04-09-2025, 05:08 PM
(04-09-2025, 04:56 PM)ac3r Wrote: I guess it depends on the industry and where you work. Sure I can see nobody wanting to pay for an office lease because it's Waterloo Region. In Toronto, office buildings are still busy (statistically less so than some years ago, I'm sure).
Heck I fired some zoomer recently who kept bringing WFH up and spamming the whole office with emails about it. Many days we'd request she come and and she'd be a no-show. "I can do so much of the work at home..." is besides the point. We are a small firm - less than 20 people - but do some rather important work in both Canada and Iceland (with a growing presence in Bolivia), so we expect to have our team members offer a physical presence. It's just better for our kind of work. I don't care if she can run AutoCAD at home, we just want people there to be able to collaborate. A Zoom meeting where half the people aren't paying attention doesn't offer the same team value and degree of collaboration as a couple hours in the office each day. We don't even expect full days or 5 days a week in the office, but we still want people to show up even 4-5 hours every other day. This individual wouldn't listen and went on some ideological rant in emails and it was just silly.
This is very spot on for many types of work. You cant have good collaboration without face to face. A good team is a team that has broken bread together. I have had the privilege to supervise and run many team teams both large and small for the past 20 years. I need to be able to get to know a person properly to ensure they are on task and have a good life work balance. I can see how someone that works a call centre, or process insurance claims can work from home without any difficulty. But I still think they should have to come to work once in a while to know them. Sure you can measure their productivity, but how do you monitor their health and mental health?