But does a return to the office makes sense from a productivity perspective? For most employees, in the office is nothing more than a proxy for are you working -- and a poor one at that.
The ONLY judge of “productivity” is the employer.
That is so wrong holy moly lol wow . No productivity should only be judged by metrics, otherwise you immediately are just using bias which is not only bad for the company but bad policy in general. WOW yikes that's like saying the only one who can tell if a company is doing well is the CEO of the company.
Without banding together into a union and individual employee (white collar), has no chance of combating a company such as Apple, when they judge productivity, which is Apples right, note white-collar workers by in large, see themselves as special so most won’t be joining a union particularly in the English-speaking capitalistic countries.
The protest in France over retirement age would never happen in the United States, or the UK, at any significant level.
But does a return to the office makes sense from a productivity perspective? For most employees, in the office is nothing more than a proxy for are you working -- and a poor one at that.
A former workplace did the remote thing during lockdown. Productivity declined. A videographer that worked under me was nearly fired twice in that time as his work suffered noticeably. Had to rescue his job both times. He admitted to being distracted. A return to the office (and a difficult meeting) was huge in sorting that out.
The great thing is that employees don’t have to consider that. That’s for leadership to do. All the employee needs to do is get to the office. Pretty simple stuff.
On the other hand, the company I work for made the remote work permanent for everyone. We have to get permission to come into the office, and most of the offices around the country have been closed or leased to someone else.
Whether or not remote work is appropriate depends on the workers and the work being done. In person collaboration is essential for some kinds of work, and I tend to believe Apple when they say there's a lot of that for them. For my type of work, remote work is just fine, with, in my case (though I recognize my case isn't universal) has fewer distractions that spending an hour on the road every day getting to the office.
The biggest problem I personally have with working from home is that it's far to easy to work longer hours than I should. I have to watch myself.
It’s difficult to comment on this without injecting my own biases, but I just wanted to add that the “work from home” WFH scenario has ramifications that extend beyond all of the the “company vs employee” issues, at least in some physical locations. To be more specific I’ll bring up two cases: 1) the impact on businesses located in the vicinity of the company office, and 2) the impact on regional taxes where the locality takes a cut of the employee’s income.
The first case, local businesses, occurs most noticeably on restaurants located adjacent to the corporate facility. Fewer people showing up to the office means fewer people going out for lunch, after work drinks, offsite team events, etc. The impact of this at least in my area has been very noticeable with some restaurants going out of business once the covid subsidies stopped.
The other is the loss of revenue that municipalities have received when people no longer show up in the office and are therefore no longer paying regional income taxes in their place of work. Of course if they live in a municipality that also charges regional income tax, their home gets the regional income tax. While they were going to work the employee’s regional income tax was split between the two municipalities if both had regional income tax. This is not the end of the story either because in many cases the company deciding to move to a specific location was driven by subsidies the company received from the municipality based on an expectation that they would receive an influx of additional regional income tax from the additional employees working in the municipality that granted the subsidies.
The latter issue is very much a big issue in some areas, especially ones that count on regional income tax revenues. Not too many places have regional income tax but it is becoming more popular and is a lever used for negotiating site selection when a company is considering relocation. Killing off or wounding restaurants, hotels, and other businesses that depended on the population of employees contributing to local revenues is probably less of a concern to companies as large as Apple, and is probably devoid of legal battles, but it is a very real thing that needs to be part of the “big picture” view of the issues at hand.
The pandemic and our response to the pandemic was a very disruptive event. Evolutionary changes tend to occur in connection with disruptions that take place on the scale of the pandemic. The world in general and the business world in particular will never be the same as it was prior to the disruption. For good or bad we must come to terms with the inevitable change and use this point in evolution to redefine the way we want things to be going forward. Pretending it didn’t happen and that we can simply turn back the clock to return to “the way things used to be” is impossible at this point. It seems like Apple is being much more open to adaptation than most companies. Hopefully they can reach a compromise solution that does not sacrifice their business performance, especially in terms of execution. All sides, including those I’ve mentioned, need to work together towards a mutually beneficial solution.
It is nice to see Apple to clamp down on lazy employees. There is zero doubt productivity from remote work is way down. Multiple companies have data to show it. Thats why the push to get people back in the office. I have run into several Apple employees in the Coffee Shop at 1030 doing nothing. Software quality is WAAAAY down. Time to actually do some work.
It is nice to see Apple to clamp down on lazy employees. There is zero doubt productivity from remote work is way down. Multiple companies have data to show it. Thats why the push to get people back in the office. I have run into several Apple employees in the Coffee Shop at 1030 doing nothing. Software quality is WAAAAY down. Time to actually do some work.
What happens when there's there's an Apple employee who is highly competent, and who works 60-70 hours a week, but he fails to appear in the office more than 2 days a week. Do you let an employee like that go?
