They don’t care. It’s about control and real estate.
Comment on ‘Don’t Mess With Us’: WebMD Parent Company Demands Return to Office in Bizarre Video
Sekrayray@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I’m so sick and god damned tired of corporations and governments making sweeping decisions with no evidence base to back them up. I work in a field where there is no option for remote work, but I think it’s pretty clear at this point that most non-service industries can be just as effective via remote options. All of this is just about control and it’s so stupid.
NocturnalEngineer@lemmy.world 10 months ago
IDriveWhileTired@lemmy.world 10 months ago
More about real estate than anything else, to be honest. You have far more control over remote work than in the office. I know how many minutes each member of my team spends on any and all websites, can log keyboards, to the point I don’t recommend to anyone working remotely to access bank accounts on their work computers.
tias@discuss.tchncs.de 10 months ago
I don’t see how working from home changes anything. If you can do that kind of logging on their work computers at home, you can do it at the office too. And at least in the EU you have to inform employees about the extent of the monitoring beforehand. Can’t imagine how they expect to attract competent employees that way though.
IDriveWhileTired@lemmy.world 10 months ago
You’d be surprised how much people actually just don’t care how their work computers are monitored nowadays. We disclose everything, even showed our monitoring tool to employees, and they just don’t care. I guess people know by now that personal stuff should be handled on personal devices, such as phones, tablets and computers. And the things they use their work computers for, they don’t care if we’re looking at it or not,
Funny enough, we never used those tools working in the office, even though they would work. But the fact that people are inside a controlled environment makes companies more lenient about IT security, funny enough. Having a badge seems to make computer monitoring tools redundant (even though they aren’t, of course).
But again, I do think this “back to work” movement has more to do with financial losses in real estate than real team work or control over the team. To some degree, banks, insurers and funds own us all.
01189998819991197253@infosec.pub 10 months ago
I slightly disagree on one aspect. I have read several studies (relatively short term, but still) about how WFH and Remote Work employees are measurably and significantly more effective and productive as their in-office counterparts. Evidence actually supports remote work.
Powerpoint@lemmy.ca 10 months ago
Yup. WFH/Remote increases productivity. Any CEO who limits their companies productivity should be relieved of their job. In office is and should be a thing of the past for most day to day operations.
laurelraven@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 months ago
The companies were even praising the benefits of WFH earlier in the pandemic, boasting about record productivity, and those same people and companies are now saying they need to bring people back without acknowledging their prior statements. It’s perfectly bizarre.
They want closer collaboration, there are ways to do that remotely, and do it well. I think MMOs have proven that people can collaborate effectively for long periods with people they’ve never met, don’t know what they look like, what their voice sounds like, or even their name.
Sekrayray@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Yeah, so the decision is actually counter to the evidence.