Not enough office space: safe from RTO?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:What kind of work do people do where you can concentrate with many, many people around you speaking all of the time? A call center? This can't be anything that involves any sort of mental concentration.

Frankly, very low level worker bees are responding to this, no quality work can be done in such an environment.

Yes, I'm on Teams calls a minimum of 4+ hours a day with people all over. I don't understand how that will work when we are all doing that.

At my place of work, people have headphones on and speak when they need to speak at a normal but not shouting volume. Invest in good head phones that have a noise canceling feature and it really isn't that big of a deal.

It’s actually a big deal and teams is terrible at canceling our background noise on your mic when it another person talking. It negatively impacts the people in your meeting even if they are not in the office with you.

Let alone issues of any sort of reasonable discretion, let alone security risks or PPI.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I seriously doubt all of these people quitting jobs over RTO. How are you going to pay your bills if there aren't many telework jobs available?

Not everyone needs the money or get another job.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I seriously doubt all of these people quitting jobs over RTO. How are you going to pay your bills if there aren't many telework jobs available?

Per the data TW has increased the labor participation rate of women. Those people that were not working pre-pandemic for various reasons (largely childcare) will likely exit the labor force.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We got rid of some office space during pandemic, remote employees have changed office location, although most remote employees are remote locally. Basically, some employees change teleworking status (before Covid) to remote status, with SF 50 duty station changed too.

There is no funding to get more office space (flat funding, majority of funding goes to employees' salary; while salary/other costs increase annually, there is not even enough money to fill every vacancy).

How do you know this? If you know this much about employee locations and office square footage - you SHOULD be in a position to impact this. Look for more office space, do hotel desks etc etc.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Spouse has been RTO for about a year. There is no office space. He drives an hour, scans his badge for attendance, and works from his car in the parking lot or a table in the cafeteria. He’ll go in the building for meetings, but then back to his car for phone calls. Then 1.5 hours home.

So. So. Dumb.

This is absurd. This will be my souse too. Find a random place to sit, even if he goes in really early.

If you can work from your car then you can work from anywhere. No way would I stick around to work in my car.

No one is. Fake news.

Yes; you can fit 20-30 people in a room. You cannot fit 1000 in floor space designed for 200. It's just not possible.

If its an entire floor of a building you can fit a few hundred or more. There are no rooms anymore.

This. The closest comparison for how my company has done it is a school cafeteria. They run power strips down the center of the table in a very large room and you sit elbow to elbow with colleagues. Each seat has a docking station and double monitor. It's amazing how many people you can pack in, especially if you account for some being out sick, some on PTO, some on travel, some in a meeting, staggered schedules, some at lunch or on break, etc. The biggest issue has actually been parking and sufficient bathrooms--you can't increase the number of people at the site to such a large extent without those being choke points.

I all BS on this 100%

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We got rid of some office space during pandemic, remote employees have changed office location, although most remote employees are remote locally. Basically, some employees change teleworking status (before Covid) to remote status, with SF 50 duty station changed too.

There is no funding to get more office space (flat funding, majority of funding goes to employees' salary; while salary/other costs increase annually, there is not even enough money to fill every vacancy).

How do you know this? If you know this much about employee locations and office square footage - you SHOULD be in a position to impact this. Look for more office space, do hotel desks etc etc.

I’m not the PP but that’s…not how it works in the govt. you can be an SES manager and have essentially no control over something like space allocation. This really relates to the whole assault on “ unelected bureaucrats.” The bureaucrats are just following directives from whatever administration is in charge. Congress appropriates funding. A manager can’t just decide to look for more space and get it!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We got rid of some office space during pandemic, remote employees have changed office location, although most remote employees are remote locally. Basically, some employees change teleworking status (before Covid) to remote status, with SF 50 duty station changed too.

There is no funding to get more office space (flat funding, majority of funding goes to employees' salary; while salary/other costs increase annually, there is not even enough money to fill every vacancy).

How do you know this? If you know this much about employee locations and office square footage - you SHOULD be in a position to impact this. Look for more office space, do hotel desks etc etc.

