Remote Working News and Discussions

[raklian]

Remote work may now last for two years, worrying some bosses

Aug. 22, 2021 5:30 am ET

That is raising concerns among executives that the longer people stay at home, the harder or more disruptive it could be to eventually bring them back.

Well, excuse me for saying this, but screw them.

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

[Yuli Ban]

[wjfox]

From Global Workplace Analytics:

https://globalworkplaceanalytics.com/re ... oggle-id-4

[caltrek]

The Real Stakes of Apple’s Battle Over Remote Work
By Shirin Ghaffary and Rani Molla
September 24, 2021

https://www.vox.com/recode/22690190/app ... ke-parrish

Introduction:

(Vox) For the past several months, a fight has been brewing inside Apple, the world’s most profitable company, about a fundamental aspect of its business: whether its corporate employees must return to the office.

Apple expects employees to return to their desks at least three days a week when its offices reopen. And although the Covid-19 delta variant has made it unclear exactly when that will be, Apple’s normally heads-down employees are pushing back in an unprecedented way. They’ve created two petitions demanding the option to work remotely full time that have collected over 1,000 signatures combined, a handful of people have resigned over the matter, and some employees have begun speaking out publicly to criticize management’s stance.

Apple employees who don’t want to return to the office are challenging the popular management philosophy at many Silicon Valley companies that serendipitous, in-person collaboration is necessary to fuel innovation.

“There’s this idea that people skateboarding around tech campuses are bumping into each other and coming up with great new inventions,” said Cher Scarlett, an engineer at Apple who joined the company during the pandemic and has become a leader in, among other issues, organizing her colleagues on pushing for more remote work. “That’s just not true,” she said.

If Apple doesn’t budge on its remote work policy — and everything it’s said so far indicates that it won’t — some of its workers will likely jump ship. But Apple can afford to draw a hard line here because of its enormous power. The company offers workers hard-to-beat pay, benefits, and prestige, so it’s capable of retaining most of its workforce and continuing to attract top talent, regardless of its stance on flexible work.

[Yuli Ban]

[wjfox]

EXCLUSIVE PwC offers U.S. employees full-time remote work

September 30, 2021
11:58 PM BST

Accounting and consulting firm PwC told Reuters on Thursday it will allow all its 40,000 U.S. client services employees to work virtually and live anywhere they want in perpetuity, making it one of the biggest employers to embrace permanent remote work.

The policy is a departure from the accounting industry's rigid attitudes, known for encouraging people to put in late nights at the office. Other major accounting firms, such as Deloitte and KPMG, have also been giving employees more choice to work remotely in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.

PwC's deputy people leader, Yolanda Seals-Coffield, said in an interview that the firm was the first in its industry to make full-time virtual work available to client services employees. PwC's support staff and employees in areas such as human resources and legal operations that do not face clients already had the option to work virtually full-time.

PwC employees who choose to work virtually would have to come into the office a maximum of three days a month for in-person appointments such as critical team meetings, client visits and learning sessions, Seals-Coffield said.

"We have learned a ton through the pandemic, and working virtually, as we think about the evolution of flexibility, is a natural next step," Seals-Coffield said. "If you are an employee in good standing, are in client services, and want to work virtually, you can, full stop."

https://www.reuters.com/business/exclus ... 021-09-30/

[caltrek]

Google’s Plan to Cut Pay for Remote Workers Who Relocate is a Bad Idea
by Rani Molla
October 4, 2021

https://www.vox.com/recode/22691275/goo ... eal-estate

Introduction:

(Vox) Google recently bet $2 billion that its New York workforce will return to the office. But to encourage its employees to actually make use of its massive real estate investments, some say the tech behemoth is using sticks, not carrots: Google employees who move to less expensive parts of the country could see their pay cut. In June, the company launched a tool for employees that showed how much less they’d be paid — anywhere from 5 to 25 percent, according to Reuters — if they move from somewhere like the Bay Area or New York City to a lower-cost location.

Many companies that employ the estimated 13 percent of US workers who are still working from home due to the pandemic expect to open their offices back up in January. Google is one of several notable tech companies, including Facebook and Twitter, that has enacted controversial plans to lower pay for remote workers who’ve moved away from the expensive areas where their headquarters are located. But there are signs these policies may backfire.

While potential repercussions for cutting workers’ pay may not be immediate, humans are highly susceptible to loss aversion — losses are more painful than gains are pleasurable — and pay cuts could cause workers to either leave or resent the company. Alienating your existing workforce is always a bad idea, but it’s especially bad when tech companies are already struggling to find the workers they need.

