Earlier in the pandemic many news and magazine organizations would proudly write about how working from home always actually can lead to over working and being too “productive”. I am yet to collect some evidence on it but I think we remember a good amount about this.
Now after a bunch of companies want their remote workers back at the office, every one of those companies are being almost propaganda machines which do not cite sound scientific studies but cite each other and interviews with higher ups in top companies that “remote workers are less productive”. This is further cementing the general public’s opinion on this matter.
And research that shows the opposite is buried deep within any search results.
Have you noticed this? Please share what you have observed. I’m going paranoid about this.
In my observation it has been industry and sector dependent.
Corporate tech and finance are calling for remote work to end. Most of the articles I see where going back to the office is touted are all “silicon valley” type companies and finance/investment firms writing opinion peices.
PR, marketing, and news media, comms fields - which I am in - are doing the opposite. I work in digital media with government clients and my office just had a building contractor come in and walled off 2/3 of our empty cube space that was full pre-pandemic but is now vacant because all those employees remained remote. The positions in that area of the office were mostly copy editors, graphic design, and technical writers. The building owner turned that area into a new office but hasn’t rented it to anyone new yet.
Many of my colleagues are active duty military and government civilians. They all telework as much as 3-4 days a week currently. All of their jobs are administrative in nature and almost all of the military people are officers.
It is important to note that the military has loosely instructed liberal telework at unit level discretion because of record low retention rates. I’ve been working in/for government for a long time and even before 2020, federal contractors and DoD civilians have usually had telework of some kind provided what they did was something that could be taken home.
When I worked in DC in the mid-00s it was common to see offices engage rotating flex schedules because of the insane traffic and hours long commutes in the DMV corridor.
But, I suppose it’s all anecdotal. Where you live and what you do for work are going to impact reality more than anything. Watching the MSM speculate and reading nonsense opinion articles in the Atlantic or Times aren’t going to give you any real information.
All I can say for sure is my office has fully remote and hybrid only. We are guaranteed two days WFH a week but all salaried employees have optional flex schedules and can work non-concurrent hours as long as deadlines are being met. But again, I work for a massive international fed contractor that does largely administrative and PR consulting. So all things that have a history of WFH schedules already.
not only industry and sector dependent, also dependent on the country. at least in my personal bubble (in Germany), remote work is still very common. I also heard from companies who openly advertise remote work and get much more job applications because of it.