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Let's have an open thread today, readers — how important is work-from-home flexibility to you, going forward? I know I've seen a lot of readers commenting on both sides of this issue — that WFH is NOT for them, while others don't miss their commute and time in-office. It sounds like some companies are going to offer work-from-home flexibility as a regular perk, while other companies can't wait to get back to the office.
So let's discuss: how important is work-from-home flexibility to you going forward? If you're looking for a new job, is the flexibility to work from home sometimes a must-have for you? Do you like some balance between remote work and being required to be in the office sometimes? For those of you who think a mix of the two is best, do you prefer if the majority of your colleagues are back in the office on the same days (i.e., everyone shows up on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday, while everyone works from home Monday/Friday) — or do you feel like some other equation is better?
For my own $.02 – I've obviously been working from home for a LONG time (wow, ten years at this point). I have always felt that there is room for improvement in my personal productivity, focus and attention, whether in office or at home — but I can also say that for me, in general, I vastly prefer working from home.
I wrote before about how 2020/2021 have not been truly representative of the remote work experience — a high proportion of households were home, people couldn't work somewhere other than home due to social distancing and shutdowns, and entire offices needed to adapt to what was maybe new technology and methods if they didn't have many staffers working remotely prior to the pandemic. It's been a rocky road for sure!
Over to you, readers — what are your thoughts on WFH versus going to the office? How important is work-from-home flexibility to you going forward?
Stock photo via Stencil (woman wearing pink pants working with laptop on her lap while drinking a fancy coffee).
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And some of our latest threadjacks here at Corporette (reader questions and commentary) — see more here!
Some of our latest threadjacks include:
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- What small steps can I take today to get myself a little more “together” and not feel so frazzled all of the time?
- The oldest daughter is America's social safety net — change my mind…
- What have you lost your taste for as you've aged?
- Tell me about your favorite adventure travels…
Anon
Literally ready to quit my job if I could WFH 2 days per week.
AZCPA
I’d been mostly WFH (3-4 days a week) with monthly work travel pre-pandemic. I’d asked about going full remote in November 2019, but my business unit’s VP had made a huge stink about it, and was trying to force me and many other hybrids to go back into an office full time. It made no sense, since my local office isn’t where my team resides, so it was literally for making me swipe my badge and ensure butts in seats. They were also moving to eliminate remote positions that weren’t near offices, saying that in-person was critical.
Of course the pandemic blew that whole line of reasoning, since we functioned. VERY successfully for 2020. They started making the same noises about sending us back to the office ASAP; between that and other issues looked for another job. Now fully and permanently remote, though with travel to headquarters in another state a few times a year once it’s open.
I love WFH, but we don’t have kids to juggle, my spouse works in person, and I have an excellent dedicated home office. If any/all of those things were different, I might prefer at least a hybrid option.
BeenThatGuy
My big CRE Company is 100% in person with zero flexibility. It’s impossible to recruit good talent right now because of this. The world has changed but the old white man CEO’s have not.
Elle
100%. All the old (not all white man CEOs but def older) mentality has not caught up with 2021 post (hah) Covid working world.
JTM
I’ve learned that I really love WFH – I’m both more productive and happier. So I’ve decided that I’m WFH forever moving forward. My current employer has really embraced it and allowed many of us to go permanently remote.
test run
Same – I’m so much happier working from home. My employer has largely embraced it moving forward, but I think my boss sort of… assumes I’ll start coming back into the office a few days a week in the fall (despite there being absolutely no reason for me to do so). I’m basically just avoiding the conversation with her for as well long as possible.
Anonymous
I wouldn’t take a job that didn’t let me WFH at my discretion. But I’m in a field where that’s common, and we’re trusted to be the professionals that we are and decide for ourselves when it’s important to come into the office and when it’s not.
Anonymous
+1. I love WFH, but the thing for me is that I need to be treated like an adult. My boss (pre-pandemic) insisted on butt-in-seat during historic flooding/storms, which resulted in an extremely delayed and horrendous commute for me, and would also fight me when I needed to leave early for doctor’s appointments and make up time at home later. I’ll never work for someone like that again. I’m an adult, I’m highly productive, and I’ll do what I need to do for my health and safety.
Katrina
+1 to “Covid WFH isn’t real WFH”. I used to WFH 2 days a week before Covid and I loved having the flexibility to avoid my 1.5 hr one way commute. WFH during Covid, I was definitely less productive because of the constant drone of anxiety in my head. The endless following the news and detangling mask and SIP mandates left me with just a % of my energy to focus on work. Not to mention personal stress of worrying about the safety of everyone you love.
