this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2024
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Work Reform

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HR software biz BambooHR surveyed more than 1,500 employees, a third of whom work in HR. The findings suggest the return to office movement has been a poorly-executed failure, but one particular figure stands out - a quarter of executives and a fifth of HR professionals hoped RTO mandates would result in staff leaving.

According to the report, most employees working remotely and in-person both feel the need to demonstrate productivity, which for more than a third of employees means being seen socializing and moving around the office. That intense need to be visible may actually be harming productivity, study author and BambooHR's own head of HR Anita Grantham concluded in her findings.

A full 42 percent of employees who responded to the Bamboo survey said they show up solely to be seen by bosses and managers. If bosses think their presence in the office is making any difference to the amount of work getting done, the results indicate that's not the case.

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[–] aramis87@fedia.io 147 points 5 months ago (6 children)

I had a friend who made a point of "needing" to go into the office an average of one day every week during the pandemic. His logic was that, if his job could be done entirely from the comfort of his living room in the suburbs, eventually the bosses would realize that it could also be done entirely from the comfort of someone else's living room in the Philippines or India.

[–] bstix@feddit.dk 110 points 5 months ago (5 children)

It's a valid point.

Most practical examples of out-sourcing has however failed to show any worthwhile savings, while working from home has shown remarkable increases in productivity.

[–] SlopppyEngineer@lemmy.world 32 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Other time zones and that makes communication difficult, so no quick IM with "by the end of the day" as that means something different over there. Different culture and way of doing things, so have to spend a lot more effort in communication being very clear. Even then they're far away where it's a lot easier to hide stuff until the hole is very deep. Travel expenses going up very quickly for a little training for a new guy. It can be so fun to work with teams in a different continent.

[–] Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works 9 points 5 months ago

Besides that, you also get what you paid for.

Hiring someone in India means that the person is gonna give you as much dedication as their wage will allow. If they produced top of the line stuff they would want close to top of the line compensation.

[–] InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world 5 points 5 months ago

Is it valid? If they could outsource they already would have. They already have with heavy industry.

[–] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 5 points 5 months ago

Perhaps true with office work (so many tales of people saying they got shit code from overseas developers) and such, but I think the savings were very real for manufacturing, at least for a period of time. Happy to be corrected if that's wrong.

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[–] Eezyville@sh.itjust.works 23 points 5 months ago (2 children)

While the work could be outsourced to foreign countries there is still some hurdles to overcome. Language barriers, cultural barriers, time zones, labor laws, the paperwork involved with taxes, worker reliability, the threat of scams (see N. Korea), etc. But hey, let them find out for themselves.

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[–] Coreidan@lemmy.world 21 points 5 months ago (4 children)

Ya but work quality from India and Philippines is pretty bad. They aren’t equal.

[–] Dkarma@lemmy.world 11 points 5 months ago (2 children)

The bosses don't care when 3 of them cost the same as 1 of u

[–] Coreidan@lemmy.world 8 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Some do. The ones that don’t are garbage companies not worth the time to begin with. It depends heavily on the type of work you do. If your company can squeak by with shit quality work, then you probably don’t belong there to begin with.

[–] Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works 6 points 5 months ago

You’re assuming 3 of them produce 33% or more compared to me.

In my experience, the math doesn’t add up and you just get what you paid for

[–] Blackmist 7 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The recent AI LLM goldrush has shown that things don't need to be good to be used.

If it makes the line go up, no matter how short term it is, it gets done.

[–] Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works 5 points 5 months ago (2 children)

It has also showed when things aren’t good and are used, users notice slowly, but the trust is gone for a long while.

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[–] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 4 points 5 months ago

That's why you don't fire the whole department, just implement a hiring freeze while your US staff train the Indian and Filipino staff.

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[–] Kit@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 points 5 months ago (1 children)

His fears happened to me. I worked a fully remote job for 5 years and ended up getting a horrible boss who worked me insane hours and liked to remind me that he could replace me with someone in India for 1/10th my salary.

