The LA Times draws my attention today to one of my pet topics: working at home. Gensler Research recently conducted a survey of office workers to find out if they were happy with their home-office split. They weren't, but not in the direction you'd think: on average, they said they spend 48% of their time in the office and would prefer to spend 63% of their time there. But why do they value more office time? Here's the breakdown:
Among all age groups the top reason was the same: to focus on work. Surprise! It's harder to focus on work at home than in the office, and apparently people are figuring this out. This gibes with time-use studies showing that people generally get less done at home than in the office.
Will this eventually lead to a broader retreat from working at home? Stay tuned.
Who the heck focuses better in the office than home? My office is noisy, smelly and chilly. I'm busy coughing and blowing my nose while fielding drop in questions where I tell folks to go back to their desk to skype me so I can help them real time as they doing whatever it was they were stuck on and give them advice that is actually applicable to their problem not the problem they THINK they have.
I do. There is an endless supply of other-than-work tasks waiting at home.
That's a concentration problem that would be in effect no matter where you are sitting IMO. Unless you are in a Manhattan efficiency with screaming kids, I cannot imagine that a work professional would be so easily distracted at home.
Then clearly there is more to work and professionals than is dreampt of in your philosophy 🙂
Maybe people who have home offices and maids find few distractions at home. When you can see the piles of dishes and laundry--and have to break up kid arguments starting at 3:30--home can be pretty distracting.
My Telework agreement is clear cut, if you have little kids you must ship them off to daycare, have in home daycare or be sending them to school. My colleagues with children get the flexibility in work hours within some core hours, one team member is married to the other, she logs in way early, he logs in about 8:30 after dropping their son off at daycare. My boss's kids are all HS so self sufficient.
My dishes are mostly in the dishwasher, I do the exceptions to the rule after dinner.
Okay I'll cop to having a cleaning crew in the house every other Wednesday hahaha.
How do you get more housework done by sitting in an office and commuting for two hours a day?
I have been working full time out of my home since 2010 and like it a lot. That said, when you are sitting in your house trying to edit source code it looks to your wife and your kids that you are just diddling around and fair game for any and all interruptions whatso-effin-ever. Not everyone can handle that.
Yeah, I'm able to work much better at my office than at home in most instances. I also have a door on my office, though, and don't have to talk to people if I don't want to, so ymmv. My wife, on the other hand, wastes half her life at work having to listen to a supervisor who drops by to "chat" each morning and spends and hour or two just talking about random personal stuff. She luuuuuuuvs remote days. Mostly because that's the one day a week she actually gets work done.
The cube farm community is very much letme work from home please. It's a whole other ball game if you have an office and the office folks often lose the sense of how it was in the cube farm.
How are 'socializing with colleagues', 'to be part of the community', 'scheduled, in-person meetings with team' and 'to sit with my team' distinct?
They didn't say they PREFERED to spend 63% of their time in the office, they said that's what would maximize their productivity. Believe it or not, for many people their top priority in life isn't to maximize their productivity!
Yeah, when you get right down to it, who really _wants_ to "focus on their work", or "go to meetings"?
Like most things in life, it's a tradeoff. If something is slightly worse for my work productivity but improves my life significantly in other ways I'd still take it. Maximizing the value you provide your employer isn't the most valuable thing, and definitely not the ONLY thing that matters. If you disagree, feel free to go ask your employer for a pay cut while you continue to do the same work, I'm sure they'll be thrilled.
Do people (the usual suspects) keep looking for reasons to push a return to the office narrative? You bet!
All this survey says is that the choice should be the employees, not the company's, so that employees can choose the option that works best for them and getting their work done.
Anecdotally, I don't know a single fucking person who wants to go in to the office 3 out of 5 days per week. Maybe I'm insulated, but among my family, friends, and all their coworkers that I hear about, I don't recall a single one who wants to go into the office more than 2x per week. Many of them hate going into the office even 1x per week. Some like going in 1x per week, and a few 2x per week.
The only person in that entire network of hundreds of people that I can think of who likes going into the office and doesn't complain about it is my partner's boss. That's it.
Then I journey on over to r/nova and r/washingtondc and see dozens (hundreds?) of posters deriding the return to office push.
And so I just wonder... who are all these people who allegedly want to be in the office 3 days per week?
Edit to add: I also see this survey as extremely suspect, because the reason most people "want" to go in to the office is simply because they think they'll be retaliated against if they don't (or written up because their company requires it). But they're going to say "to focus on my work" because they don't want to draw negative attention to themselves. Labor has no real power in this company.
