Getting back to work

[Cornell]

I work for a small (approx 125 employee) business. Bulk of employees are split b/w Chicago & St. Louis offices -- a handful scattered in other parts of the US. Chicago is the only location where employees take public transport. All employees are in an office setting. We have been WFM since this corona thing started.

HR did a survey of employees last week to gauge the temperature of employees about going back to work. It was interesting to me:

28% said they were "extremely / very comfortable" returning to the office
41% said "somewhat comfortable "
31% said "very / extremely uncomfortable"

The general plan that was outlined to us was that once local authorities give the green light to open up, those employees that feel comfortable will be asked to return to the office. Then at some later point, other employees need to return to work. The upper management is very cognizant that there are potentially going to be child care issues for some employees.

The Chicago office currently is a mix of traditional offices and "cubes" currently but we are moving to a new office space in Nov - the typical "open concept" floor plan. We were told that this is still the plan. I was really taken aback by that. Seems like this is the perfect opportunity to move away from that type of arrangement.

One interesting aspect of all of this is that our traditional phone system is being dismantled and we will no longer have phones. We have done so well phoneless in the past 6 weeks that the company has decided to ditch the phone system. So -- there is one area of innovation that I see coming out of this.

 

[Luanne]

My dd works for a national lab. She was allowed to work from home in the past occasionally for things like bad weather. Ever since we returned home from Maui and San Francisco on March 14 she's been working from home. At first it was because they thought it would be a good idea for her to self isolate since we'd been in San Francisco. Then a couple days into working at home the entire lab started working from home. She has been in exactly once, and that was to pick up a work laptop.

She is enjoying working from home, except for the contact with co-workers. They do have virtual meetings fairly often though. She is not missing the commute at all. She's saying that she can see when the lab opens back up some changes happening. Maybe they'll start having people work at home a couple of days a week, and on site a couple of days a week. I think there will be a lot of businesses that realize the work can be done from home.

 

[MrockStar]

I work for a small (approx 125 employee) business. Bulk of employees are split b/w Chicago & St. Louis offices -- a handful scattered in other parts of the US. Chicago is the only location where employees take public transport. All employees are in an office setting. We have been WFM since this corona thing started.

HR did a survey of employees last week to gauge the temperature of employees about going back to work. It was interesting to me:

28% said they were "extremely / very comfortable" returning to the office
41% said "somewhat comfortable "
31% said "very / extremely uncomfortable"

The general plan that was outlined to us was that once local authorities give the green light to open up, those employees that feel comfortable will be asked to return to the office. Then at some later point, other employees need to return to work. The upper management is very cognizant that there are potentially going to be child care issues for some employees.

The Chicago office currently is a mix of traditional offices and "cubes" currently but we are moving to a new office space in Nov - the typical "open concept" floor plan. We were told that this is still the plan. I was really taken aback by that. Seems like this is the perfect opportunity to move away from that type of arrangement.

One interesting aspect of all of this is that our traditional phone system is being dismantled and we will no longer have phones. We have done so well phoneless in the past 6 weeks that the company has decided to ditch the phone system. So -- there is one area of innovation that I see coming out of this.

No Phones, some may like that. Not sure I would? hope it works out.

 

[PigsDad]

No Phones, some may like that. Not sure I would? hope it works out.

It doesn't necessarily mean what you may think it means. My workplace has effectively gotten rid of our phone system a couple of years ago, but we now use Skype or MS Teams, which replaces all of the functionality of a traditional phone system with tools on your computer and headsets. We can still "call up" people (inside or outside the company) anytime; it just is not with the traditional phone device.

Kurt

 

[Cornell]

It doesn't necessarily mean what you may think it means. My workplace has effectively gotten rid of our phone system a couple of years ago, but we now use Skype or MS Teams, which replaces all of the functionality of a traditional phone system with tools on your computer and headsets. We can still "call up" people (inside or outside the company) anytime; it just is not with the traditional phone device.

Kurt

Yup... using Teams. I like this development for many reasons.

 

[PigsDad]

I work for a global IT company w/ ~60K employees, and they have said we will be taking a more conservative approach to re-opening the offices. They indicated that they will most likely wait until at least July before allowing employees to start going back to the office, which will most likely be well after the state orders are lifted. But even then, they said no one will be forced to come back into the office, and will at first allow only a small percentage to come back in. They also mentioned that they are seeing productivity actually increase during this time. Now, this could be due to a variety of reasons, but there are indications that working from home generally doesn't have a negative effect on getting our work done, so we may see some long-term changes with what our offices look like going forward.

Interesting times, indeed!

