Remote or hybrid workers, would you rather work a 4 day week on site, or WFH completely for 5 days a week, for the same pay?
I know this will vary a lot, so hypothetically let’s say you currently WFH/work remotely at least 3 days a week. Your commute to work takes an hour max (door to door) each way. If you were given the choice of a 4 day week working onsite, or a 5 day week WFH (or as many days as you’d like) for the same pay, which would you choose?
Both. Studies have shown that WFH actually INCREASES productivity, and other studies have shown that a 4 day work week doesn't decrease productivity at all either. It sounds unlikely but it's true. So both are a win-win for the worker and company alike.
Because that’s my question? I’m interested in workers’ preferences, not which option is more productive. Like you say, both are better than 5 days a week on-site. But despite both equating to around the same amount of time in total for the same pay, in practice the two options are pretty different.
People liked to hate on reddit for it devolving into that. But the opposite extreme was Tildes which was all text based. Fediverse is thriving though which is the closest to reddit. Yes, comments will be like reddit. Pick and choose when people are open for discussion.
Puns and Memes will always be top content for a reason. Most people are looking for a quick 15 minute distraction, not a book club.
I moderate a couple of communities that fit that criteria - you can have a discussion but ultimately they’re just mildly amusing screenshot/photo communities. Initially the comment section was much much more friendly here than Reddit but I’ve definitely noticed a decline recently, say the last 2 weeks. Some of the messages I get when I warn people not to insult others are becoming unhinged. I know it’s bound to happen, lemmy is still the internet. But I had hoped for a place where people didn’t call each other fucking dickheads for having a different opinion.
My commute was, at best, 30 minutes each way. Weather or traffic can easily drive up this time. So at least an hour a day. Being in the office 4 days/week = 4+ hours commuting and all the headaches of driving, parking expense, car expenses, etc. I was much less productive in the office so I think it actually hurts my work to be in the office.
I'd prefer to drop the commute and be more productive. My employer will get MORE than 8 hours of work with that arrangement.
Yeah I think it’s very easy to underestimate your commute if you only consider the journey time. Like you said, you also have to consider parking or getting to the bus/train, getting from the car/train/bus station to your actual office, any traffic or delays… and there’s the getting yourself ready time. It’s not uncommon for my partner to roll out of bed at 8.50 to start at 9am!
Front door of your place to desk in the office seems like a good measurement, right?
For a while my parking ramp was 3 blocks from my office. I appreciated the exercise but it took at least 10 minutes. So 30 minute drive plus 10 minute walk.
Significant expenses are also mostly ignored. Buying, powering and maintaining a vehicle is not cheap nor is parking in many places. Work clothes are not free.
I think it would be interesting to do a really detailed analysis of the differences between WFH and in office. There's probably more we're not covering.
I work hybrid and had my car totalled by a dear not long before I landed my current role, and my wife’s a stay at home mom. We stopped looking for a car because my wife can either drop me off if she needs the car on one of my in-office days or she can walk with the kids. We save a good chunk of change by sharing one car!
I work from home so that I don’t have to go to the office.
I don’t have to go to the office.
Let me work fewer days. 4x10 days would be nice. From home. So I don’t have to go to the office.
I don’t want to go to the office just to be on Zoom all day anyway. It’s a waste of time, a waste of carbon, and a waste of company money on the office space.
Yes it’s true. Why go to the office just to be on Zoom all day? I can do that at home and save myself some money. More importantly: I can do that from home and save myself the time it would take to drive to or from the office. Not to mention that I could be on Zoom all day from home and save myself the stress of driving around maniacs. Last, but not least, I could do it all from home and the company could save money by not paying for an office.
Not to feed into the bosses’ paranoia, but I’d say WFH 5-days (on paper) and bunk off, which is a lot easier to do WFH anyway.
I don’t actually think the employer misses out here, even if most companies already take far more than they’re owed from their employees to begin with.
The reality for a lot of jobs, especially those that require deep work, creativity etc, is that watching how long people are sat at their desks is not a good way to improve results anyway. Better a motivated happy workforce, and managers that are thinking in terms of how well a team is delivering useful things for the org rather than obsessing about timesheets.
If the company is happy to pay me X salary for the results I provide them, everybody wins. It’s foolish for organisations to think that getting people to work longer hours, whether it’s forcing people to work 4, 5, or 6 days, is going to get them more bang for buck.
As for remote working, I’ve worked exclusively from home for over a decade in fully remote teams. Everyone wins with WFH. There can be problems to mitigate and there’s always some subjective preference to consider, but on the whole the average employee and employer wins big from the arrangement.
All the pushback I’ve seen on WFH since the pandemic seems in large part management using it as an excuse for their own incompetence.