LOL no. Within an agency budget can be pretty transparent because so much of it is fixed by appropriations and highly predictable staffing and operations costs. That doesn't mean we all have the authority to use...nonexistent money...to rent more office space. And hoteling only works if people aren't there more than half the time - once you have everyone coming in 3-5 days it breaks down.

This is going to be a mess.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I seriously doubt all of these people quitting jobs over RTO. How are you going to pay your bills if there aren't many telework jobs available?

Not everyone needs the money or get another job.

So I'm a person who did this last year. I spent 6 months job searching after my time in office requirement increased to 50% (I'd told myself during covid that 40% was my line in the sand, given my long commute). I was offered a higher level remote-advertised job out of another HQ in DC. They could have hired someone from Alaska or Colorado, it did not have an expectation of regular work in the office.

But now I'm a person who can't quit if that remote status gets revoked, because yeah, I need the money and the remote work is drying up. So I'll be miserable but I won't go anywhere.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We got rid of some office space during pandemic, remote employees have changed office location, although most remote employees are remote locally. Basically, some employees change teleworking status (before Covid) to remote status, with SF 50 duty station changed too.

There is no funding to get more office space (flat funding, majority of funding goes to employees' salary; while salary/other costs increase annually, there is not even enough money to fill every vacancy).

How do you know this? If you know this much about employee locations and office square footage - you SHOULD be in a position to impact this. Look for more office space, do hotel desks etc etc.

I am not this poster but anyone who is friends with a few higher ups in their organization can get gossip like this It's not rocket science.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We got rid of some office space during pandemic, remote employees have changed office location, although most remote employees are remote locally. Basically, some employees change teleworking status (before Covid) to remote status, with SF 50 duty station changed too.

There is no funding to get more office space (flat funding, majority of funding goes to employees' salary; while salary/other costs increase annually, there is not even enough money to fill every vacancy).

How do you know this? If you know this much about employee locations and office square footage - you SHOULD be in a position to impact this. Look for more office space, do hotel desks etc etc.

I am not this poster but anyone who is friends with a few higher ups in their organization can get gossip like this It's not rocket science.

Unions also have access to a lot of this information.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We got rid of some office space during pandemic, remote employees have changed office location, although most remote employees are remote locally. Basically, some employees change teleworking status (before Covid) to remote status, with SF 50 duty station changed too.

There is no funding to get more office space (flat funding, majority of funding goes to employees' salary; while salary/other costs increase annually, there is not even enough money to fill every vacancy).

Why people are so concerned about RTO?

+1. The panic is downright bizarre. To me it gives credit to the argument that people are working less at home. Doing laundry, prepping dinner, picking up kids from school and not paying for aftercare. Otherwise they wouldn’t be in panic mode at the thought of going back.

you do understand the big difference between an uncertain driving commute and being able to walk to the school to pick up your kid, right?

right now, i can sign off from my desk at home as late as 5:45 and leisurely walk to get my kiddo before 6pm when aftercare ends. If I have to be at the office, I have to be out the door well before 5 because while *most days* it only takes 20 minutes to drive during rush hour, sometimes it can take over an hour. but if I have to leave the office by 4:45, that means I have to *get to* the office by 8am, which suddenly means either my partner (and I'm lucky to have a partner, not every parent does) is doing drop off (can't drop off until 8:15), I'm taking an hour of leave every school day, trying to hire someone *just* to walk the kiddo to and from school (ahahaha, good luck with that), or if I'm really lucky I'm doing maxiflex and putting an hour+ of remote work in every night after dinner. It's a stupid expense and burden AND I get less work done.

.

You leave your kid aftercare till 6 pm? You work from home - the benefit being your kid shouldn’t need or be in aftercare upwards of 3 hours daily anymore.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We got rid of some office space during pandemic, remote employees have changed office location, although most remote employees are remote locally. Basically, some employees change teleworking status (before Covid) to remote status, with SF 50 duty station changed too.

There is no funding to get more office space (flat funding, majority of funding goes to employees' salary; while salary/other costs increase annually, there is not even enough money to fill every vacancy).

Why people are so concerned about RTO?

