Workplace Flexibility

[Braivo]

As technology changes, have any of you seen any changes to your day to day work life as a result?

I am a bit frustrated at the moment as my work is electronically based and can be done anywhere, anytime, yet my industry is very slow to adapt. Most of us are still stuck in cubicles from 8-4 even though we could do our work just as well from home, or working 7-3, etc. 

I have heard of large trends toward flexibility and mobility, but those don't seem to have reached my (finance/accounting) industry. 

Not being stuck to the cube 8-4 would be a drastic improvement in the quality of my life, yet it seems slow to develop.

[Gator Hazard]

Also in finance accounting. I have ability to work from home and do on occasion but it's usually better to be in office for me and my team. I encourage my team to use the option of working from home on occasion as well so long as not during close. 

If anything, tech has just made it so we work more. We can work in office and from home. 

[Shooting29]

I work as a crane/saw operator. So I'm not speaking from a position of experience but I did read an article a couple days ago about why companies don't let people who can work from home do so. (I looked for the article to link it but could not find it.)

The main point of the article was that many companies are still ran by boomers and they value facetime. They want to see you at work. The author argued they do this to the detriment of the company and are alienating talent who chooses to work for firms that offer a much more flexible schedule. 

A counter point was similar to what @Gator Hater said in that some people who work from home feel like they are always at work and can never unplug.

[saevel25]

1 hour ago, Braivo said:

I have heard of large trends toward flexibility and mobility, but those don't seem to have reached my (finance/accounting) industry. 

Not being stuck to the cube 8-4 would be a drastic improvement in the quality of my life, yet it seems slow to develop.

The tough thing is security. For me to do any sort of work I need to VPN into the network. Even then I hear the process brings productivity down to a snails pace. Its best just to use for emails and small things. 

 

[dennyjones]

I was playing racquetball with a friend that owns a cement business.  He has an estimator that works from home a lot of the time.   He was complaining that he doesn't think this guy is doing his job very well because he never sees him in the office.   I asked where the guy was failing and my friend said nowhere, the guy is doing everything I ask.   What's the problem?  

46 minutes ago, Shooting29 said:

The main point of the article was that many companies are still ran by boomers and they value facetime. They want to see you at work. The author argued they do this to the detriment of the company and are alienating talent who chooses to work for firms that offer a much more flexible schedule. 

This explains his situation...I believe a lot of the older generation believes if they don't put time in at the office, work isn't getting completed.  

[No Mulligans]

Meg Whitman, CEO Hewitt Packard, on bringing workers back to the office:

Quote

According to an undated question-and-answer document distributed recently to some HP employees and shared with AllThingsD, the new policy is aimed at instigating a cultural shift that “will help create a more connected workforce and drive greater collaboration and innovation.”

Yahoo and Google both brought their employees back to the office.

Quote

Studies show that people who work at home are significantly more productive but less innovative, said John Sullivan, a professor of management at San Francisco State University who runs a human resource advisory firm.

¶“If you want innovation, then you need interaction,” he said. “If you want productivity, then you want people working from home.”

 

[Gator Hazard]

23 minutes ago, No Mulligans said:

Meg Whitman, CEO Hewitt Packard, on bringing workers back to the office:

Yahoo and Google both brought their employees back to the office.

 

I've said for a long time now that both companies and employees would benefit from some type of a rotating schedule for work from home. Like two days in 3 days from home and vice versa for people so all work equal amount of days in office. Could have departments where need half the work space if did that. Companies save on real estate, employees save on gas and time and can focus more and weight their tasks accordingly. Heck, even environment may get a gain out of it. 

My only thing for working from home is production. If you can produce I am fine with you working from home here and there, if not, then you gotta be in office. Some people just can't be trusted to get stuff done at home. Had one employee like that, she would wiggle mouse about every ten minutes so looked like she was not away from her computer and was working (instant messenger status) but I know she was doing things around the house and then just walking by and jiggling the mouse to make it appear she was active and working. I put an end to that. 

Edited April 6, 2017 by Gator Hazard

[iacas]

@Braivo, have you asked your boss about trying one day a week from home?

[upndown21]

I run a couple businesses and almost exclusively work from home. I might spend 2 hours a month at my actual office. Personally, I can get a full days work done in 6 hours or less if I am not distracted or having pointless small talk. Also, I do not take breaks. 

My wife is a federal employee and they track her workload. She does one day per week from home and averages over 2 days of office workload per day at home. 

If you do not have to report to anyone on a daily basis and have a history of getting your work done it should be easy convincing your boss.

[Lihu]

4 hours ago, dennyjones said:

I was playing racquetball with a friend that owns a cement business.  He has an estimator that works from home a lot of the time.   He was complaining that he doesn't think this guy is doing his job very well because he never sees him in the office.   I asked where the guy was failing and my friend said nowhere, the guy is doing everything I ask.   What's the problem?  

This explains his situation...I believe a lot of the older generation believes if they don't put time in at the office, work isn't getting completed.  