“How can I tell my employees are working if I can’t see them at their desks?” If you cant tell if they’re working now, then you didn’t know they were working before either!
On-boarding new people, building up young people, is just different from before. Make sure they have decent equilment for video and normalise teams sitting in video rooms when the work. Encourage buddy working at all levels. Recognise and respect the upfront cost of training. Encourage and fund opportunities for socialising both remotely and in person.
Managers don’t know what’s happening without the “water cooler effect”. They’re used to be able to shout at teams across an office, or easedrop. Again, this demonstrates a weakness in their ability to communicate and interact with the people they claim to “lead”. Good managers will be in the same video rooms and chatting shit with the people they lead while they work as a united teams. Shitty managers will sit on their hands while not even noticing their team does everything they can to avoid a unhelpful or unsupportive “leader”.
The worse one is productivity. I have no doubt things are going worse for corpos since the pandemic. This likely correlates with increase WFH. The ideas that this is proof that WFH is outrageously. During the pandemic we had teams working 17 hour days. Corpos took the opportunity to cut every corner and show contempt to the workforces, and they didn’t fix things when the COVID numbers went down. The big shots made some truly terrible strategic calls. All these things and more are seeming to lead to a kind of mass enshittification across a ton of organisations. But bosses don’t want to own their mistakes, let alone fix them , so WFH ends up the scapegoat.
(Sorry! This thread seems to have brought out the rant in me!)
I just did. I’m lucky that I can afford it. Although, because of tax, it affects my take home way less than 20%.
It’s wild really. I’m lucky, and most of my career I’ve been in the maximum tax bracket in my country. Also cause I’m lucky, I kept getting raises and bonuses, because I work damn hard and I’m pretty good at what I do.
The thing is though, I’m no better off in terms of my life quality for all that money. I live in a small semi-detached in a nowhere town. I’m incredibly grateful to have been able to buy rather than rent, but I’d still like to strive for a little more space, a little more privacy or a little more excitement. But the way property is, even though I’m earning well, it seems impossible. I’ve tried unsuccessfully 3 times in the last 5 years to move , and come to the conclusion without earning a considerable amount more than I am it’s impossible.
My basic needs were met long ago. I find ways to waste money here and there, but nothing to really work towards. I guess I could have kids, but this place is too small for a dog, let alone a couple of sprogs, and I wouldn’t wish this world on another generation. The only good reason to be earning more for me is to maybe protect the quality of life I have should I lose my job or the situation gets worse in general (inflation, climate change etc), and again it doesn’t seem like it’s much protection. I believe in the important of tax, I’d pay even more if I thought it’d be used for good, but with this circus in charge, it’d hard to imagine much of my considerable tax bill going to help people rather than ending up in the pocket of some corpo with a government contract.
Add to that, jobs seem to get worse and worse. I swear everyone I know, across multiple sectors, is burning out. Corpos and governments alike are treating people like garbage, working them to death then discarding them as reward. Profits go up. Nothing of value gets made. Everyone but the bosses gets fucked.
As for my job, I worked hard and gave it a lot. I’ve seen the company mistreat and discarded good people for years, while outsourcing to halfwits and grifters (and I can’t even be that angry at the grifters given what they’re paid regionally). It’s impossible to make a positive change, although I still try. But I hate it. The job grinds me down and takes everything.
I plan to work as little as possible, even if it means cutting back. I live in hope that it’ll mean I recover a little, maybe find some joy again. Not much hope, but worth 20%.
(Sorry for that becoming antiwork tirade. It’s been a shitty few years.)
I don’t mind the one hour commute, I did it for 3 years going to college and my first job and I think 3 day weekends are the perfect amount of time between work weeks. Then again, I love the freedom of WFH. I can’t choose.
Commute time for 4 days is typically more than 1 whole work day.
My commute would need to be 45 minutes or less, and even then half the year said commute involves wading through snow, so, no thanks.
Full time WFH is a big yes. Too many offices aren’t easy to commute to, to save money on rent. My last job did t even have a sidewalk to get there, the last 2 blocks to it were your choice of walking on the road itself, or wading through knee deep snow.
I went back to 5 days a week in office in summer 2021. I hated it when I was told but now I’m glad it happened. I walk 2 miles each way to work. That walk is one of the nicest parts of my day. I get crazy paranoia when I can’t speak to people face-to-face, and I can maintain a routine. I appreciate I am lucky in my situation but I would take the 4 days and enjoy a long weekend where I can properly unwind
My comment goes against the trend, but I’d choose to go into work since I find it much easier to focus, to the point where I could likely get the same amount of work done in 4 days at the office vs 5 days at home.
Currently my employer makes us come into the office three days per week, unless we choose to switch to full-time remote.
Add comment