Reply to WaPo opinion piece from a CEO who wants people back in the office

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[quote=Anonymous]This woman seems out of touch, completely.

The question of permanent WFH, however, is not so simple. I hear all these people saying they are more productive at home as if work product is the only metric to use to measure productivity. Creation of new ideas, brainstorming, tangential conversations, camaraderie build by walks with coworkers, lunches, mentoring, etc, are also important and necessary for long term success.

We are having conversations of what the right mix should look like.  We should offer more flexibility. But we can’t really let employees decide what their WFH days (or hours?) are.  People need to be together - otherwise why waste time bringing them in?  But then how do we handle space?  Let the office sit empty two or three days a week?

And some of my employees have been downright superstars during work from home. Some have muddled along. And some have been terrible. It’s not uniform. It isn’t a question of dealing with the underperformers. It is understanding that some type of contact is important for some to be firing on all cylinders and we can’t penalize them for having a very human need.

I have found that those that are most productive have no home responsibilities. Those with kids, especially younger kids, whether male or female, seem to be most out of synch with how they thought they were doing and how I thought they were doing. I feel for them.  Working and supervising distance learning, especially among the elementary school set must be awful. And I understand the need to run them to the park or whatever after they have spent a day staring at screens. But having spotty attention every afternoon does begin to show even if there are no planned meetings etc.

There is no one answer, I don’t think. Every group will have to figure it out for themselves. But the silver lining behind the pandemic is making us examine the work environment for white collar workers, which is a good thing. [/quote]

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