Kurt

 

[csodjd]

Here is the challenge of returning to work. Texas has done fairly well in its numbers, until just recently. As the graph shows, 3 of their 4 highest "new cases" days are this past week (and you can't go by the May 3 date because weekends are generally less reported). In other words, their problem is getting worse, not better. Yet they are opening. It's not very clear that's going to LOWER the infection rate. Obviously it isn't. So, the 31% feeling very uncomfortable probably have it right.

 

[queenofthehive]

I have worked from home with my company close to 13 years. I normally work 3 days a week from home (sometimes more due to schedule) and go into the office for 2 day a week. Virtual meetings were very common with us as team members are located in other offices. I don’t see my company opening up the office and back to “normal” anytime soon and they have stated that will most likely continue to work this way for sometime. We do not have clients that need to come into the office. All business can be conducted over the phone or computer. We have individual offices and cubicles as a set up at my office location. My type of work is very detailed and would not work well with open concept desk arrangement. We do have and need phones in my line of work to talk with clients but use Skype to talk internally with co-workers. My office is in a city but most everyone drives in from the suburbs. No one takes public transportation at my office but co-workers in larger cities most likely do.

 

[Cornell]

Here is the challenge of returning to work. Texas has done fairly well in its numbers, until just recently. As the graph shows, 3 of their 4 highest "new cases" days are this past week (and you can't go by the May 3 date because weekends are generally less reported). In other words, their problem is getting worse, not better. Yet they are opening. It's not very clear that's going to LOWER the infection rate. Obviously it isn't. So, the 31% feeling very uncomfortable probably have it right.

View attachment 20077

That’s interesting. Are they testing more now in TX? I ask bc in IL
we’ve seen a recent increase in cases but there is also a big increase in testing.

 

[Cornell]

@queenofthehive Yes, I was not happy when I heard about the open concept plan. I used to work in that type of setting & found it to be very challenging.

 

[csodjd]

That’s interesting. Are they testing more now in TX? I ask bc in IL
we’ve seen a recent increase in cases but there is also a big increase in testing.

They don't have the data on that as a trend. But the data does show that Texas has the lowest testing rate on a per capita basis of the 14 states with the most cases. So it appears one of the reasons for their "doing well" earlier was low testing. It may be that they are catching up with testing and finding more cases. But that's a guess.

 

[TravelTime]

I am not worried about the number of cases going up as long as the deaths and death rate do not increase. I read somewhere today they they think there may have actually already been 5 million cases in the USA vs the recorded 1 million.

 

[MrockStar]

It doesn't necessarily mean what you may think it means. My workplace has effectively gotten rid of our phone system a couple of years ago, but we now use Skype or MS Teams, which replaces all of the functionality of a traditional phone system with tools on your computer and headsets. We can still "call up" people (inside or outside the company) anytime; it just is not with the traditional phone device.

Kurt

Yes I also use Skype for business and teams. Works great.

 

[TravelTime]

I rarely call any of my employees and they rarely call me. We communicate primarily through email and very occasionally through text. We are now all using Zoom so we meet there when we need to talk and for staff meetings. We used a different video service before Covid. Every now and then, I might schedule a 1:1 call instead of using Zoom if I feel I do not need to see them. Most of my clients communicate with me through video. But I need my cell phone because I still need to call people when I have connection problems with video or the clients are running late and I need to check on their status to make sure they did not forget we had a video meeting scheduled.

 

[geekette]

@queenofthehive Yes, I was not happy when I heard about the open concept plan. I used to work in that type of setting & found it to be very challenging.

"very challenging" is a very mild way of putting how I feel about open concept.

 

[geekette]

Illinois:

Tests	Hospitalized	In ICU	On Ventilator	Outcomes	Total Test Results
Positive	Negative	Pending	Currently	Cumulative	Currently	Cumulative	Currently	Cumulative	Recovered	Deaths	Positive + Negative
61,499	257,814	N/A	4,701	N/A	1,232	N/A	759	N/A	N/A	2,618	319,313

Texas:

Tests	Hospitalized	In ICU	On Ventilator	Outcomes	Total Test Results
Positive	Negative	Pending	Currently	Cumulative	Currently	Cumulative	Currently	Cumulative	Recovered	Deaths	Positive + Negative
31,548	359,012	N/A	1,540	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	15,544	867	390,560

From CovidTracking.com

Testing rates are roughly comparable, death rates are not. I will go with the gut feel of wide open spaces making a difference. Chicago is a commuter train city, I don't think there are any in TX.

