher productivity with remote employees. The second says a third of managers say productivity increased and 22% say it decreased. The third says it depends on the employee. There's one that says remote employees are happier, which no one is disputing. There's one that says hybrid gives a small benefit to productivity (which was my experience) while fully remote is a net negative, and so on.
Your second article mostly talks about working from home sometimes (e.g., "at least a few times a month") and my whole point was that hybrid seems to be best overall.
Your last one isn't data, it's mostly anecdotal, but the overall thrust is that employees work longer at home, which isn't the same as productivity and which I said in my comment.
None of these touch on my point that teams work more effectively and come up with better solutions when they work together in person. That's my experience over the last four years, and my employees tend to say the same thing.
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.
If they are "clearly not working", why can't you prove it?
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.
That makes sense, thanks for the thorough response!
Thanks for reading it!
People had no tangible tasks? Wouldn't the proof be that their work was not getting done?
It wasn't so black and white. You'll see what I mean if you want to read my replies to other commenters.
Then your real problem is you don't have an effective way to set and measure goals.
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.
Does it involve spying tools?
No
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.
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.
I think you're headed in the right direction, and it sounds like you understand what I was trying to say. I'm sorry you have so many duds on your team, but you know the game, and sounds like you're acting on it.
You're absolutely right, remote workers - especially those in customer service or any on-demand platform must be available at all times. The nice thing of being at home is that you can be a bit more relaxed, but that doesn't mean shutting your computer and walking away, it means you can hear the call coming in while you're getting a cup of coffee.
Good managers aren't micromanagers like I said, but you're seeing the other side, but they will be if forced. I agree with your bosses, your specific employee you have in mind has lost work from home privileges, it's how you carry that out in your head now. Personally, I would start keeping a record of missed calls and if you have it in your company, start building a PIP. Missed calls is absolutely a metric for a customer service agent. I'm not saying anyone is a perfect 0 missed calls, but you can take the average that everyone else has (double it to be generous maybe), and then you have this person's target level. If they're consistently above that, well, there you go. PIP and then if no improvement out the door.
For the flus, well, for that one since it's health I would inform your HR team of what you suspect is happening along with the proof of the pattern and ask for guidance. They'll probably guide you on how you should proceed there so that the company doesn't come off as "not caring about health" - but they're definitely not going to be happy with an employee faking illness.
As for the rest of the team, motivation may come from that. Not saying from fear, but they probably know Kevin is over there dicking around and offline most of the time, and so it makes them think that he's just getting away with it, and demoralizes them because they probably do care about the job. I know I've been in that position before, nothing kills morale like a teammate who doesn't care at all.
I really do wish you good luck. Management isn't easy when you have a team of duds, but I've seen great managers come in and turn a team around - and a large part of that is cutting the chaff so to speak. Sounds like you know what sort of boss you like and who you want to be, and that's the boss I strive to be too, but for some people they just don't want a boss at all. And for them we have to become the bosses we hate.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. Yes, I absolutely got where you were coming from. That's why I felt the need to elaborate. It sounds like you have more managerial experience than me, but we're on the same page.
I have a team of 11 including 1 supervisor under me. They're all mostly ok besides the 3 troublemakers. We're not in turnaround territory and it definitely could be worse.
I no longer have remote workers. Only by exception (home repair, sick kid, etc.) And not to play semantics, but back when I had most of the problems with remote workers, working from home wasn't a privilege. It was a health & safety mandate from global hq to allow for proper social distancing. I would take a different approach today if I were put in that situation again.
HR does know about my chronic friday/Monday call off gal. I was able to write her up once, but then she got wise. She'll pay a co-pay to go to some random immediate care place and get a one sentence doctor's note saying "she was seen here today." HR says those absences have to be excused. She's killed off a few relatives too. It's a shame because she has the best attitude on the team when she's there.
For us, PIPs are the last step to getting someone out the door. By then you should have had a couple verbal warnings and a write up or two.
Once I finally get my KPIs finalized, documented and trained, then I can really start auditing and enforcing more aggressively. I'm already getting a lot of pushback, but they were underperforming quite a bit when I joined. We have capacity.
I don't think they realize how close I was to having to lay off 2 or 3 of them due to falling customer demand. I agreed to take on more business from the region to keep everyone busy. We're actually growing now, but my RVP won't have infinite patience if I can't get results. If he pulls the plug then I'm overstaffed by about 6. I just hired 3 to handle this new business.
Now I'm motivated to write up some SOPs!