Yep - if I'm forced to return to the office, I'll suck it up and lie because I'm not ready to retire just yet - I need to work some more before I can retire but I won't be happy about it. I'm so lucky that for now there's no office space so I'm full time remote.
I just met someone at a NYE party who worked from home and was looking for a job where they could go into an office. After the party my wife and I actually talked about the comment because it was such a shocking statement.
There are those sicko extroverts who crave attention hahaha. They were the ones who were my time sinks at the office.
I'm an extrovert (on balance). But I don't like working with other people and would prefer to do my work at home, thank you very much, where I can do 5 other things at once because that's how my brain was made.
I'm sure CRE interests got what they paid for, and that it reaffirmed the beliefs of our retired host.
And I'm still never commuting to an office again.
Well, yah, I would like to spend more time in the office, too. I just don't want to commute. And there's the rub. SoCal traffic is no joke.
Work, office. Life, home. Use the corresponding location for the corresponding activity. …
I have a home office. Try it sometime!
Two points:
1. Kevin fails to mention that the survey also shows that people who are currently working full-time at the office think they would be *more* productive with *less* time spent there,
2. The report does not include raw data or distributions, just summary stats. That raises a flag -- especially given some of the specificity of cited results. My guess is that the response was strongly bimodal and they have cherry-picked the summaries that will support their desired conclusion.
OMG I just noticed the breakdown of the roles of people surveyed:
16% Senior leadership
25% Director
29% Manager
16% Professional staff
5% Technical staff
9% Administrative/support staff
So the banner news is that 70% of the people surveyed were in management. Gosh. New headline: "People who can't manage remote workers complain about remote work."
Thank you.
???? Management would like employees to know that they'd like to see staff in-office more often.
Really, the most interesting thing about this survey is that in spite of very obviously putting their fingers on the scales, the *strongest* conclusion they could draw is that some people* in some demographics think they should spend *slightly* more time in the office.
*where 70% of people are management
Bad managers want this. Good managers have not problem managing remotely. There are plenty of jobs where there is no choice. For example my friend was the head of the sales division of a major manufacturing company. The sales reps were responsible for a particular are of the country so they had to live in that area in order to visit accounts regularly. My friend worked from home unless there was a sales meeting because almost none of his staff were in the corporate office. She would fly to visit reps and go on calls with them once or twice a year but mostly managed by regular, frequent phone calls to individual reps as well as weekly group phone meetings. They were a very successful department.
I think Kevin does these to see if people are paying attention
L.O.L.
First, I wouldn't trust a survey conducted by an architecture firm.
Second, AFAIK, no one caps the amount of time an employee can spend in-office. So I suggest you watch what people do, not what they say.
I've heard of a few companies in which workspaces are shared. If it's not your scheduled day to be in the office there's probably someone else sitting at "your" desk. I doubt that this is a common problem.
I know that's a thing for companies using workspace sharing services like WeWork. I know some companies during the Great Recession subleased to former employees who wanted to work for themselves after being laid off.
Summary - office design/architecture firm reports that corporate leaders want people in the office more!
Shocking!
Even taken at face value, I wouldn’t be surprised if this continued to shift more to “at home” as more people develop living arrangements designed for WFH.
We were living in Brooklyn when the pandemic hit. I was psyched to go back to office 3-4 days a week.
We’ve since moved to suburbia, and now I’m in the office once a week. Why the heck would I want to leave my perfect spot? The team I manage is 80% remote anyway, so I’m only in to see my boss and my peers. I’m PLENTY productive at home, since I’m no longer sharing a living room/office with another working pro, and don’t want 200 minutes of commuting time if I don’t need to do it.
i'm sorry, but... is there anything preventing these people from going into the office if that's what they want?
Yes, lack of in-office employees to manage.
I mean, they could still go in. They'd probably be just as effective.
They just wouldn't feel that way. They'd feel like they were doing nothing.
The emperor is naked but doesn't want to admit it.
Once again Kevin’s bizarre obsession with other people working in the office causes him to overlook the clear flaws in this survey. First he continues to point to the time use studies that I and others have pointed out he’s misreading and now this valuable survey where 70% of those surveyed were Managers, Directors, or Senior Leadership. Of course they’re going to say people need to be in the office to work better. Only 30% of those surveyed were professional, technical, or administrative staff. Kevin you’re dead wrong on this one stop while you’re ahead.
I was living alone (OK, with two cats) when working from home so I had fewer distractions than I did working in the office, but I can that people who have kids, spouses or roommates around-- and don;t have a good home office space-- may have some problems there. I am though sympathetic to the benefits of office socializing, which I did miss during the Pandemic lockdowns.