 

[klpca]

My boss is very old school with everything work related but in all things tech I am an early adopter. Just show me how the latest technology works and I am in. Over the past 10 years I have chipped away at everything that I can and we are probably 85% paperless, but that last 15% may never happen. I have loved working from home, my boss does not like me working from home - because he wants that last part of the process to involve paper. I am going to ask for 2 days in the office, 2 at home, and flex the 5th day as needed. My office is probably as safe as my home but I hate driving in and wasting an hour of my day. Plus my boss is very vocal politically and that, more than anything, really annoys me almost enough to quit. He knows that we are opposite on almost everything. I do not discuss politics at work - we don't agree after all - but he chatters on about it all the time. I don't think that he is trying to goad me into an argument (that will never happen - sometimes being extremely stubborn is a virtue), but he just feels like it's okay to speak his mind whenever he wants to. I don't really need the money but otherwise I have this job dialed in and I get as much time off as I want so I am still there.

As others have anecdotally reported, I have a friend who owns a business that is also seeing an increase in productivity with work at home. I suspect that eliminating constant interruptions is allowing people to focus on their work. I hope that this changes the workplace permanently.

 

[PigsDad]

"very challenging" is a very mild way of putting how I feel about open concept.

My company has dabbled a bit with some locations trying out the open concept layout, but luckily they haven't done it at my location. I've said that if they do move to that in at my office, I would either work from home full time or even consider quitting / retiring early. I just couldn't stand sitting practically shoulder to shoulder and if you look over your monitor, looking someone else in the eye. Nope -- I need some level of privacy.

Kurt

 

[SmithOp]

I am retired, but I do volunteer “work”. We have direct public contact required, the shut down was initially until April 30th. On Friday 1st we got an e-mail extending the shut down until June 1st.

We all got new Chromebook laptops in January with the Enterprise G Suite, they recently opened up Google Meet, which I use to have weekly updates with my team leaders. We talk about how we are going to operate under the new social distance norms.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro

 

[needvaca]

My boss is very old school with everything work related but in all things tech I am an early adopter. Just show me how the latest technology works and I am in. Over the past 10 years I have chipped away at everything that I can and we are probably 85% paperless, but that last 15% may never happen. I have loved working from home, my boss does not like me working from home - because he wants that last part of the process to involve paper. I am going to ask for 2 days in the office, 2 at home, and flex the 5th day as needed. My office is probably as safe as my home but I hate driving in and wasting an hour of my day. Plus my boss is very vocal politically and that, more than anything, really annoys me almost enough to quit. He knows that we are opposite on almost everything. I do not discuss politics at work - we don't agree after all - but he chatters on about it all the time. I don't think that he is trying to goad me into an argument (that will never happen - sometimes being extremely stubborn is a virtue), but he just feels like it's okay to speak his mind whenever he wants to. I don't really need the money but otherwise I have this job dialed in and I get as much time off as I want so I am still there.

As others have anecdotally reported, I have a friend who owns a business that is also seeing an increase in productivity with work at home. I suspect that eliminating constant interruptions is allowing people to focus on their work. I hope that this changes the workplace permanently.

do we work for the same boss?!? seriously, my state has a shelter in place order until May 31. My boss just sent an email last week saying he's looking forward to seeing everyone in the office on May 4, so we can get "back to work".
the dinosaur attitude has to change.

 

[PcflEZFlng]

When I was working full time, I was allowed to WFH only one day a week since I was in project management. We had a mix of cubes and open-floor desks with only 3-foot dividers between them. It didn't matter that virtually (see what I did there? ) everything we did was via Skype and email. Though I didn't especially mind being in the office, I hated the commute. After I retired, I was called back nine months later to work on a single project part-time. One of my conditions was to always WFH and only come in on rare occasions. That was a great gig.

 

[klpca]

do we work for the same boss?!? seriously, my state has a shelter in place order until May 31. My boss just sent an email last week saying he's looking forward to seeing everyone in the office on May 4, so we can get "back to work".
the dinosaur attitude has to change.

Right? I overheard him tell a friend on the phone that we're just working half days. What? I'm charging full hours. I guess he's working half days but I'm not! It's been a joy to work without having to answer questions every 5 min. I was in last week and in one 30 period of time he asked me to stop working on the project I was doing to make minor changes on another. He did this with 5 other projects. Insanity. Stop. Start. Stop. Start. Just write down the changes you want me to make and I'll do them before I finish for the day but let me finish what I am working on first. Oh well. I'm heading in now.

 

[PigsDad]

I was in last week and in one 30 period of time he asked me to stop working on the project I was doing to make minor changes on another. He did this with 5 other projects. Insanity. Stop. Start. Stop. Start. Just write down the changes you want me to make and I'll do them before I finish for the day but let me finish what I am working on first. Oh well. I'm heading in now.

Was your experience like this?

Kurt

 

[geekette]

Yikes, I have indeed had that job a time or two. Way too many pointy hairs in the world.

 

[bbodb1]

We need more Dilbert references!