I left and got a hybrid job that is 2 days in office. It pays 50% more, has a free gym, free EV charging, 30 days of vacation, and better health insurance. And I have a niche specialty so they won't be able to replace me easily. Feels much more secure.

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[–] jorp@lemmy.world 4 points 5 months ago

This makes no sense. What could possibly be in the office that's needed AND can't be purchased in the Philippines? Is your friend working for a government agency building military or spy equipment which can't be shipped overseas?

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[–] HexesofVexes@lemmy.world 95 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Yup - the reason most folks "go in" is to be seen, rarely to get things done. The only genuine reason to go in is if you need to talk to a lot of people.

[–] AnalogyAddict@lemmy.world 37 points 5 months ago (2 children)

I go in so I can find people who will eat my baked goods.

[–] bravesilvernest@lemmy.ml 24 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I go in to eat said baked goods ❤️

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[–] walter_wiggles@lemmy.nz 11 points 5 months ago

Where do you work? I'll start coming in too.

[–] CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 5 months ago

The only reason I go in is for the free food. It's pretty good. But I'd rather have my time commuting back.

[–] lightnsfw@reddthat.com 8 points 5 months ago (11 children)

I am wildly unproductive when I WFH. I literally cannot focus on work tasks when I have so many more interesting things available to me to do. I’ve tried everything to make myself focus but the best I can do is maybe 3/4 hours of the day interrupted by doom scrolling or messing around on my personal desktop. My coworkers all WFH as well and seem to have no issues getting their stuff done so I’d never argue that WFH is bad for everyone but for me personally it is. I need the structure of going in the office. Thankfully my job gives us the choice.

[–] Dagwood222@lemm.ee 13 points 5 months ago (5 children)

Get a different job.

For years I thought I just hated working. After I was injured at work and had some off time, I picked up a book called "Discover What You Are Best At" by Linda Gail. It helped me assess my strengths and pointed me to a job I actually enjoyed doing.

[–] shrugs@lemmy.world 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Don't leave us hanging. what was your job before and after?

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[–] prole@sh.itjust.works 7 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Have you tried taking your laptop to a library or coffee shop or something?

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[–] b3an@lemmy.world 6 points 5 months ago

I have the opposite problem. When I work at the office so much time is spent 'harmonizing' with the other workers, I get a lot less done on those days than if I had worked from home and was able to focus on my tasks.

But some people can also listen to heavy metal while working, whereas I prefer silence. 😁

[–] Passerby6497@lemmy.world 4 points 5 months ago

I get the issues with doom scrolling, but the desktop issue is pretty easily fixed. I have my home office set up with a couple KVM switches so that I can't be on my work laptop and home desktop at the same time, because both systems use all the same peripherals. That at least makes it harder to justify switching over and being (more) unproductive during my shift.

Also, I have found it helps to have music or a podcast going in the background to help keep your focus on what you're supposed to be doing.

[–] echodot 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

I work in corporate IT so my job is basically to sit there twiddling my thumbs and wait until something breaks. Then I remote onto the server to fix the issue. Which means I was basically working remotely anyway the server might have been in the same building as me but I was never physically going down there I was still remoting on so working from home isn't much different for me.

I'm much more productive now because I don't have people coming and asking me questions, for which answer is in the corporate knowledge base. Now they actually have to check it.

[–] Redecco@lemmy.world 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

If you have ADHD WFH could be a lot more challenging. Without external structure or factors aid track of time it makes it super tough to work isolated like that.

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[–] princessnorah@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 5 months ago

I'm so sorry for all these other replies you got to a simple explanation that you personally prefer working in the office. You do you mate!

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[–] Coreidan@lemmy.world 90 points 5 months ago (4 children)

Study shows more than 1/4 of bosses are morons that know nothing about how shit works.

[–] chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 24 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The office is the principal-agent problem in spades. Even if your manager is a technical person they don’t necessarily understand all the details of what you’re working on: that’s what they pay you for.

This problem is pervasive throughout society. How many people can hire a dentist, a car mechanic, a plumber, or any of countless other specialists and fully understand what the person is doing so that they don’t get ripped off?

