The Wall Street Journal concedes that remote work is down since 2020, as are job listings that advertise remote options. But remote work is "sticking" anyway:
Many lower-wage office and call-center jobs went remote at the onset of the pandemic. Business executives viewed the shift as a temporary emergency measure, said Julia Pollak, chief economist at jobs site ZipRecruiter....“Many employers were surprised to discover that remote customer support agents and freight dispatchers, for example, were often just as effective and productive working from home, if not more so,” Pollak said.
Thanks to those productivity gains, as well as improved recruitment and retention, reduced absenteeism and lower real-estate costs, companies decided to keep offering remote options for some lower-wage staff long after offices reopened, she said.
Oh please. This article is based heavily on data from the American Time Use Survey, so let's see what ATUS says about remote work. I've put this up before more generally, but here it is for different professions:
On average, across every profession, people who work at home put in way fewer hours than people who work in an office. The average difference is nearly three hours, and this is true for every other type of measurement too. Full-time vs. part-time. Men vs. women. High school grads vs. PhDs.
These figures are not averages for everybody. They are solely for employed people who "worked at their workplace on an average day" or "worked at home on an average day." And if these numbers are even in the ballpark of being correct, they mean that workers at home spend a ton of time goofing off just because they can. There's no other conclusion to draw. Is it any wonder they love working at home?
The rehashing of the same old drivel would be getting really sad if it weren't for the fact that Serious People use Kevin's takes on this for Serious Articles to bang the drum for the anti-remote narrative.
Well, I think part of the disparity here is when you are in the office, one is usually "on the clock" for the entire time you are there, working or not.
Also: I agree that most people probably work less hours when they are at home. Depending on what they do, this may not mean less work is getting done. What is important, I guess, is being able to measure the work output in a meaningful way so that expectations can be agreed on.
The main issue I see is with junior hires. These people need training and help, which is best accomplished in person (IMHO) for the simple reason that turn-around on questions is so much quicker when you can have a conversation.
Typically workers only "work" 5 to 6 hours a day in an office environment. When I was involved with estimating projects we considered a work day as 6 hours. When we did 8 hour/day estimates we knew there would be lots of overtime on that project. A lot of time is spent going to meetings , bathroom breaks, coffee breaks lunch breaks etc.. Not to mention the various personal conversations that take place in an office environment that don't happen when you work at home.
I have been working from home for the better part of the last 20+ years and I find that I am more productive working from home.
Less distractions, much less.
The issue isn't hours worked, it's productivity. The Journal article mentions productivity so if Kevin wants to make an argument about remote work, he should put up actual productivity stats or at the very list, revenue numbers. Hours worked means nothing without further context.
It's all about measuring outcomes (aka productivity). Nothing else matters. If managers can't track that and hold employees accountable, they should find a new line of work.
I know there are people who desperately want to go back to "the way we've always done it", and I'm thinking that when managers run out of ideas because they're failing at their jobs (or were unnecessary to begin with), then making a bunch of noise about RTO becomes a substitute for relevancy.
Estimating the carbon impact of forcing RTO would be relevant in light of the fact that 7/04 this year has been the hottest day on average in possible 125K years.
There's Mencken's definition of 'Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.' We can file off the serial number of this and now create others:
Modern late stage capitalism's worker management is the C-suite's haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may not be killing themselves for the company
Conservative reaction to a Democratic White House: 'Puritanism: The haunting fear that might be no grounds on which to impeach
Modern late stage capitalism's pursuit of ever-increasing profit (forever and ever amen) is characterized by the C-suite's haunting fear that somewhere there is a messed opportunity to get blood out of a stone
I'd like to know where these numbers are being pulled from. Most full time, W2 workers are required to enter their time daily or weekly to get paid even if they're salaried and exempt. But that doesn't really tell us that they are actually working on anything productive as opposed to just logged on the system and available for work. And that's true whether they're in the office or at home. And as I noted in a previous piece of this sort working from home generally junks "face time" as a concept where people just hang around not really doing anything productive for the sake of looking good.
Kevin, you seem to be growing more reflexively anti-liberal with each passing day. I work remotely but do go into the office once every other week. My job is metrics-driven and some days are slower than others, depending on how much work I have on my plate on a given day. The three hours of "busy work" I might have to force myself to do on that one day in the office because I want to look good for the boss does nothing to add to my performance or the company's bottom line. You'd have us believe that it's character flaws that cause workers to put in fewer hours at home, but couldn't this just be a reflection of design inefficiencies inherent to many work processes? But by all means, please feel free to denigrate working professionals while "goofing off" with your blog all day.