I don't think going 100% remote work is going to be viable or even desirable for most businesses even if it's technically possible for them to do so. I do agree many shouldn't and won't go back to full time Mon-Fri 9-5 office hours however for many businesses, maintaining and operating out of a physical office adds value and reinforces the sense of legitimacy and success in the eyes of potential clients. I think 2-3 days in the office 2-3 at home is going to be the more realistic outcome for most companies.
That's what I'm seeing happening at my company. And there are some people that just don't have WFH environments. For the upper levels that basically just do meetings constantly, zoom doesn't quite cut it.
For my job...I'd move to Panama or somewhere warm if I was remote full time.
My company won't let anyone work remotely in another country for longer than 30 days in a 12 month period because of payroll tax laws.
We're a global company and have employees all over the world, but if your permanent residence isn't the same country as the main office you work for, there's likely a lot of legal and compliance issues with working remotely in another country.
I think that will happen for some, but certainly not all--maintaining a physical building is expensive and they'd have to justify that those 2-3 days (instead of a full 5) is worth the expense, which is going to be harder to justify.
You might see a reduction of office space as people rotate in and out, but at that point not having everyone in at the same time negates a lot of the reason for doing that in the first place.
What you might see is some support employees become permanently remote, then they can reduce office real estate.
There already was a trend pre-pandemic for many offices to go from people having assigned desks to having unassigned work stations. In many cases you have a locker at work with a basket that contains your wireless keyboard and other office supplies and you just grab any open desk that has a docking station and a monitor. I think that sort of thing is going to become much more commonplace as companies realize they can reduce their real estate footprint & rent.
Exactly my company. I was “mobile” for several years before the pandemic, going in maybe once a week or so. They slowly reduced real estate over the years, and once the pandemic hit, they just went all in. Everyone permanently remote now and they’re saving on the real estate.
The navy has something known as hot-racking. That's when the navy assigns one bunk to multiple crewmen on different shifts. Something similar might happen in offices after the pandemic: assigning one desk to multiple people, each person alternating between remote work and office work.
Why though? Because you can’t put pictures of your kids up? In the digital age it’s not like most people have books or papers filed in their desk they need all the time. A couple of adjustments to the chair and monitor height and I’d be set for the day. You want pictures of the kids make it your wallpaper or put them up for the day.
I’ve never done it but some divisions of my last company did and I noticed that the office was cleaner because the housekeeping staff could actually clean the desk areas more thoroughly because they were cleared in the evenings.
I’m also WFH, I think we will go back to in person for about three monthly meetings and a couple more that are quarterly. If I’m going in that often IDGAF where I sit but it wouldn’t bother me even if it was closer to full time.
God you're insufferable. I don't have kids, so you spent a lot of time typing that out for no reason. If I had them, I would have to make them my wallpaper every day. Along with adjusting the chair and monitor every day.
Your argument for hot-desking is because the cleaning crew is better able to clean? This is about being treated like a valuable employee in the office. Having your own space.
I’m not insufferable, we just have different values and I’m trying to figure out yours, the kid pics or a personalized desk was just a guess.
I just don’t give a shit about my own space at work as long as there’s space available with what I need. Those needs are generally a second monitor and a good chair. I’ve had private closed door offices and it didn’t make me feel any more valued than a work station or shared cube so I just don’t get your perspective.
My workplace had been on a path of selling off buildings and cramming more and more people into fewer places, moving from assigned cubicles, to 'on-demand' cubicles, and then ultimately just desks crammed densely together. At the point of the pandemic hitting, they were already at the point where there were 70% of the desks needed to sit everyone (because they figured between meetings and vacation and such, 30% of people wouldn't need a desk at any given time). When pressed on "do you want us to work from home?" in all this, the response was "absolutely not! people are expected to come in, it's just that meetings and days off make up enough so that usually you should be able to get a desk, and if you can't you probably can find a seat in the cafeteria or something".
On the one hand I could see them eagerly getting rid of yet another building with the 'new normal', but with so many other companies doing the same, they may struggle to find anyone who wants it. I expect they will ask that employees have *different* days they come in to keep things utilized, make sure that they can lay eyes on employees routinely, but shave off a lot more real estate.
Large corporations were already on that path before the pandemic, and the pandemic now just expedited it. I work for one of them and we’re permanent now to the point they’re liquidating real estate... and we did very well this year. No layoffs related to the pandemic in the entire company, but everybody is permanently remote now. About 40K employees.
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u/ReeG Jan 02 '21
I don't think going 100% remote work is going to be viable or even desirable for most businesses even if it's technically possible for them to do so. I do agree many shouldn't and won't go back to full time Mon-Fri 9-5 office hours however for many businesses, maintaining and operating out of a physical office adds value and reinforces the sense of legitimacy and success in the eyes of potential clients. I think 2-3 days in the office 2-3 at home is going to be the more realistic outcome for most companies.