Even though Google is a highly desirable employer, 53 percent of 230 verified Google workers said, in a survey for Recode that was conducted by workplace community app Blind, that they would think about leaving the company if they moved and had their pay cut. That’s a bit less than the 68 percent of all professionals on Blind who said so, but it’s still high. Googlers are also more likely (30 percent) to have moved outside their metropolitan area since the pandemic began than professionals at large (22 percent), and some Googlers have already shown a willingness to leave the company over what some of them have called hypocritical remote work policies.

[wjfox]

Utter nobhead.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-58804607

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

Amazon drops its return-to-office plan and will now let most employees work from home indefinitely

Dominick Reuter
20 hours ago

Pour one out for the "office-centric culture."

In a Monday message to Amazon employees, CEO Andy Jassy said the company would no longer require corporate workers to return to the office.

"At a company of our size, there is no one-size-fits-all approach for how every team works best," Jassy said.

Before this week's announcement, Amazon was planning to require corporate and tech workers to be in the office at least three days per week starting in January 2022, unless given special permission by their manager. The original plan had been to return in September.

Now, Jassy said, "we're going to leave this decision up to individual teams."

https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon- ... ly-2021-10

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

The Ultimate List Of Remote Work Statistics for 2021

Jack Steward
Updated Oct 27, 2021

Remote work has been on the rise for the past few years but in 2020, with the sudden outbreak of a global pandemic, even the companies who didn’t believe in the power of telecommuting had no choice but to join the trend.

And for many, having to adjust to a completely new reality in a short period of time ended up being the silver lining during incredibly difficult times.

Remote work wasn’t so scary, after all.

Whether you’re an employer thinking about maintaining work-from-home policies even after the health crisis is over, or an employee starting to look for remote opportunities in their industry, there’s a lot you can learn about the universe of remote work.

Keep reading and discover 25 key remote work statistics for 2021!

https://findstack.com/remote-work-statistics/

[caltrek]

‘You Are Mommy Tracked to the Billionth Degree’
by Emily Peck
November 15, 2021

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/ ... ons-520601

Introduction:

(Politico) When F, a 37-year-old media strategist, started working at a tech company based in Austin in June 2019, she negotiated a hybrid schedule. She would work from home Tuesdays and Thursdays so that she could spend more time throughout the day with her 15-month-old son.

This was pre-Covid 19, and F was the only person on the marketing team at her 30-person company who chose to work from home a few days a week. With a child that young, her priorities were different than those of many of her colleagues, who preferred not just to work together all day but also to socialize together afterwards. “I’m not going to be in an office from 8:30 to 5, and then [go to] happy hours and drinking party boats,” said F, who asked for anonymity to speak openly about her former employer.

In hindsight there were red flags. Her colleagues told her they thought it was “fascinating” she had children, she recalled. “The thing haunting [me] was, they kept saying, ‘We really want an adult in the room,’” she said. That “adult” was supposed to be her.

After a few months, it was clear something was off. She’d come into the office on a Friday and find out about a new direction for the business that everyone else already knew about. When she asked why she hadn’t been told, they’d say, “‘If you were here, you would know,’” F said.

When everyone started working from home during the pandemic, she was relieved. If the whole company was remote, then she’d finally be on equal footing. But things somehow got worse. She was left off team emails or excluded from Slack messages. It felt like gaslighting, she said; there was a lot of “I could’ve sworn I sent that to you.” Then deadlines became unmanageable, she said, with requests for work to be completed by the next day coming in at around 4:00 p.m.

[caltrek]

The Office Will Never Be the Same
Daniel Cubias
November 17, 2021

https://manomagazine.com/politics-repub ... ss-office/

Introduction:

(Mano) So the pandemic is finally ending, and all of us are ready to return to the office—well, by “all of us” I mean white guys. And let’s face it, they’re the only ones who get a vote, right?

You see, recent surveys have shown that most corporate executives—still predominately white men—want to end all these touchy-feely flexible work schedules and this 21st-century telecommuting nonsense. They want to get back to their cushy offices where they can survey their kingdom of cubicle serfs and more effectively terrorize their employees. In fact, “executives are nearly three times more likely than non-executive employees to want to return to the office full-time.”

But the average Latino or Black office worker is not so thrilled at the idea, as studies show that the “desire for flexible work policies is strongest among employees of color.” There are several reasons for this, including the fact that ethnic minorities in corporate offices still face discrimination and suffer more stress than their white colleagues.

African Americans in particular are fans of telecommuting, because “remote work increases a feeling of belonging and makes it easier for Black employees to manage stress.” Perhaps this is why white employees are seven times more likely than Black employees to want a return to full-time office work.

I guess we don’t need to ask who put the white in white-collar.

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

[wjfox]