+1. The panic is downright bizarre. To me it gives credit to the argument that people are working less at home. Doing laundry, prepping dinner, picking up kids from school and not paying for aftercare. Otherwise they wouldn’t be in panic mode at the thought of going back.

you do understand the big difference between an uncertain driving commute and being able to walk to the school to pick up your kid, right?

right now, i can sign off from my desk at home as late as 5:45 and leisurely walk to get my kiddo before 6pm when aftercare ends. If I have to be at the office, I have to be out the door well before 5 because while *most days* it only takes 20 minutes to drive during rush hour, sometimes it can take over an hour. but if I have to leave the office by 4:45, that means I have to *get to* the office by 8am, which suddenly means either my partner (and I'm lucky to have a partner, not every parent does) is doing drop off (can't drop off until 8:15), I'm taking an hour of leave every school day, trying to hire someone *just* to walk the kiddo to and from school (ahahaha, good luck with that), or if I'm really lucky I'm doing maxiflex and putting an hour+ of remote work in every night after dinner. It's a stupid expense and burden AND I get less work done.

.

You leave your kid aftercare till 6 pm? You work from home - the benefit being your kid shouldn’t need or be in aftercare upwards of 3 hours daily anymore.

DP here. Obviously you don't have kids and can't math. Drop off at 8:15. 15 mins to get home and time to get settled. 9am start. Work basically 9-5:30 (half hour lunch). Then shut down and get ready to walk over at 5:45.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We got rid of some office space during pandemic, remote employees have changed office location, although most remote employees are remote locally. Basically, some employees change teleworking status (before Covid) to remote status, with SF 50 duty station changed too.

There is no funding to get more office space (flat funding, majority of funding goes to employees' salary; while salary/other costs increase annually, there is not even enough money to fill every vacancy).

Why people are so concerned about RTO?

+1. The panic is downright bizarre. To me it gives credit to the argument that people are working less at home. Doing laundry, prepping dinner, picking up kids from school and not paying for aftercare. Otherwise they wouldn’t be in panic mode at the thought of going back.

you do understand the big difference between an uncertain driving commute and being able to walk to the school to pick up your kid, right?

right now, i can sign off from my desk at home as late as 5:45 and leisurely walk to get my kiddo before 6pm when aftercare ends. If I have to be at the office, I have to be out the door well before 5 because while *most days* it only takes 20 minutes to drive during rush hour, sometimes it can take over an hour. but if I have to leave the office by 4:45, that means I have to *get to* the office by 8am, which suddenly means either my partner (and I'm lucky to have a partner, not every parent does) is doing drop off (can't drop off until 8:15), I'm taking an hour of leave every school day, trying to hire someone *just* to walk the kiddo to and from school (ahahaha, good luck with that), or if I'm really lucky I'm doing maxiflex and putting an hour+ of remote work in every night after dinner. It's a stupid expense and burden AND I get less work done.

.

You leave your kid aftercare till 6 pm? You work from home - the benefit being your kid shouldn’t need or be in aftercare upwards of 3 hours daily anymore.

NP. I’ve been doing remote work a long time (since before COVID) and while my 5th grader can come home at 3:30 and make a snack/do homework while I continue to work, same kid in 1st grade was much happier in after care with activities and friends.

[Anonymous]

Our smallish agency just went through a "restacking" exercise with our offices. Effectively, if you committed to a certain number of days on site, you would get an office (picked via position and seniority). The others would have to come in fewer days, but would have to hotel for those. This whole thing took the better part of a year to pull off. And now all those people that selected hoteling are in limbo. I'm wondering if they'll just blow it all up and start over.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We got rid of some office space during pandemic, remote employees have changed office location, although most remote employees are remote locally. Basically, some employees change teleworking status (before Covid) to remote status, with SF 50 duty station changed too.

There is no funding to get more office space (flat funding, majority of funding goes to employees' salary; while salary/other costs increase annually, there is not even enough money to fill every vacancy).

How do you know this? If you know this much about employee locations and office square footage - you SHOULD be in a position to impact this. Look for more office space, do hotel desks etc etc.

It is not secret, how much funding, how is funding spent, why doesn't an employee know the information? There is townhall meeting while and while, those information is shared with employees.