I tend to fall into this category, but have flexibility in time. In part, because there are too many distractions at home to work effectively.

My hours are typically from 6:00am until 2:00 or 3:00 to pick up kids and put in some personal time, then come back to work after dinner until 10:00 or so. It gives me a rest from my work and allows me time to recharge and feel like I want to get back to my current problem. Sometimes I stay really late if I'm on a roll with some coding or something. The main thing is my office and lab are more suited to creating things than my home.

Most people probably are not that effective at working from home unless they are really well focused and have all the tools they need. Then there are the collaborative projects, and honestly, most projects are collaborative these days. There's just so much technology and with it higher expectations. You really can't do everything yourself any more and meet time deadlines. Time is so important.

Using technology to talk to each other is not quite the same thing. I teleconference daily all over the world, and it's great if there are set goals. If the goals are not clear, then face on brainstorming is important.

[Hategolf]

I was stuck in a cube for a long time. I felt my life was passing me by. I gained weight and lost interest in the job over time.

Now I work mostly from home. Plenty of flexibility as I can do my work from anywhere but I  do battle productivity.

I am however much happier and my work is way more interesting.

 

[Patch]

When I had my own business, I had a couple of folks working from home, 4 out of 5 days. Never any problems. 

I also had a fine lady who was my office manager for 25 years. She ran a pretty tight ship. She kept me in line. She even talked me into having an in office play area for some our other employees' youngsters. 

Happy employees make the best employees, and the best employees get more work done. 

[Gator Hazard]

14 hours ago, saevel25 said:

The tough thing is security. For me to do any sort of work I need to VPN into the network. Even then I hear the process brings productivity down to a snails pace. Its best just to use for emails and small things. 

 

I have to say that ours is pretty good. So long as I am not too far away from my wifi (sitting outdoors it's slow) the speed is decent and I am usually cranking on Excel sheets and using a BI system. The only real lag is actually from opening shared files from the server. Sometimes the BI system is slow but it can be in office too depending on how many people are using it. 

8 hours ago, Patch said:

When I had my own business, I had a couple of folks working from home, 4 out of 5 days. Never any problems. 

I also had a fine lady who was my office manager for 25 years. She ran a pretty tight ship. She kept me in line. She even talked me into having an in office play area for some our other employees' youngsters. 

Happy employees make the best employees, and the best employees get more work done. 

Our work can be very tough, challenging, and long so I try and do a lot for my analysts. Take them to lunch, bring in bagels and coffee, etc. I also try to be very flexible and to give them a good amount of rope to play with. I try and hire people who can manage themselves and are driven. If I see someone on the internet or chatting I don't make an issue out of it so long as they are producing. Breaks are necessary when looking at reams of data and numbers all day, and people who "play" are often also creative if they are mature. Some of my best ideas come when I take a break and am walking around the office or just relaxing. 

[klineka]

Coming from the perspective of a millennial here, I feel that one of the things that can affect productivity at home is how your home environment is set up. I built my own desktop with multiple monitors when I was in college, so I have a dedicated office for that in my house, which makes it very easy to bring my work laptop home and plug into the monitors if necessary. It would be much more difficult to work from home if I had to be only on the laptop with the single screen.  

That being said, the majority of the time I am in the office, working with different teams of people, typically the only times I work from home is if I have been out for a day or two with the flu or something and I feel good enough to work but don't want to get everyone else sick, or if a contractor is coming out to the house during the day and someone has to be at the house.

 

My fiance is in the accounting/finance sector and her company came out with a policy allowing their employees to work 1-2 days a month from home. Pretty nice just knowing that is an option if something comes up, especially with being in a region that can see decent amounts of snow some winters.

[krupa]

Depends on your job.  Mine is software engineer for a small company with a few offices around the country.  So there's three types of remote worker in my environment:

1.  People in other offices working on my (i.e., I'm the project lead) project

2.  People working full time from home/remotely but ostensibly based in my office.

3.  People working full time in my office but occasionally working from home.

The results are mixed:

1.  This works OK but I find that it's difficult discussing technical details over a phone/web conference.  Something gets lost along the way.  It may just be that drawing diagrams through a web interface isn't as easy as on a whiteboard in the same room.  It may also be that the remote person is only ever half-listening.

2.  This hasn't been sustainable for long periods of time.  The full-time remote people end up feeling isolated and out of the loop and end up leaving to find work in their area.

3.  This is OK so long as people actually work but if you don't have a reason to be home (e.g., waiting for a plumber) we'd rather people come in.  And when people work from home they have to be honest about how much they actually work.  We're not salaried (instead we bill our time to the different projects we work on) so it's important to be accurate and honest about it.

We do flex time so if I have an appointment in the morning, I can work later and still get 8 hours in... or spread that extra time over a couple days to get 40 hours in for the week.

Personally, I don't really care for working from home.  There are too many distractions and however you cut it, I'm spending 8-10 hours working so the location doesn't matter.  (Also worth mentioning that I live about 6 miles from my office and there isn't even a stop sign along the road... though it looks like they're installing a traffic light at a particularly dangerous intersection.)

