True benefit of what has happened is increased flexibility. Its no longer “everyone in the office every day” type approach. For some that works and/or is needed which is fine. For others that isn’t the case. Allow for what works. And that will vary by industry/company/employee.
I do expect that market for office space to get ugly in the next 5-10 years as leases come up for renewal and companies reevaluate their need for office space (both in terms of physical square footage and how it is configured).
This has been an interesting thing to watch. My D is a 2020 college grad who is employed by a large company. She has never been to her office, though she did intern at this company in person between junior and senior years but in a different department than she is currently assigned to. I asked her when they were going back and she said some people already were and she could technically go in if she wanted, but, most of her group is working from home, her manager is working remotely from Chicago, and she never even got an employee badge so she’s not sure how she would even get past the front door. She has never been in the building where her current group is located and doesn’t even know where exactly in the building they are located or if she would even have a desk to go to.
That sounds like my S20 except he never interned there. He interviewed there and that’s it! I think some people are there, at least part time, but they have to wear masks all day. Or you can WFH full time. He likes working from home, though initially he was sold on the company because of their cool office. I think ultimately he would like a hybrid model, mostly because it’s easier to get to the gym when he WFH.
I’ve been in the office since June 2020 in a low vax area. Yesterday, the powers that be reinstated the everyone must wear a mask in common areas policy. That was dropped back in May. I’m not sure what prompted that decision. We’ve been very high risk for about 6 weeks or more. And of course, having a policy and people actually following it/enforcing it are two different things. But I appreciate the mandate. I’ve been doing that for the last month or so. anyway.
And I would HATE communal office spaces. I love having all of my pictures/magnets/postcards up everywhere. It’s what gets me through the days sometimes. And while I loved my 3 months of WFH, it would also be very hard for me to go back and forth since I also have multiple monitors and lots of big plans/files/etc. I could see something like two weeks WFH and two weeks in the office. Or completely WFH. That would be my ideal, sigh…
We’ve been back to the office for a long time. I work in a small department on a large campus so don’t come in contact with tons of people on a daily basis.
Today I went to my first off campus meeting. I have to say, I didn’t feel great about it! About 15 of us in a room that did not allow for social distancing. Everyone was masked, probably vaccinated but…who knows??? Doors were closed and we were in the room for about 75 minutes. This was our first monthly meeting in person after 18 months or so of virtual. We had agreed to try one meeting in person quarterly. I’ll be happy to go back to virtual. It wasn’t a hard working meeting more of a committee “let’s update each other” - we can so do that virtually!
This is why I didn’t want to teach this semester. 75 minutes at a time in often small classrooms with a bunch of supposedly vaccinated and sort of mask wearing students. I say supposedly because I’ve from a parent of a student at another college that fake vax cards are common.
I hear you. I’ve been trying to skip out on meetings like that as much as possible. But I’ve got another on Thursday. Roughly the same size and length - but only 25% of our employees are (or were last i heard) vaccinated and masks aren’t required. I would HOPE more of these folks (higher up, more educated) would be vaccinated but mask wearing will be almost non-existent I’m sure. Last month I used vacation to miss it. I’d rather not again. I’ve thought about going in and writing down my updates and giving them to the top dog (he chairs the meeting) and telling him I’m not comfortable in this situation and leaving. But I don’t know if I’ve got the guts to do that. Easier to just use leave time. I have gobs of it.
Oh and while the state is getting better case wise, we have stubbornly plateaued at around 50-60 cases a day per 100K.
My company was supposed to reopen November 1st on a hybrid schedule. Due to the high daily infection numbers in our county, reopening has been pushed back to January 3rd.
DH’s situation is the same (computer, monitor, files, etc) but they gave NO OPTION but to use the “hotel desks”. And for a while the person had to leave the station after a certain # of hours so they could clean. Not very conducive to getting work done.
My husband decided to bring his stuff home and work from home again. Even though it’s suggested to come in 2 days a week, it’s not being enforced and no one is coming in. It wasn’t fun being the only one in the office, so he decided to come back home.
The office I work in has been working from home since March 2020 (although I have gone in for important meetings). I work in a small office. We were all outfitted with laptops, keyboards, monitors, cameras and docking stations so if we had to return to the office, there would be no lugging around computer stuff. Everyone except 1 person is vaccinated-- unfortunately that person reports to me. This employee says they are young and healthy (doctor supposedly said this person doesn’t need a vaccine) and has requested to work indefinitely from home. As my team are all (except this person) vaccinated (and young), they also want the work-life balance and do not want to ever return to the office either. But we are a group that did have meetings (pre-Covid) that definitely work better in person. It is a conundrum. Our office culture is one of mentoring/apprenticeship and this person wants to be promoted. In LA County, there is the idea floating around that you have to be vaccinated to enter different establishments- surely this person would need to be vaccinated if they sought another job. It’s a mess. HR has said anyone not vaccinated (or prefers not to share info) should work from home (and we had to fill out a form saying yes,no, prefer not to say if vaccinated)-- it’s a mixed message when people use this as their excuse (which I feel this employee is doing because this person in general is thought of as “sneaky”) to not get back to the office (even if just 2 days a week).
My husbands office is asking folks to come in twice a week. Schedules are done to meet the needs of the work teams and clients. Everyone is expected to be fully masked while in the building.
They are more than 100 employees so in this state can mandate vaccines. We hope they are heading in that direction.
D2’s law firm is saying, “they are required to be in the office x hours per week, and for people to be back in the office they need to be vaccinated.” The message is if you want to be employed you need to be vaccinated.
My friend at a large accounting firm got a memo that said they were required to be vaccinated. If for whatever reason they couldn’t be vaccinated then their last day were sometime in November.
Someone I know works as a supervisor at the NYC Department of Sanitation. Workers there are required to be vaccinated or tested every week. But it turns out that workers that must be tested get to leave 2 hours early on the last shift of their work week to do so, a sweet deal that disincentivizes them to get vaccinated. Ugh, ugh, ugh.
A full time nanny is nice to have, but not affordable for many people. Of course, our country needs to get on board with some sort of child care help for working parents.
I still remember the year that I had seven nannies/childcare arrangements. That was the year I quit and started working for myself.
I like the idea of asking people what hours they would like to work and where. I get that you want some in office time, but I think the idea that everyone should be on call 24/7 is unhealthy. I kind of am now, but since I don’t work anywhere near 40 hours a week, I don’t mind that I have one client who sends me texts at 10 pm on Fridays. She works full time and has a toddler. I know that’s probably the only time she’s free.
There was a woman on the news last night who had applied for 300 jobs and felt the economy wasn’t on a rebound. It wasn’t clear what she did for her career, but she hadn’t worked since the beginning of the pandemic as she’d had a baby who was now about 9 months old and she only wanted a job she could do at home while taking care of her baby. Gee, no employer wants you dividing your time between working and watching a baby who is about to be mobile and might require some attention? No one wants to pay you for working full time when you won’t be?
I am a grandma and my grandchild is 9 months old. I can tell you that there is no way I could take care of her and also work. The week I was with her while her parents were away, they had a full time nanny from 8am to 7pm. The baby only took 2 naps a day. She needed 100% attention while she was awake.
Before the pandemic when we had people work from home, we always told the employees that because they worked from home it didn’t mean they could forego childcare.
I know most people working from home do send their kids to daycare.