I’m glad more workers are re-thinking the commute and understanding the amount of their day they’re sacrificing for free to work doing things like commuting, packing a lunch, prepping childcare/petcare for those 8-10 hrs a day, etc. I, for one, find that it helps my productivity to take a break to put in a load of laundry then return fresh to the work.
Allie
I’m super pro WFH as a working parent over the past year — it’s so much easier to juggle work and life from home (now that daycare is back!). Government jobs used to be good “lifestyle” jobs but as companies are embracing WFH and government is doubling down on in person, I’m worried that that is changing to the detriment of public service.
anon
+1 this is totally true about gov’t jobs and it’s the main reason I left my state gov’t job (very much a butt in seat job) earlier this year for a FT remote option in the private sector. It’s worked out amazingly well and I don’t think I will ever go back to a FT office position (I would be open to hybrid).
just a potato
I want flexibility more than set WFH. Flex hours, work from Starbucks, stay at home, make up time at 2am on Saturday so I can take off 3 hours early on Thursday.
pugsnbourbon
+1. I work from a bunch of different sites (15-60 minutes from home) so the flexibility matters more to me than having a set remote agreement.
Teams/Zoom have really changed how we work – it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out over the next year or so.
anon
I’m in finance, management level and an in-demand skill set now that I’m more experienced. I was able to work at home in one job but mainly had jobs where (mainly old, white men with SAHW) bosses in upper management forbade any and all WFH. I did often do work outside of business hours at home on a laptop or smart phone, so I think the WFH was misplaced as we all gave extra work outside of office hours that benefitted the employer. Some of my jobs had enough flexibility to meet a furnace repair person or furniture delivery during the work day so the butt-in-the-seat was getting a bit better, but others were 8-5 with no flex at all.
But my whole team and boss have all received permission to work from home forever. The team is spread out all over the west coast anyway and there is no benefit to being in the office all by yourself. Office space coming off lease is not being renewed. I expect that I will be able to work from home for the rest of my career now that most of the old white men with SAHW are retiring.
Anon
I’m permanently remote and I don’t like it. I have kids but they’re in daycare so that’s not the issue, I just feel like I have no separation between home and work and it’s affecting my mental health and work productivity. Daycare is also at my office so I’m currently commuting twice as much as I was before, which is annoying (and good daycare is extremely limited in my area so finding a new place is not an option). I can see potential long term benefits, especially once my kids are in elementary school and we don’t have year-round childcare. I was just thinking today that in a couple years I might take my oldest to a cool camp in a nearby big city and work remotely out of a hotel for a week or two. I wouldn’t want to burn vacation time on something like that so it’s not something I would have thought of doing before I was full time WFH. But right now with kids enrolled in full time daycare and us trying to be cautious about Covid, we’re not doing stuff like that and I don’t see much upside to working from home.
Anon
Also I feel really out of the loop on everything at work. I work exclusively with a large team in a different unit but because I’m not officially part of the team I’m excluded from a lot of organized team social events and always feel like an awkward interloper. That was true pre-Covid to some degree, but WFH has made it 1,000 times worse because there are no casual social interactions with people to make up for the lack of formal networking.
anon.
I just started an in-person job after almost 8 years of exclusive WFH. I was ready to get back around people, get out of leggings and get out of the house. I was feeling that a little in 2019 but COVID escalated the timeline. I moved to management in 2019 and realized that while my individual contributor job was great for WFH, being on a management team was difficult for me. I was the only one not in the home office, and felt constantly out of the loop on decisions being made. It wasn’t on purpose, but many times conversations happen organically among people in a room and stuff happens. If you’re not in the room, you’ve missed out.
Anonymous
My office has implemented a 2 days/month mandatory in office requirement, otherwise employees can decide what they want to do for the other 18+ work days/month. I think that’s fair, personally I’m still going to be returning to office once it’s safe to do so.
Anonymous
I was always in the office every day. If my boss tried to pull that now I’d quit.
Anonymous
Same here.
Anon
I am a million times more productive and happier when WFH. Given that my husband is an academic at a rural university, the ability to WFH means that I no longer have a hellish commute. Going forward, I will take a substantial pay cut or move heaven and earth to WFH.
One of the important factors in my job is that I’ve often worked for companies with offices all over the country. I don’t “see people in the office” anyway – most of the people I interface with work elsewhere. From my perspective, I don’t care if they are working from a beach in Florida or the office in Nashville; we do not interact in person anyway.
