My office hasn’t announced a return date yet. They are planning an announcement around July 1. Pre-COVID there was a requirement that you had to be in the a minimum of 2 days per 2 week pay period. That requirement won’t be enforced until next calendar year.
If that is the case then you are not getting your work done. Some jobs have a timing element for getting work done. Others do not. If your job does, you will need to make the timing work as well.
My D has a coworker that movee from California (where her whole team is) to Chicago during the pandemic. The coworker is now saying that her hours each day end at 3pm (pacific time). D said her manager is going to talk to the coworker since she needs to be available to the team and others she supports on the west coast during business hours pacific time.
I have several friends here in California that work east coast hours because that is where their offices are headquartered or where they are supporting clients. WFH has been wonderful for many, but you do need to be available when your team is working even if you have been allowed to move to another time zone.
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Lol on the employee that wants her day to end on central time even though the team is in California!
Ummm, yea that’s a unique way to look at it
My husband has a person on his team who moved to AZ, she is expect to be on the 6:55 am EDT call. It was her choice to move not the teams.
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For half the year. AZ doesn’t switch to daylight savings time. Once I was calling a branch in AZ and there was no answer. I tried for almost an hour. I was mad and going to report them to their district manager until I realized it was 6 am in AZ.
But people in the midwest and mountain time zones tend to work earlier to sync with the east coast. Working later to line up with the west coast is harder.
I’ve been thinking about this and might add that it could be worthwhile to work with HR to make it easier to use PTO (by the hour!) and/or to work a shortened week until everything is back to normal.
When we made it clear to folks that we expected 40 hours a week and availability at certain times BUT that we would work with them in taking time off or arrangements for fewer hours per week if that wasn’t feasible, several people came forward saying they would like to talk about options. I think everyone felt better – the employees who had been juggling were given a fair way to do all their jobs (work and otherwise) and the company paid only for the time it was getting. I won’t say it was perfect but I am pretty sure nobody begrudge colleagues who were honest about their situations.
I remain appalled by child care challenges in general in our country, and recognize it’s particularly tough now. But I am also wary of "prioritizing " the parent class of workers over others who may also have equally good reasons for needing flexibility.
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Regarding time zone differences and working hours, how about the people who work at securities brokerages’ local offices in Hawaii?
My H works with people in Europe and has regular calls in the early morning hours. The Europeans he works with are not very flexible and expect their coworkers in the US to be on meetings when it’s convenient for them.
I’m surprised this was not addressed when she relocated. My husband’s company had offices in London, South Africa and Asia. There was a weekly staff meeting where my husband had to be up and on a call every Tuesday (this was pre-pandemic) at 5am.
Depending on the circumstances of her move and whether she negotiated something with her boss, people like your D’s coworker are the kind of people that end up not getting very good performance evaluations when the time comes.
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My husband used to do that… those odd hour calls with Europe were getting really old. In some countries, there are regulations and laws prohibiting employers from extending workdays for employees beyond the 9 to 5 kind of workday, apparently.
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There was a Dilbert cartoon 15 years or so ago in which Dilbert asked his boss if he could work from home. Boss asked how he would know Dilbert was working if he was at home. Dilbert’s response was to ask how his boss knew he was working when he was in the office. To which the boss replied, when you are here you are miserable which is the same thing as work.
I think there is at least an element of that going on now in many offices.
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Agree. I rented a home in California January to March of this year. I got up around 530 am to accommodate the guy I work for who liked 8am meetings. By 3-4 pm I was done for the day. I liked that schedule just fine. But if you move you have to be the one to accommodate.
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I am a part time and contract worker and sometimes volunteer. I live in HI. I really do NOT enjoy calls and conferences before 8am local time. I had a 4 hour zoom conference call that started at 5am last week (volunteer project). I warned them in advance I would likely only participate once I woke up. Lucky for them, I woke and signed in at 6 but I really dislike such early long calls. The same folks are doing another 4 hr call from 6am. I gave them the same warning.
It just feels very unreasonable as they could have shifted it to a bit later as they’re all in the US. It makes me dislike their project as it feels they’re not considering my and another guy’s 6 hour earlier time zone, which they knew about at the outset.
I agree that many folks are shuffling other obligations, including providing care for elders or chronically ill family members as well as those caring for young children. All of those benefit from flexibility and as much notice as possible.
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When D1 is doing an Euro deal, she is at work by 3am. I work with India quite a bit. We have all of our meetings with India by 10am. Now we are working from home we can have 7am calls, which we wouldn’t be able to once we are back at work.
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DH works for an international company. He has direct reports in Europe and India. They are in IT and stuff happens all hours of the night and day. In addition to the emergency issues or scheduled upgrades or what have you that occur at night and on the weekend (and they expect the upgrades to occur on holidays when the offices and plants are quieter- never mind its a holiday for all employees) and they have meetings that begin at 8 am. We spent a month in CA when our new grandchild was born earlier this year. He was up at 5am Pacific time to be on those calls. Monday-Friday. For a month.
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My relative works for a bank. His work hours are aligned with Wall Street though he lives in Hawaii, so yes, he starts work when most are sleeping and finishes shortly after lunch. He’s a night owl, so it took some adjusting fit him.
Even before Covid and zoom, international conference calls took place at all hours. My sister used to have group calls with people in Australia, Hong Kong, South Africa and she was in Denver. Of course she could take those calls at 9 pm or 3 am on a Saturday, but from her home. No need to be in the office.
Stock brokers in Denver were often on eastern time, so they were all golfing at 3 pm as they’d been at the office since 5 or 6 am.
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I am happily retired now, but I did A LOT of flexing (and unpaid overtime) to deal with schedule challenges of worldwide crossfunctional teams and 24x7 system support. Once in a while I’d get up for 5am or 6am calls and did occasional middle-of-the night pager callouts. Also plenty of weekend support work. When I’d take a break 3pm to get the mail, it seemed like neighbors would look at me thinking “gee, must be nice working from home”. Sometimes yes, often no.
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I am more content now that I finally learned that at least one person in today’s meeting was in Rome, Italy, so my hours were 2 hours different from hers. 5am-9am for me was 5pm to 9pm for her and today’s 6-10am was 6-10pm. Before this it was irksome. Now it’s more understandable.
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I saw an article today about how the workforce is still short 2 million women who haven’t returned since COVID. Hopefully, those who hung on, can go back to the office successfully, with whatever they need. We don’t want to lose any more women because of issues with returning to the office.
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