The future of remote and full-time WFH

[Anonymous]

What about admins, and various jobs in HR, etc.? Lots of these people don’t have quantifiable work product and could easily piss away whole chunks of days with no one noticing. Maybe we should just fire them all - fine with me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What about admins, and various jobs in HR, etc.? Lots of these people don’t have quantifiable work product and could easily piss away whole chunks of days with no one noticing. Maybe we should just fire them all - fine with me.

Hr seems pretty quantifiable and noticeable especially on things like recruiting (since you have interview schedules) and benefits and payroll (did people get paid and signed up for benefits?)…

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What about admins, and various jobs in HR, etc.? Lots of these people don’t have quantifiable work product and could easily piss away whole chunks of days with no one noticing. Maybe we should just fire them all - fine with me.

It's clear you have no idea what HR does or how it's measured. But if they are pissing away the day, that's for their manager to address.

You appear to be neither the employee, manager, nor customer in this hypothetical, so why are you so invested in where people work? It's honestly creepy, like you need a captive audience.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What about admins, and various jobs in HR, etc.? Lots of these people don’t have quantifiable work product and could easily piss away whole chunks of days with no one noticing. Maybe we should just fire them all - fine with me.

Hr seems pretty quantifiable and noticeable especially on things like recruiting (since you have interview schedules) and benefits and payroll (did people get paid and signed up for benefits?)…

Payroll is outsourced most places and open enrollment happens once a year. Any time I have an HR question they take days to respond and are often wrong. What a WFH admin does I will never know. Any ideas?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Come on. We all know the ways people abuse WFH - either ourselves, our spouses, our friends or neighbors or some combo of the above.

Anyone who says this isn’t true is totally lying.

Maybe in a job where there is no measure of your productivity, you cannot fathom that there are some of us who simply need to get a certain amount of work done, and if we are not getting it done, we are held accountable.

I cannot “abuse” WFH because I need to finish my work. If my work is not finished, it does not matter where I am.

Do you do housework or carpools or meal prep during the work day?

How does it matter as long as they are getting the work done? They are not galley slaves.

It matters if they are paid to work 40 hours a week and they aren’t. Many of you are arguing that a work week should be any length you desire as long as you “get your work done.” First, that is not as easily measured in some jobs. Second, that’s not how salaries are currently structured. You are paid in hours, not work product. If you ARE paid by your work product amount, I have no objection but many are not.

You are being ridiculous. Are you spending every single minute at work working? You don’t go out to lunch, waste time yapping with your coworkers, browsing anything non-work related, LOL? Stop sounding like a clown.

[Anonymous]

We've got a guy on my team who we all know has a second full time job, but he does enough of the bare minimum we can't fire him. The ratio of those gaming the system because they don't havr to be somewhere in person seems to be about 4 to 1. Can't wait for the recession and we can cut the loose chains.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We've got a guy on my team who we all know has a second full time job, but he does enough of the bare minimum we can't fire him. The ratio of those gaming the system because they don't havr to be somewhere in person seems to be about 4 to 1. Can't wait for the recession and we can cut the loose chains.

Seriously. All these people being defensive on this thread are clearly the ones doing minimal work and looking to justify it. Still no one has answered what a WFH admin does yet our company pays dozens of them $75-100k/year. To what?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We've got a guy on my team who we all know has a second full time job, but he does enough of the bare minimum we can't fire him. The ratio of those gaming the system because they don't havr to be somewhere in person seems to be about 4 to 1. Can't wait for the recession and we can cut the loose chains.

Seriously. All these people being defensive on this thread are clearly the ones doing minimal work and looking to justify it. Still no one has answered what a WFH admin does yet our company pays dozens of them $75-100k/year. To what?

Most admins in Fed government should be cut. I never understood what they did. Ordered a few pens. Talked on the phone all day. Scheduled some meetings and got half the details wrong. Gossiped. Seriously, it is a welfare program.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We've got a guy on my team who we all know has a second full time job, but he does enough of the bare minimum we can't fire him. The ratio of those gaming the system because they don't havr to be somewhere in person seems to be about 4 to 1. Can't wait for the recession and we can cut the loose chains.

Seriously. All these people being defensive on this thread are clearly the ones doing minimal work and looking to justify it. Still no one has answered what a WFH admin does yet our company pays dozens of them $75-100k/year. To what?

Why don’t you ask your company? Or tell us where you work and we’ll ask for you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We've got a guy on my team who we all know has a second full time job, but he does enough of the bare minimum we can't fire him. The ratio of those gaming the system because they don't havr to be somewhere in person seems to be about 4 to 1. Can't wait for the recession and we can cut the loose chains.

