People return to offices, productivity plunges

BlueTex · Nov 1, 2022

Who would have thought disrupting workers lives by making them come back to the office would impact productivity? /sarcasm

One of the most interesting things about the pandemic, at least from an employment perspective, is that productivity didn’t suffer as a result of remote work.

In many cases, employees became even more productive while working from home, either because they were happier or because they were making an extra effort to impress far-away bosses.

Now comes word from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that productivity plunged during the first half of 2022, down by the sharpest rate since the 1940s.

Economists are trying to come up with explanations for the decline, and to understand what this means for post-pandemic changes to the workplace, including hybrid schedules that allow more time out of the office.

People return to offices, productivity plunges

One of the most interesting things about the pandemic, at least from an employment perspective, is that productivity didn’t suffer as a result of remote work. In many cases, employees became …

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Gatsby · Nov 1, 2022

My optimal setup is a lot less than 40 hours of facetime, but it's not zero. My job has a pretty good arrangement: They encourage everyone who lives nearby to come into the office on Tuesday/Wednesday every other week. If you live in a different city or you just really don't want to, you don't have to. And we all meet up for one week every quarter.

I like this. I can live anywhere I want, no one is looking over my shoulder, but I get to see my team often enough that they don't feel like anonymous strangers.

Napoleon · Nov 1, 2022

The whole notion of an “in-person work culture” demonstrates how out-of-touch CEOs are with their workforce. It doesn’t really exist outside of perhaps the headquarters. Even before the pandemic, standard practice was to do telephone and video conferences rather than in-person meetings. I’m still waiting for someone to explain the difference between using Zoom at home vs using Zoom in the office.

Schism · Nov 1, 2022

I've been working from home for 11 years, my wife for the last 6.

It's definitely better for lots of reasons. It's perfect for this time in our lives and careers.

dmpi · Nov 1, 2022

There's a labor shortage and we're now scraping the bottom of the barrel. These people are untrained and less productive. Also workers are feeling empowered and they feel they're entitled to a job regardless of how little they produce. Some workers are taking advantage of that. This will all come to a end when layoffs start coming. Then suddenly the workplace is competitive and everyone is struggling to look good & keep their job.

beefheart · Nov 1, 2022

I worked at home before the pandemic, same as now. Our company closed its physical location here...no great loss.

BlueTex · Nov 1, 2022

dmpi said:
There's a labor shortage and we're now scraping the bottom of the barrel. These people are untrained and less productive. Also workers are feeling empowered and they feel they're entitled to a job regardless of how little they produce. Some workers are taking advantage of that. This will all come to a end when layoffs start coming. Then suddenly the workplace is competitive and everyone is struggling to look good & keep their job.

LMAO… Are you suggesting a large percentage of the workforce left and were replaced with untrained workers? All within a couple of years?

Even an employers market for hiring, the best people will almost always choose the company that doesn’t treat them like children.

Ginger Ale · Nov 1, 2022

dmpi said:
There's a labor shortage and we're now scraping the bottom of the barrel. These people are untrained and less productive. Also workers are feeling empowered and they feel they're entitled to a job regardless of how little they produce. Some workers are taking advantage of that. This will all come to a end when layoffs start coming. Then suddenly the workplace is competitive and everyone is struggling to look good & keep their job.

?????
What will come to an end? Working from home? More productivity?

Ginger Ale · Nov 1, 2022

I work from home most of the time. All my kids work from home as well. It's great, and I don't see the real reason work that can be done at home, shouldn't be. It costs a lot less, and if they're more productive I don't see the argument.

Mr Person · Nov 1, 2022

dmpi said:
There's a labor shortage and we're now scraping the bottom of the barrel. These people are untrained and less productive. Also workers are feeling empowered and they feel they're entitled to a job regardless of how little they produce. Some workers are taking advantage of that. This will all come to a end when layoffs start coming. Then suddenly the workplace is competitive and everyone is struggling to look good & keep their job.