AFT
Pre pandemic I typically worked in the office 4 day, at home 1, with a lot of flexibility. Completely at home until June, and pressured to come in 1x a week this summer. I’m Sept, I (along with most of my corporate colleagues) will be required to be in office 3 full days. The old white dudes are indicating they expect everyone to work 8+ hrs in office those days, which just seems bonkers. For folks like me who primarily interface with managers who are in the field nowhere near the corp office, it feels very out of touch anachronistic, and is one of several reasons I’m looking to leave. I’ve screened out/declined to proceed with opportunities that seem inflexible.
My kids are older elementary, and expected to be out of the house 8-3, but with allows me to deal with their activities and how my work actually flows (slow days where I can take care of other issues and busy days where I have calls and emails late or early).
Anonymous
I like the flexibility. I want to be at the office regularly, but there are some tasks that I can do much more effectively at home. It shouldn’t be an issue, as I am a partner, but some of my partners are generally less happy about it than others and most have been in the office daily throughout the pandemic. It’s really no different from.beforw. A tough brief or a document review is going to turn.out better if I can focus in quiet. No kids or spouse, so home is productive space for me when I have a task.
Anon
WFH is make or break for me. I’m stuck in a rural area due to sickly family. Remote work is my ticket to getting out of dead-end jobs with pitiful salaries.
Anon
Preach.
Anonymous
Very important. I worked from home one day a week pre-pandemic and plan to do so at least 2, maybe 3, even once we get back to normal. My firm is officially embracinga hybrid model as a policy when we come back to the office full time, though you’ll have to apply for it if you want to WFH 3 or more days a week. Apparently some of the old school partners have been grumbling about wanting their team in 5 days a week. I straight up told someone we would lose out on good associates if they insisted, but I’m the juniorest of junior partners, so I have no sway. It will be interesting to see how it varies by group in reality once we’re fully “back.”
anon
I feel this. I worry that some of the old school partners are going to drive out really great associates if they insist on butts in seats. Plenty of peer firms are offering flexibility.
Anonymous
I hate WFH because there seems to be an expectation of 24/7 availability that didn’t exist before. I work in a govt job that used to really respect vacation time, weekends, evenings etc. but I’ve had to explain to multiple people this week that no I cannot prepare a draft of a document or take video calls from my vacation next week. I actually had to bust out the “Sorry, I’m going to be in a cabin in the woods with no internet” excuse that I haven’t had to use since I was in Big Law. Maybe it’s just my workplace, but it’s an awful change. I would much rather be in an office 9-5 but have my weekends and vacations respected.
Anonymous
I’ve found that there are some people who will expect more availability, but I’ve gotten almost no pushback when I’ve actually set boundaries. I don’t make big announcements, but I just don’t respond to emails after my day is done and I don’t respond on vacation.
anonshmanon
Caveat that my job doesn’t require super fast turnarounds most of the time, and I’ve found it much easier to not answer or send emails after 5pm (and the barrier to actually call me to ask me to do the thing is relatively high), compared to being in the office and being asked face-to-face when I am ready to head home.
What has been hard is that the ability to work is always there, and I have less incentive to be disciplined and get shit done within work hours, so I’m letting it bleed into evenings.
Anonymous
Now fully WFH and unlikely to consider another position if it is not. I loathed WFH pre-COVID and avoided at all costs. My quality of work and life has improved dramatically since being home, I can’t imagine going back.
Pompom
My org is being hamstrung by literally 1 old white man who has already announced his retirement, but hates the idea of WFH at all, so has an iron fist on makeing some butt in seat requirements that didn’t even exist pre COVID. Like, all front desks must always always be staffed, never unmanned, always, despite that not having been the case preCOVID (and trust me, not a normal thing in my industry), AND having several of our front desk-seated roles vacant while under a hiring freeze.
I need that dude to retire and go away. Asap.
Anon
Extremely important. I lost my job at the beginning of the pandemic, interviewed with two places (and by long time friends!) who were reluctant to let anyone work from home during a global pandemic unless forced to do so, so I said F it and started my own consultancy.
Jane
I work in software implementation. Our last CEO was very invested in the idea of a Fun Tech Office and people being in 8 hours per day, but at the same time the office is in the suburbs, many people live in the city and don’t have cars, and the commute was truly hellish. The work of software implementation also sometimes requires long hours of availability for nervous new customers who won’t hesitate to call their account manager, so trying to do that from the office 5 days a week is impractical and just results in more working hours. I found myself working the 8 hours in the office, from my phone on both commutes, and having to check in before bed.
From home, I might work a slightly longer day, but it’s somewhere where I can also take breaks to run errands or go to appointments. Most pertinently, the day is longer, but it does end.