see url:
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/apr/08/working-from-home-is-a-failed-experiment
see full article...interesting survey results on working from home...
Quote<<<
I have a client who runs a business that was not considered to be
“essential” and therefore had to shut his doors during the height of the
pandemic and send his employees home to work. This went on for a few
months. When, last summer, things started to relax, he called everyone
back to the office. No exceptions.
“Working from home isn’t an option in my business,” he told me. “I don’t
buy into it. I want my people here.”
The robots are coming to small businesses – and for business owners
Gene Marks
Read more
Is he out of touch? Perhaps. But this point of view is shared by more
than a few clients of mine. Mostly, they fit a similar demographic:
older, set in their ways, long time in business, family-owned companies.
It’s obvious that most companies will need to offer work from home
options in the future. But what’s more obvious, at least to me, is that
so far, this has been a failed experiment. And, sooner or later, many
small businesses are going to come around to thinking like my client.
If you don’t believe me, then just consider the results of a recent,
large study from Microsoft.
According to the study, almost two-thirds of the more than 31,000
full-time employed or self-employed workers across 31 markets said that
they were “craving” (yes, craving) more in-person time with their teams
and 37% of the global workforce complained that their companies were
“asking too much of them” when out of the office.
About 54% of these people feel overworked and 39% are simply exhausted.
Thanks to these new working from home arrangements, meetings are
significantly longer, “chats” have risen 45% and 41m more emails were
sent in one month alone (February 2021) compared with the same month
last year (remember when email was supposed to be “dead”?).
While older workers and bosses seem to be handling things in stride (61%
of them say they are “thriving” right now, a number that clocks in at a
whopping 23 percentage points higher than those without decision-making
authority), the younger generations – specifically the Gen-Zers (aged
between 18 and 25) – are struggling to balance work with life and are
simply more exhausted than their counterparts. They reported
difficulties feeling engaged or excited about work, getting a word in
during meetings and bringing new ideas to the table.
Worse yet is the killing of innovation. Microsoft reports that companies
have become more siloed than they were before the pandemic. And while
interactions with our close networks have actually been more frequent
than previously, the fact is that even these close team interactions
have started to diminish over time. “When you lose connections, you stop
innovating,” said Dr Nancy Baym, senior principal researcher at
Microsoft. “It’s harder for new ideas to get in and groupthink becomes a
serious possibility.”
All of this is taking its toll on workers and big companies are starting
to take notice. Recently Citigroup announced a series of “Zoom Free”
Fridays to encourage workers to get away from their screens and LinkedIn
said it was giving its employees a paid week off to deal with the
stresses that they have been enduring while working from home. It’s also
why the Goldman Sachs CEO, David Solomon, told a conference recently
that working from home is an “aberration that we’re going to correct as
soon as possible”.
So now do you see where my client is coming from? He wants his people
back in the office where he can see them, talk to them, brainstorm with
them, connect with them. He’s old school. And he’s probably not wrong on
this.
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