How does feeling entitled to a job affect one's ability to get and keep a job?

humbolt · Nov 1, 2022

I've long thought that many jobs can be done from home. Back in the early 80's I was running systems across Europe remotely. Obviously, many jobs can't be done from home, but if immediate, face to face interaction with others isn't necessary, or physical hands on isn't required, I see no reason not to do it from home. I don't know if there's a correlation between a drop in productivity and required presence at an office, or not. Probably worth further investigation.

multivita-man · Nov 1, 2022

Meh, I'm skeptical of productivity numbers associated with staying at home. To be completely honest, I think the productivity plunge has to do with rising nominal salaries and less output -- and I'm saying this as a liberal. I don't think it's Biden's fault or any of that nonsense, but WFH is probably, in reality, less productive than working in an office. But WFH may be a perk that could be useful in retaining top-level talent. It's complicated

dobieg · Nov 1, 2022

For every person who has the discipline and focus to work from home there's the person working on their Fantasy league, taking a nap, playing video games or like my wife's team saw one day, a person who didn't realize they turned their Webex on during a mandatory team meeting and had their pants down and were pleasuring themselves in front of a large group of mainly women. It's been 6 years and I love bringing that story up.

phoenix2020 · Nov 1, 2022

We are working 3 days in / 2 days out of office. This is Silicon Valley big tech. Overall it has worked fairly well; some are salty but most seem to enjoy face to face interactions, lunch with coworkers, and so forth. Large decision making meetings are more hit-or-miss; we’ve become much more consensus oriented which tends to make larger strategic meetings spiral. We have lost some people who were quite attached to remote work but on the balance not too many. It’s pretty normal here to crack open some beer in a meeting once we get to 5pm or 6pm to keep it a bit more social and chill, and I’ve missed that dynamic and am happy to enjoy it again. Doing so remotely wasn’t the same!

Chillfolks · Nov 1, 2022

I prefer going to work and leaving work at work. It does not come home with me. Home is my family time, work will not take that away

Port & Starboard · Nov 2, 2022

Chillfolks said:
I prefer going to work and leaving work at work. It does not come home with me. Home is my family time, work will not take that away

There are just as many studies out there stating that working from home is less productive.

I believe that it depends on what field of work is involved.

Some jobs are just better off with people interacting face to face, while other jobs like data entry may be another story altogether.

I don't think I would like being stuck at home.

ElChupacabra · Nov 2, 2022

humbolt said:
I've long thought that many jobs can be done from home. Back in the early 80's I was running systems across Europe remotely. Obviously, many jobs can't be done from home, but if immediate, face to face interaction with others isn't necessary, or physical hands on isn't required, I see no reason not to do it from home. I don't know if there's a correlation between a drop in productivity and required presence at an office, or not. Probably worth further investigation.

My focus has been to make the two days in the office the ones focused on collaborative work (team and stakeholder meetings), this way the other days can be centered around the work that doesn't require being in person to do. It's working so far, but the question I've been asking myself and getting from my team, is "where is everybody?" because many others are not in the office. From a productivity perspective I think remote work has been great; accessibility is one of the things I've been surprised by. I have team members responding to issues during times they would be commuting to and from work, and with a remote work option, days they would otherwise take off for personal errands are now just a few hours off.

I've been cognizant of the desire for social interaction, which often varies with any group of people. Team members who want to come in more than the designated days can go in, and so far it's worked out well. I lean more on the side of working from home more, though it was a challenge getting used to my home also being where I work. The key was creating new rituals that don't make home feel so confining; fortunately that didn't take long. I know some companies are already looking at downsizing their physical footprint as a result, so we'll see how this results for companies and their workers.

VanceMack · Nov 2, 2022

Lots of potential for this to become a double edged sword.

We have let go people that 'worked from home' but had a tendency to often be not working from home. Some have been champs. What I see as a tendency is that some employers will recognize the opportunity to spend less on facilities, benefits, and ultimately with more productive staff, realize they need fewer people.

bave · Nov 2, 2022

The fundamental problem was that it became clear WFH just wasn't really working. Employers saw their employee productivity and responsiveness decline rather sharply. It is all going to come down to competition. If you have a skillset that is in high demand you are going to be able to negotiate some of this, if you don't, enjoy the commute. The coming recession is likely going to burn a lot of this out.

multivita-man · Nov 2, 2022

bave said:
The fundamental problem was that it became clear WFH just wasn't really working. Employers saw their employee productivity and responsiveness decline rather sharply. It is all going to come down to competition. If you have a skillset that is in high demand you are going to be able to negotiate some of this, if you don't, enjoy the commute. The coming recession is likely going to burn a lot of this out.

I think it's still an open question as to plusses and minuses of WFH, and a lot of it depends on the job, the nature of the work, and the kinds of monitoring that organizations can utilize. There are some cases in which employers actually seemingly had more control over employee productivity because they could log when employees were logged into their systems and how productive they were for every minute they were logged on.