It is nice to see Apple to clamp down on lazy employees. There is zero doubt productivity from remote work is way down. Multiple companies have data to show it. Thats why the push to get people back in the office. I have run into several Apple employees in the Coffee Shop at 1030 doing nothing. Software quality is WAAAAY down. Time to actually do some work.
"There is zero doubt productivity from remote work is way down." Do you have any evidence whatsoever to support that claim? Please show us. I'll wait.
I worked for a high tech company for 20 years, and then the pandemic sent us all home. I got far more work done at home.
But does a return to the office makes sense from a productivity perspective? For most employees, in the office is nothing more than a proxy for are you working -- and a poor one at that.
The ONLY judge of “productivity” is the employer.
The ONLY judge of "productivity" is the immediate manager of the employee. Having a corporate-wide mandate prevents the immediate managers from making decisions that are good for their team.
LOL at the people who think the office environment is somehow devoid of distractions. The big craze in the corporate world was to go back to "open offices" where absolutely everything becomes a distraction.
Yeah, I work in an open office. It's a room with 30-40 people wearing headphones all day. Morale sucks, and nobody communicates unless they have to. What an awful idea.
LOL at the people who think the office environment is somehow devoid of distractions. The big craze in the corporate world was to go back to "open offices" where absolutely everything becomes a distraction.
Yeah, I work in an open office. It's a room with 30-40 people wearing headphones all day. Morale sucks, and nobody communicates unless they have to. What an awful idea.
I could not agree more. Open office plans are a cruel experiment performed on human subjects. But it could be worse if the concept in the following link catches on.
Not picking on UPLIFT Desk. Their standing desks are totally awesome. But this concept is dystopian and it came out long before April 1st. Can anyone imagine a warehouse of these booths being used to address those who oppose open office plans? So you don’t like your open office? Look what we have for you! Total privacy, well sort of. You have your own door. But we can still watch you.
Now get back into your booth code monkey, close the damn door so I don’t have to hear your clicking, and start coding!!!
UPLIFT is very good about providing a wide range of accessories for their products. I’m assuming that for this product they’ll have an optional food pellet dispenser (product code: FPD-1984) for these “productivity booths.”
Comments
The protest in France over retirement age would never happen in the United States, or the UK, at any significant level.
The first case, local businesses, occurs most noticeably on restaurants located adjacent to the corporate facility. Fewer people showing up to the office means fewer people going out for lunch, after work drinks, offsite team events, etc. The impact of this at least in my area has been very noticeable with some restaurants going out of business once the covid subsidies stopped.
The other is the loss of revenue that municipalities have received when people no longer show up in the office and are therefore no longer paying regional income taxes in their place of work. Of course if they live in a municipality that also charges regional income tax, their home gets the regional income tax. While they were going to work the employee’s regional income tax was split between the two municipalities if both had regional income tax. This is not the end of the story either because in many cases the company deciding to move to a specific location was driven by subsidies the company received from the municipality based on an expectation that they would receive an influx of additional regional income tax from the additional employees working in the municipality that granted the subsidies.
The latter issue is very much a big issue in some areas, especially ones that count on regional income tax revenues. Not too many places have regional income tax but it is becoming more popular and is a lever used for negotiating site selection when a company is considering relocation. Killing off or wounding restaurants, hotels, and other businesses that depended on the population of employees contributing to local revenues is probably less of a concern to companies as large as Apple, and is probably devoid of legal battles, but it is a very real thing that needs to be part of the “big picture” view of the issues at hand.
The pandemic and our response to the pandemic was a very disruptive event. Evolutionary changes tend to occur in connection with disruptions that take place on the scale of the pandemic. The world in general and the business world in particular will never be the same as it was prior to the disruption. For good or bad we must come to terms with the inevitable change and use this point in evolution to redefine the way we want things to be going forward. Pretending it didn’t happen and that we can simply turn back the clock to return to “the way things used to be” is impossible at this point. It seems like Apple is being much more open to adaptation than most companies. Hopefully they can reach a compromise solution that does not sacrifice their business performance, especially in terms of execution. All sides, including those I’ve mentioned, need to work together towards a mutually beneficial solution.
I worked for a high tech company for 20 years, and then the pandemic sent us all home. I got far more work done at home.
https://www.upliftdesk.com/onepod-office-phone-booth/
Not picking on UPLIFT Desk. Their standing desks are totally awesome. But this concept is dystopian and it came out long before April 1st. Can anyone imagine a warehouse of these booths being used to address those who oppose open office plans? So you don’t like your open office? Look what we have for you! Total privacy, well sort of. You have your own door. But we can still watch you.
Now get back into your booth code monkey, close the damn door so I don’t have to hear your clicking, and start coding!!!
UPLIFT is very good about providing a wide range of accessories for their products. I’m assuming that for this product they’ll have an optional food pellet dispenser (product code: FPD-1984) for these “productivity booths.”