Return to office

matthew

matthew

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I'm returning to the office on May 2. My group will be going in one day per week and after a few weeks, it will be two days. I think the plan is to have the entire team on one of the days and then we go in whatever other day we want.

I'll miss waking up at 9 for my 8:30 start.

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Yup that pretty much sums us up.

Return to office...have TEAMS meeting with colleagues as we can't be in the same big meeting room together. Ridiculous.

My boss called me once, and I reminded him that I'm sitting behind him and can see myself in his camera.

We're at a 'hybrid' 3:2 right now, with official return in June. But as you can imagine...big boss shows up, middle boss shows up...it's only natural that I need to show up. I don't mind it as I'm at the office at 6:30/7am to beat traffic and if I have meetings in the afternoon I leave at lunch to make the 1pm meeting from home. They don't realize that people work additional hours (like a fool that I am) to make up for the commute because it's so simple, and the meetings/emails never stop. But now people are coming in late, and leaving early to beat traffic. Productivity is going down.

It just sucks having to wear pants again.
 
Working extra is for suckers. I don't get paid for that.

It's just a trickle down effect. Middle managers need to justify their existence and the need to watch over everyone like children. Two years of WFH apparently no longer is functional or efficient even though productivity is up and my stress levels are way down.

At least I only have to commute one (or two) days from Orangeville to Brampton along the 410


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matthew said:
My group will be going in one day per week and after a few weeks
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That's how the company I work for was working pre-pandemic. And it was optional. So switching to WFH for us was easy.

And my team is spread from Vancouver to Quebec City, so there's no really a point in going to office anyway.
 
Agreed. It’s ridiculous. And none of the manager wants to be there, but we ‘need to set and example’.

I’m expecting WFH to get extended further as the 6th wave grows.

Unfortunately as we are in construction, there are benefits to working together. But not when only 1/3 of the team is in. Either have anchor days, or don’t.
 
My outfit seems to have a "boil the frog" plan to get us 100% back in the office by mid/late summer (they haven't revealed yet the part where they're going to ask all roles to return to the office fulltime, but I can smell it). I've warned my boss that I'm not going to do that
 
Another thing... If an employee is expected to be in office only once a week and different teams come to office on different days - you need only 20% of the real estate compared to when you want people to spend 100% of their time in office. So I don't really know why anyone really wants people back to office if they can work from home.
 
TwistedKestrel said:
I've warned my boss that I'm not going to do that
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I think that's the bigger fear. Many employees feel the same way. Businesses realize the window is closing. The longer this goes on, the more attrition if they force a return. Also, if you hire people during wfh and then want to convert them to office work, unless you were really careful with your contract, the business is f'd and the employee has them over a barrel.
 
Maniac said:
Another thing... If an employee is expected to be in office only once a week and different teams come to office on different days - you need only 20% of the real estate compared to when you want people to spend 100% of their time in office. So I don't really know why anyone really wants people back to office if they can work from home.
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In smaller companies, owners often have a different company spun up to own the office. They want to justify the huge transfer of rent to minimize profit sharing (no profit to share if it all went to rent). On a larger scale, I am sure the giant office companies are offering a break (or even personal benefits) to tenants willing to maintain square footage. In order to justify maintaining the space, corporations need employees in the seats.
 
It's not the same for every role, but for mine it would be insane to demand a return to how things ran before. It has had next to no impact on day to day ops (and some of that impact is measurably positive), and they didn't have to do ANYTHING to facilitate WFH for us back in 2020. All we needed was permission
 
Ryerson is running a survey currently and I think local and provincial governments will lean on it somewhat to adopt new WFH vs office policies. Also a lot of questions regarding compressed word days - 4 or 3 workdays weeks.
We all were asked to fill it up.

P.S. actually survey is designed specifically for small municipalities.. so nm, we will see what will come out of it...
 
TwistedKestrel said:
It's not the same for every role, but for mine it would be insane to demand a return to how things ran before. It has had next to no impact on day to day ops (and some of that impact is measurably positive), and they didn't have to do ANYTHING to facilitate WFH for us back in 2020. All we needed was permission
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For sure I can see some jobs needing face to face interaction for whatever reason but in my situation, I'm a GIS "professional", so that means I sit in front of a computer all day drawing lines and dots and filling in spreadsheets. It's not something that requires any sort of collaboration or team effort.

My supervisor laughed during the meeting this morning when he said the people above him want to harbor a team atmosphere, when of course there isn't one.
 
Our 'new' office is 24,000sqft...150 spaces, 20 offices, 5 meeting rooms.

Last week we had the HIGHEST number of employees in the office in a single day...12.
 
mimico_polak said:
Our 'new' office is 24,000sqft...150 spaces, 20 offices, 5 meeting rooms.

Last week we had the HIGHEST number of employees in the office in a single day...12.
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And who owns the office? Do they happen to be on political donor lists?
 
Many companies started bringing workers back at the beginning of March. Since then lumber prices have dropped 30+% and they are still falling.

Coincidence?

I can't wait till everyone is back in the office, I have a big framing project and 2 large decks to build.
 
Mad Mike said:
Many companies started bringing workers back at the beginning of March. Since then lumber prices have dropped 30+% and they are still falling.

Coincidence?

I can't wait till everyone is back in the office, I have a big framing project and 2 large decks to build.
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More commuting equals less time to work on construction projects equals lower lumber price?
 
Mad Mike said:
Many companies started bringing workers back at the beginning of March. Since then lumber prices have dropped 30+% and they are still falling.

Coincidence?

I can't wait till everyone is back in the office, I have a big framing project and 2 large decks to build.
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And I'm planning on building a new fence!
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