That, in a lot of cases, burned workers out, which led them to seek other opportunities, and I suspect that if there's a loss in productivity, this is where we're really seeing it. Not so much in the day to day work itself, but rather in the fact that because there's so much money flowing through the economy, rising inflation, and a still robust jobs market, employees can quit if they want and find another job in a relatively short period of time, and for significantly higher wages. If you're losing employee A b/c he's feeling overworked and underpaid, you lose employee A and you eventually get employee B, but employee B is not only less experienced and less productive but also demanding more money and is thus more expensive. I think it's the turnover, the actual quitting - not the quiet quitting - that is causing the real loss of productivity. Nothing a good recession can't fix.

Gaius46 · Nov 2, 2022

Gatsby said:
My optimal setup is a lot less than 40 hours of facetime, but it's not zero. My job has a pretty good arrangement: They encourage everyone who lives nearby to come into the office on Tuesday/Wednesday every other week. If you live in a different city or you just really don't want to, you don't have to. And we all meet up for one week every quarter.

I like this. I can live anywhere I want, no one is looking over my shoulder, but I get to see my team often enough that they don't feel like anonymous strangers.

Just curious does your employer cover your travel?

BirdinHand · Nov 2, 2022

dmpi said:
There's a labor shortage and we're now scraping the bottom of the barrel. These people are untrained and less productive. Also workers are feeling empowered and they feel they're entitled to a job regardless of how little they produce. Some workers are taking advantage of that. This will all come to a end when layoffs start coming. Then suddenly the workplace is competitive and everyone is struggling to look good & keep their job.

Source for this claim?

My work tends to focus on high tech - so I don’t “see” that at all.

Gaius46 · Nov 2, 2022

Before being retired I worked from home FT for 8 years. In my case my team was spread across the globe and I had no one, not even my boss, working out of the same office as I. Except for losing the ability to have others drop by for an informal chat there was no reason for me to be in the office. I was never one to hang out after work with colleagues - I had both a family and a 2 hour one way commute - do I didn't miss that either.

I got back 4 hours a day of life by not having to commute of which between late meetings and having to schedule calls and meetings that respected timezone differences (half my team was in India) I probably gave back 2-3.

The company didn't lose out on my productivity.

humbolt · Nov 2, 2022

ElChupacabra said:
My focus has been to make the two days in the office the ones focused on collaborative work (team and stakeholder meetings), this way the other days can be centered around the work that doesn't require being in person to do. It's working so far, but the question I've been asking myself and getting from my team, is "where is everybody?" because many others are not in the office. From a productivity perspective I think remote work has been great; accessibility is one of the things I've been surprised by. I have team members responding to issues during times they would be commuting to and from work, and with a remote work option, days they would otherwise take off for personal errands are now just a few hours off.

I've been cognizant of the desire for social interaction, which often varies with any group of people. Team members who want to come in more than the designated days can go in, and so far it's worked out well. I lean more on the side of working from home more, though it was a challenge getting used to my home also being where I work. The key was creating new rituals that don't make home feel so confining; fortunately that didn't take long. I know some companies are already looking at downsizing their physical footprint as a result, so we'll see how this results for companies and their workers.

My younger son works from home, for the most part. During Covid, it was a necessity. Most worked quite well in that environment, and naturally, a few did not. Being an international company, a lot of the work is done digitally anyway, so the transition was fairly easy. Similar to your situation, the company asks that employees go to the offices a couple days each week. In my son's case, that requires that he commute from the Hudson valley in NY to Manhatten, in NYC. While the team may benefit to some extent from that interaction, my son isn't thrilled. It's wasted time and money as far as he's concerned. Given his position within that industry, I tend to agree with him. But some people swim in a work from home environment, and some don't. Hopefully, over time employers will get a handle on it.

Decypher · Nov 2, 2022

I love working from home. Get much more done and actually work longer hours. Instead of commuting and arriving at the office at 9am, I’m at my desk at 8am and have a ton of work done before the morning meeting. Also get paid a small stipend to help with increased energy bills. The sales reps are all either working at home or on the road so the company is set-up well for this type of remote work. It seems that it’s a certain type of manager who don’t like this dynamic as they are finding it increasingly difficult to explain what they do all day.

People return to offices, productivity plunges

BlueTex