 

[Braivo]

15 hours ago, Shooting29 said:

The main point of the article was that many companies are still ran by boomers and they value facetime. They want to see you at work. The author argued they do this to the detriment of the company and are alienating talent who chooses to work for firms that offer a much more flexible schedule. 

So the back story is that I just switched jobs in a necessary move to further my career. Over the 9 years I was with my previous employer I was able to push the very old school culture a bit forward to where I was able to work from home a couple of times a month. Not much, but it was something. There was, and still is, a "facetime" culture in place. I was able to prove I was more productive at home than at work, that mattered little.

Now, my new job is just like my old one was starting out. I will be working for a 60yo boomer who, in the interview, said he values facetime above all else. Ha! Looks like I have my work cut out for me in convincing them to modernize. 

14 hours ago, saevel25 said:

The tough thing is security. For me to do any sort of work I need to VPN into the network. Even then I hear the process brings productivity down to a snails pace. Its best just to use for emails and small things. 

 

My large corp has a very seamless remote desktop connection setup, I see no delay. 

14 hours ago, dennyjones said:

I was playing racquetball with a friend that owns a cement business.  He has an estimator that works from home a lot of the time.   He was complaining that he doesn't think this guy is doing his job very well because he never sees him in the office.   I asked where the guy was failing and my friend said nowhere, the guy is doing everything I ask.   What's the problem?  

This explains his situation...I believe a lot of the older generation believes if they don't put time in at the office, work isn't getting completed.  

Perception is more important than reality, unfortunately. I have PROVEN that I am more productive at home than in the office, yet I have only been granted a couple of work at home days per month. Strange dynamic. 

13 hours ago, No Mulligans said:

Meg Whitman, CEO Hewitt Packard, on bringing workers back to the office:

Yahoo and Google both brought their employees back to the office

I believe work at home is best suited for certain types of work, typically fairly structure, non-creative tasks (like my accounting work). Obviously engineers, etc. may need to be physically in office to perform their jobs. 

13 hours ago, Gator Hazard said:

I've said for a long time now that both companies and employees would benefit from some type of a rotating schedule for work from home. Like two days in 3 days from home and vice versa for people so all work equal amount of days in office. Could have departments where need half the work space if did that. Companies save on real estate, employees save on gas and time and can focus more and weight their tasks accordingly. Heck, even environment may get a gain out of it. 

They have shown massive benefits as far as employee engagement goes. Commutes are brutal on people, more than most realize, and any alleviation of that is a win for everyone. 

12 hours ago, iacas said:

@Braivo, have you asked your boss about trying one day a week from home?

I pushed for this at my old job and got two days per month granted, now I am back at square one with a new job. 

11 hours ago, upndown21 said:

I run a couple businesses and almost exclusively work from home. I might spend 2 hours a month at my actual office. Personally, I can get a full days work done in 6 hours or less if I am not distracted or having pointless small talk. Also, I do not take breaks. 

My wife is a federal employee and they track her workload. She does one day per week from home and averages over 2 days of office workload per day at home. 

If you do not have to report to anyone on a daily basis and have a history of getting your work done it should be easy convincing your boss.

Unfortunately, there are just certain bosses, typically of the boomer generation as state above, that see working from home as "slacking" even though productivity is up. I hope we will see a shift as a lot of these bosses retire over the next few years. 

9 hours ago, Lihu said:

My hours are typically from 6:00am until 2:00 or 3:00 to pick up kids and put in some personal time, then come back to work after dinner until 10:00 or so. It gives me a rest from my work and allows me time to recharge and feel like I want to get back to my current problem. Sometimes I stay really late if I'm on a roll with some coding or something. The main thing is my office and lab are more suited to creating things than my home.

Being able to pick up kids on time is a huge plus. That is probably the biggest stressor in most people's lives, and if you can alleviate that you will have happier employees. 

1 minute ago, krupa said:

Personally, I don't really care for working from home.  There are too many distractions and however you cut it, I'm spending 8-10 hours working so the location doesn't matter.  (Also worth mentioning that I live about 6 miles from my office and there isn't even a stop sign along the road... though it looks like they're installing a traffic light at a particularly dangerous intersection.)

I think being close to the office is a huge advantage. I am considering a move that would cut my commute from 40 min to 10 min. 

[Lihu]

26 minutes ago, Braivo said:

I think being close to the office is a huge advantage. I am considering a move that would cut my commute from 40 min to 10 min. 

Very true. That's one of the reasons that I'm working where I am. I used to commute 2 hours each way every day (56mi), and spent a good deal of my time on the train and away from my family.

[bkuehn1952]

My experience has been that the longer I have worked for an employer, and established my worth, the more flexible they become as far as "work rules."  At this point in my life my knowledge is more valued than my presence so I work when I have nothing else going on.

Keep working hard and eventually one gains flexibility.