I realized when I was at Lotus that I was working mostly with people who
were not in my office so it really didn't matter much where I was.
Instead of fighting traffic at 830 I would drop the kids at school, go
home and work for a coupla hours, make phone calls, emails, work on
computer stuff, whatever. Then I would head into the office for the
afternoon and if I needed to meet with anyone I could do that. I got
more done at home without the distractions, and dealing with colleagues
in England or Europe was fine from home. It was a really nice sorta
hybrid scheme. Working always from home got to be old, even though I got
more done and it was relaxing and flexible, I missed the social
interactions, random drop-in discussions, and serendipitous ideas that
popped up being around other people and seeing them in the cafeteria or
hallways. It was just easier in a lot of ways to get a job done being
around others, at least for some things.
IBM went to a remote work environment back in the late 90s, got rid of a
lot of office space but still had some for meetings/conf rooms and hot
desking if you needed to be somewhere with those resources. Most of the
people were always traveling somewhere anyway so it did not make a lot
of difference. I spent a lot of time in hotels, airports, airplanes,
and off-site partners and our other offices so it was fine with me
though I did (until I moved away) have an office at our main building in
Cambridge with a killer view of Boston and the river. Plus I really
liked a lot of the people I worked with so that was nice to be around
friends.
But yeah, the social interaction is a key factor not just in work but in
lots of other things, I find that people are getting cranky and
ill-behaved not having that.
--FT
On 12/4/20 9:26 AM, Dan Penoff via Mercedes wrote:
And in a nutshell that’s what this company found. While the initial approach
was to let roughly 50% of the employees work remotely, about a third of those
ended up wanting to return t the office if I recall correctly. Many of them
were younger people whose social lives involved relationships with their (work)
peers.
It was pretty interesting, I thought.
-D
On Dec 4, 2020, at 9:17 AM, M. Mitchell Marmel via Mercedes
<mercedes@okiebenz.com> wrote:
A wise company will do an intelligent mix. Those who do better working
from home, work from home. Those who do better in an office environment,
work in an office.
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--
--FT
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