Good. It's dumb to pay for office space if a Zoom call would work just as well. Managers that think they can't track their employees productivity that way are telling on their own incompetence.
this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2023
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Honestly office space should be used for collaboration and social activities. There is no reason to drive to work to sit in front of a computer all day.
and since office space is only needed sometimes, it can be rented, and even better it can be located near public transport nodes.
round here there's a company that's started renting out conference rooms literally inside train stations and i hope that becomes the norm.
WeWork makes much, much more sense post-COVID
Here’s why: because fuck that
What I'm curious about (as a self employed tailor, so I have no personal interest in work from home, just curiosity) is whether or not employers are paying employees for the use of their homes as offices. Who pays the extra housing costs, internet, etc. that the employee can't claim on their taxes. And even if they could claim it, the amount claimed would not cover all the associated costs. If for instance you set aside a room in your house, and get away with deducting the rental value, claiming that value in the USA covers about 1/3 of the actual expense.
I’ve worked remote for three different companies over the past 15 years and all of them let me expense my internet and cell phone.
One big change that happened was the loss of the home office deduction, which I used to be allowed to take. That sucked.
Good
i love how towards the end they didn't even bother pitching it like it was something people should be excited for, it was used purely as a cudgel to keep employees from getting too happy or comfortable
And yet in my country and even some people in my company are aiming to have full office attendance mandatory, despite knowing that our team is 45+ people but we only have space for 17 since the renovation of the offices.
This is the second order effect that doesn't seem to have been at the centre of the conversation. It's all very well if you are an established company who took out an office lease at the beginning of the 2020s, you have a bunch of boomer managers who basically need daycare, and the HIPPO at the top is also a boomer acting all entitled about having people come back to the office.
It's something else. When you're starting a new business and seeking investment capital, do you think your investors are going to want to spend their money on office accommodation and ability staff like receptionists, cleaners etc, if they think they can get equal or better results without it?
Not only that, but if you insist on being in an office you restrict your pool of potential employees. Not only can you only look in within 1-2 hours of the office, you are also only getting people who can't find WFH positions. So you have a smaller pool of worse talent.
And if you're in a big metro area you need to pay them a lot more just to live there, whereas a fully remote position can hire people who live in the middle of nowhere and pay them less for better work.
Wish I could read the article without having to accept ads :/
WISH GRANTED! 🧞
Return to office is ‘dead,’ Stanford economist says. Here’s why PUBLISHED THU, NOV 30 20233:31 PM ESTUPDATED MON, DEC 4 20233:59 AM EST
Greg Iacurci
KEY POINTS The share of days worked from home ballooned in the Covid-19 pandemic’s early days, and subsequently declined through 2022.
However, it has flatlined in 2023, suggesting more companies aren’t calling employees back to the office. Long-term technological and demographic trends suggest the prevalence of remote work may grow in 2025 and beyond.
“Return to the office is dead,” Nick Bloom, an economics professor at Stanford University and expert on the work-from-home revolution, wrote this week.
In May 2020 — the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic — 61.5% of paid, full workdays were from home, according to the Survey of Working Arrangements and Attitudes. That share fell by about half through 2022 as companies called employees back to in-person work.
However, the story has changed in 2023.
The share of paid work-from-home days has been “totally flat” this year, hovering around 28%, said Bloom in an interview with CNBC. That’s still four times greater than the 7% pre-pandemic level. The U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey shows a similar trend, he said.
Meanwhile, Kastle data that measures the frequency of employee office swipe-ins shows that office occupancy in the 10 largest U.S. metro areas has flatlined at around 50% in 2023, Bloom said.
“We are three and a half years in, and we’re totally stuck,” Bloom said of remote work. “It would take something as extreme as the pandemic to unstick it.”
Why remote work has had staying power The initial surge of remote work was spurred by Covid-19 lockdowns and stay-at-home orders.
But many workers came to like the arrangement. Among the primary benefits: no commute, flexible work schedules and less time getting ready for work, according to WFH Research.
The trend has been reinforced by a hot job market in the U.S. since early 2021, giving workers unprecedented leverage. If a worker didn’t like their company benefits, odds were good they could quit and get a job with better work arrangements and pay elsewhere.
Research has shown that the typical worker equates the value of working from home to an 8% pay raise.
However, the work-from-home trend isn’t just a perk for workers. It has been a profitable arrangement for many companies, economists said.
Among the potential benefits: reduced costs for real estate, wages and recruitment, better worker retention and an expanded pool from which to recruit talent. Meanwhile, worker productivity hasn’t suffered, Bloom said.
“What makes companies money tends to stick,” he said.
Remote policies show ‘incredible diversity’ These days, most remote work is done as part of a “hybrid” arrangement, with some days at home and the rest in the office. About 47% of employees who can work from home were hybrid as of October 2023, while 19% are full-time remote and 34% are fully on site, according to WFH Research.
About 11% of online job postings today advertise positions as fully remote or hybrid, versus 3% before the pandemic, said Julia Pollak, chief economist at ZipRecruiter.
While remote work is the labor market’s new normal, there’s significant variety from company to company, Pollak said.
Remote work expands job opportunity for both workers and employers, says Stanford’s Steven Davis For example, 7% of workers are required to be in the office one day a week, while 9% are required in two days, 13% three days and 8% four days, according to a recent ZipRecruiter employer survey. Nearly 1 in 5, 18%, have discretion over their in-person workdays.
“The new normal is this incredible diversity,” Pollak said.
“There’s still a lot of experimentation going on,” she said. “But the aggregate effect is that remote work is steady.”
Why remote work will likely increase beyond 2025 While it’s unlikely that the prevalence of remote work will ever decline to its pre-pandemic level, it’s possible that a U.S. recession — and a weaker job market — may cause it to slide a bit, economists said.
“Employers say the biggest benefit of remote work is retention,” Pollak said. In a labor market with more slack, “retention gets much easier.”
However, since work-from-home arrangements also save companies money, it’s likely a severe recession would be necessary to see a meaningful decline, Bloom said.
Long-term trends suggest the share of employees who work from home is only likely to grow from here, possibly starting in 2025, Bloom said.
For example, improving technology will make remote work easier to facilitate, Bloom said. Younger firms and CEOs also tend to be more enthusiastic about hybrid work arrangements, meaning they’ll get more popular over time as existing business heads retire, he added.
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