[–] dustyData@lemmy.world 14 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Uh, welcome to society, I guess. That's not a “problem with society”, that's just society. It's what being human is about, developing meaningful relationships with other humans. The actual problem is that we have put in place barriers and obstacles to make us even more isolated and less integrated, thus stripping ourselves off of the social strategies and mechanisms that reduce risks on that principal-agent problem. It is way harder for your car mechanic to rip you off when they are also your neighbor and life long friend. If they defraud you, you can ruin their reputation in the community and thus make them unable to acquire any more jobs in that community. The might also feel an emotional moral compulsion to not hurt you, and vice-versa, for you to fulfill a just payment.

[–] chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 5 points 5 months ago (2 children)

I’m skeptical of the claim that an average person has the power to ruin someone’s reputation as a punishment for wrongdoing. Our society is large and extremely anonymous. People can easily pick up and move to another town, if that’s even necessary at all.

Generally I think the only people whose reputation gets damaged severely enough to follow them around for the rest of their life are public figures or infamous criminals such as murderers and rapists.

I personally have been ripped off quite severely by an unscrupulous HVAC company and I don’t see much recourse. I could try to damage their reputation but then they could sue me for libel. I think their unscrupulous behaviour is likely protected by the enormous contracts they make their customers sign and the government gives them the power to have your natural gas supply shut off if you refuse a costly repair they deem necessary.

[–] dustyData@lemmy.world 9 points 5 months ago

I’m skeptical of the claim that an average person has the power to ruin someone’s reputation as a punishment for wrongdoing.

If you read my comment, you'll realize that it is explicitly in the context of a small tightly knit community. If they decide to leave the community, then that's a win for the community, now we don't have to deal with the bad actor anymore.

Our society is large and extremely anonymous

If you pay close attention, that was exactly my comment. That is the problem with our current society, not the principal/agent problem. That is just a society. We evolved in a world where you hardly had to keep up with a handful of individuals, maybe meet less than 500 people your entire life. We are not fit for a world with 8 billion+ of us and you can potentially interact with millions of them directly with a tiny glass device in your pocket. That is not something we are good at. We are good at forming strong bonds and meaning relationships with a handful of people who you can sort of trust almost completely at all times, and they will in turn relay you information about who amongst the strangers to trust or not. It is the fundamental basis of gossip.

[–] nifty@lemmy.world 3 points 5 months ago

an average person has the power to ruin someone’s reputation as a punishment for wrongdoing

Office bullying relies on this to a large extent, it happens all the time

[–] Raiderkev@lemmy.world 15 points 5 months ago

Probably more than 3/4 tbh

[–] cuck4mai@lemmynsfw.com 14 points 5 months ago

The study must be flawed, that number is way too low.

[–] GBU_28@lemm.ee 9 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Why's that? Lots of people DID quit due to this. They knew it was a free way to get reduced headcount without needing to do layoffs, thus avoiding the negative publicity.

Then they can rehire people for cheaper, with explicit in office / hybrid contract terms

[–] doggle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 5 months ago

They're referring to the other 3/4 of managers & hr who responded that they didn't want employees to leave because of return to office policies.

They, apparently, genuinely believed that rto would have some tangible benefits, or were just trying to make their employees lives harder for a laugh, and didn't expect it to affect headcount at all.

[–] eskimofry@lemm.ee 65 points 5 months ago (1 children)

So scumbag execs can collect bonus for reduced cost and jump ship with their golden parachutes.

[–] FenrirIII@lemmy.world 6 points 5 months ago

And the people left behind have to deal with the shitstorm

[–] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 20 points 5 months ago

Businesses were over-extended by low-interest rate loans, so this isn't a surprise.

[–] StaySquared@lemmy.world 5 points 5 months ago

That's not what happened in many orgs in California. If you didn't RTO, you were terminated.

[–] Sam_Bass@lemmy.world 4 points 5 months ago

Didnt make them quit, so..

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