this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2023
127 points (94.4% liked)

News

23367 readers
2596 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

It does not surprise me companies are making people go back to the office. Not just in Australia but around the world. There are a lot of people abusing the situation. It sucks but I saw this was going to happen when work from home first started getting rolled out back at the beginning of Covid.

The companies are going to use what ever means and reasoning they need to. But at the end of the day all that matters dollars. If they would have seen more productivity with people working from home and if the company made more money, the people would be allowed to continue to work from home

top 15 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] Zezzoz@lemmy.world 30 points 1 year ago (2 children)

This is about estate properties. Banks and investors have huge stakes in office estates and are reluctant to acknowledge that work from home will be a reality.

[–] Lemmylaugh@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This needs to be more common knowledge for why the need to get people back in office. I think there was an article on this too

[–] Sanctus@crystals.rest 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It should be common. Its no secret who owns these buildings. Its glaringly obvious especially when you compare the insane benefits of WFH for the employee. Any sane employer wouldn't cancel it, until you consider their 650 million in enterprise real estate.

[–] theragu40@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

This a million times over!

For a fun little proof of concept, go look at the authors of most of these business mag op-eds talking about how WFH "just isn't working". A disproportionate number of them are somehow heavily entwined in corporate real estate investments.

It is absolutely blatant frantic thrashing from people who had an easy ticket to cheap money and lost a lot of that value.

[–] TransplantedSconie@lemm.ee 22 points 1 year ago

If I ran a company right now, I would be poaching so many good people with work from home. So much production is lost with the commute back and forth, and employee work/life balance immediately is impacted. Hopefully, you Aussies win this case.

[–] ShadowZone@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

What the heck are you on about? When we went into full work from home at my former company, productivity went UP.

There's studies showing that companies forcing their workers back into the office suffer huge brain drains and cannot hire as fast as more flexible employers.

https://fortune.com/2023/08/01/research-damaging-results-mandated-return-to-office-worse-than-we-thought-rto-remote-work-careers-leadership-gleb-tsipursky/

The people have spoken.

[–] andrewta@lemmy.world -3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

There are some companies the productivity went up. There are some that it has gone down.

At one company that I personally know of: the manager will message an employee via the internal messaging program in the computer (sorry I’m being vague but I need to because of how I found out) … anyway she will message the employee and get no response. Half hour later she will message again… no response.. try again and again… she will email a few times.. two to three hours later finally get a bull shit response of “oh I’m so sorry I didn’t see your message”..

If that happens once, ok fine I get it. Continuously from most of the department? Yeah bull shit they weren’t at their computer. It will show they are busy but yet no response.

She is about ready to tell everyone back in the office full time.

So I get why some companies are saying get back in the office.

I remember when Covid first started that there was post after post of people asking how do I make myself look busy on the computer when I’m not. Doesn’t take much to put two and two together.

I know that studies have shown that when a company says get back in the office people quit. So I do see that side.

Is it good that your company the productivity went up when you did work from home? Well yeah it’s good. It’s just not true every where.

For the banks… well let’s be honest… if their people are more productive at home and they are still saying get back in the office AND the company knows if the employees are told to get back in the office they will quit… well then maybe the banks need to figure out a better way.

[–] MostlyBirds@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Sounds like someone who disrespects and/or underpays their employees and is seeing the rightful consequences of it.

[–] NuPNuA@lemm.ee 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

To be fair, that sounds like poor people management. The first time it happened there should have been a email sent round reminding people that they're expected to be promptly available during work hours and those that aren't will be pulled up on it.

[–] b1ab@lem.monster 4 points 1 year ago

And there needs to be a WFH policy that states reasonable responsiveness. If on a break, set you chat status as such.

Of course there are workarounds, like just carrying you phone with chat app.

Then it really does boil down to people management.

[–] KevonLooney@lemm.ee 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

... there was more productivity.

[–] nexas_XIII@lemm.ee 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yup, productivity went up but paying money on a multi year lease is costing them so they want to justify paying the money. It's stupid

[–] BilboBargains@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This issue is fueled by insecurity and ego on the part of business management. They don't get to grandstand in front of a room of people and it's killing them. We'll come to the office when it's convenient for us or they can pick up the tools and have a go at this work. We'll find some other place that values our work as specialists, not seat warmers in some dismal office block. The CEO-manager class of people can eat my refuse.

Also, a lot of them are paying for spaces that aren't getting utilized to full capacity. I've noticed here in the states that many companies are clearing out whole floors and starting to rent them out to smaller companies to even out the cost a bit since they can't seem to convince anyone that the office is better.