Seriously. All these people being defensive on this thread are clearly the ones doing minimal work and looking to justify it. Still no one has answered what a WFH admin does yet our company pays dozens of them $75-100k/year. To what?

Sorry it's no longer possible for you to sit and gossip in your supervisors office while others do the work! Remote work makes it so you have to actually produce good work to get a promotion. I heard Tesla is going back in person though, maybe you should look there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What about admins, and various jobs in HR, etc.? Lots of these people don’t have quantifiable work product and could easily piss away whole chunks of days with no one noticing. Maybe we should just fire them all - fine with me.

It's clear you have no idea what HR does or how it's measured. But if they are pissing away the day, that's for their manager to address.

You appear to be neither the employee, manager, nor customer in this hypothetical, so why are you so invested in where people work? It's honestly creepy, like you need a captive audience.

No one has any idea what HR does.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We've got a guy on my team who we all know has a second full time job, but he does enough of the bare minimum we can't fire him. The ratio of those gaming the system because they don't havr to be somewhere in person seems to be about 4 to 1. Can't wait for the recession and we can cut the loose chains.

Seriously. All these people being defensive on this thread are clearly the ones doing minimal work and looking to justify it. Still no one has answered what a WFH admin does yet our company pays dozens of them $75-100k/year. To what?

Most admins in Fed government should be cut. I never understood what they did. Ordered a few pens. Talked on the phone all day. Scheduled some meetings and got half the details wrong. Gossiped. Seriously, it is a welfare program.

We have no admins at the agency I’m in now and I miss them. A bad one holds everything up and is terrible, but a good admin keeps things moving, does some editing, ensures more effective office communication, deals with time cards, and improves process across their unit. They also sometimes order supplies. But usually that wasn’t their job.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What about admins, and various jobs in HR, etc.? Lots of these people don’t have quantifiable work product and could easily piss away whole chunks of days with no one noticing. Maybe we should just fire them all - fine with me.

Hr seems pretty quantifiable and noticeable especially on things like recruiting (since you have interview schedules) and benefits and payroll (did people get paid and signed up for benefits?)…

Payroll is outsourced most places and open enrollment happens once a year. Any time I have an HR question they take days to respond and are often wrong. What a WFH admin does I will never know. Any ideas?

+1

They are so unhelpful at my government organization it’s shocking. They also take several days to respond with their not helpful information.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We've got a guy on my team who we all know has a second full time job, but he does enough of the bare minimum we can't fire him. The ratio of those gaming the system because they don't havr to be somewhere in person seems to be about 4 to 1. Can't wait for the recession and we can cut the loose chains.

Seriously. All these people being defensive on this thread are clearly the ones doing minimal work and looking to justify it. Still no one has answered what a WFH admin does yet our company pays dozens of them $75-100k/year. To what?

Most admins in Fed government should be cut. I never understood what they did. Ordered a few pens. Talked on the phone all day. Scheduled some meetings and got half the details wrong. Gossiped. Seriously, it is a welfare program.

I'm a Fed. My unit receives thousands of submissions every year. Everything that comes in for review or action is logged by the admin, sent to the correct person to take action, logged by the admin on its way out, and archived by the admin as required by federal law. The admin checks the log for late items so nothing falls through the cracks. They also draft correspondence, set up interviews and big meetings, handle travel reimbursement, and yes, order supplies. Our office is paperless so this can all be done at home.

Nobody ever likes HR but I have a lot of sympathy for people who are asked to handle recruiting, hiring, onboarding, EEO training, discipline, firing, transfers/retirement, retention incentives, health benefits, and retirement benefits. It's a huge portfolio and often there are just a few people doing it all. When I was private sector, HR also had to plan holiday parties, employee appreciation, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We've got a guy on my team who we all know has a second full time job, but he does enough of the bare minimum we can't fire him. The ratio of those gaming the system because they don't havr to be somewhere in person seems to be about 4 to 1. Can't wait for the recession and we can cut the loose chains.

Seriously. All these people being defensive on this thread are clearly the ones doing minimal work and looking to justify it. Still no one has answered what a WFH admin does yet our company pays dozens of them $75-100k/year. To what?

Most admins in Fed government should be cut. I never understood what they did. Ordered a few pens. Talked on the phone all day. Scheduled some meetings and got half the details wrong. Gossiped. Seriously, it is a welfare program.

We have no admins at the agency I’m in now and I miss them. A bad one holds everything up and is terrible, but a good admin keeps things moving, does some editing, ensures more effective office communication, deals with time cards, and improves process across their unit. They also sometimes order supplies. But usually that wasn’t their job.

We got rid of most of our admins and now have one person for the whole division. She is AMAZING. She does a million little things well that like you said - keeps things moving and solves countless small problems that used to blow up into bigger issues. She also works from Tennessee most of the time.