Office Culture, Work Spaces and Unions

As these topics keep coming up in threads where they don't quite fit, I think it might be a good idea for it to get a dedicated thread.

So yeah, this is for discussing office culture, commuting, unions, work spaces, wfh arrangements, etc etc.

Where the most recent derail into this topic went was the idea that while WFH arrangements might have negative impacts, stuff like excessive commutes and toxic work culture can mean that the benefits of WFH outweigh the downsides of working in the office.

So this took forever to open, bumping it so it's not lost forever.

So yeah, what inspired me was a discussion about how the benefits of WFH might actually outweigh the downsides of working in the office for a lot of people in ways that aren't super easy to directly measure and contrast.

Though those benefits are very dependent on the nature of work you do and how much the company supports the infrastructure and features to make work from home effective. For me personally, work from home during COVID was a terrible experience due to company system not working properly and my colleagues not being good with computer systems in general only made me communicating with them more difficult while I was at home. And my past office culture was awful to begin with thanks to uneven timing of work load and terrible time management by the management, so it was impressive to make work from home bad too. Though my former company was shifting everyone in management to laptops to make work from home a viable option, but knowing them that was likely due to them wanting to shift from work life balance to "work life integration" as the HR told us few years back (which by the way they phrased sounded more like forget work life balance, you lot are working overtime forever).

Edited by xyzt on Mar 25th 2024 at 8:58:37 PM

How topical. My workplace has recently started rumblings of having people come in (we used to be all-remote during the lockdowns), despite the fact that out of my entire team, I live the closest to the office at a brisk two hour commute one-way. There's just no point to it, and yet.

Yeah, in your situation, it sounds like the benefits of office work (especially in Japan) really do not outweigh the losses incurred from commuting like that.

It’s not just the downsides of working in the office that are hard to articulate, so are the benefits. I’m in a very weird situation where my job is best done from the office but my employer is trying to get people who don’t benefit from office working, like I do, to come in more. So I do a meeting from the office where I tell WFH HR people that not everyone needs to be in the office.

Office working benefits are generally stuff like easy joint working, faster communication, more accessible support functions, centralised infrastructure expenditure and positive social interaction.

But for that you need to do a job that requires regular joint working, that needs constant ad-hoc interaction with other people, you need the people you’re working with to be in a combined physical space that is conductive to collaboration (so not hidden behind lots of doors), localised support functions (so on-site HR) and a positive working environment.

It amuses me deeply that the people who would most benefit from working in an open-plan office aren’t your low-level staff writing reports/taking calls, but your middle-management whose job is mainly dealing with each other and addressing ad-hoc problems that require dynamic joint working.

Yeah, the kind of people who, when a problem comes up, should coordinate with each other and then get their teams working on the things that need working on.

It also needs to be handled in a way that makes sense.

Like...due to various periods of office consolidation, my entire team except me and my manager are permanent work from home. And my manager is in a different spot of the office from me, on a different floor, so she might as well not be here either because I don't have clearance for that floor. So the result is that I'm constantly told that being in the office is great for collaborative teamwork, except that there is no one to do said teamwork with in person. It makes the lack of actual interest in creating a functional system really obvious because the reasons I'm given to work in the office have literally nothing to do with my actual situation. The result is basically that I have to drive an hour plus each way to be less comfortable.

I think one other element to keep in mind is that the places that opened up to remote work ended up hiring a lot of disabled people who would otherwise not be considered at all. It's much easier to accommodate when said accommodations aren't relevant if the office isn't a factor.

There's a balancing act going on, but, to be blunt, anyone pushing for a return to the office needs to 1) be able to explain why it's necessary in a way that the workers won't immediately clock as being bullshit, 2) be honest about it, and 3) do it in a way that doesn't punish good workers who are unable to work in the office for whatever reason.

Edited by Zendervai on Mar 26th 2024 at 8:26:24 AM

I quite like our office's hybrid model. Two days a week we're in the office, rest we're WFH (optional, we're allowed to come into the office as much as we want), with the exception that if you're assisting on a project that requires you to be in the office, then that takes priority. During the initial start of Covid, a lot of support was put into place to make a WFH experience viable, including stable VPN to be able to reach digital office resources, a communications system that allows for quick impromptu calls and meeting, and designated times where we must be available to take interactions, so we still have our hours defined. Most of our work can be done remotely, anything needed to be done in person usually isn't so time sensitive that it can't wait until the 2 days we're in office, and if it's especially an urgent matter, we have policy in place what is considered urgent that it needs in-person attendance so that they don't try to force attendance for minor items. It has been very good for office happiness and productivity, because it allows greater work flexibility, since we worry less about long commutes, or parking, or expenses for gas/food (especially for people with 45 minute - hour long commutes). WFH when supported provides a lot of benefits to a good deal of us as workers, that we as workers still use it even when it became optional.

Ideally, office and work culture should revolve around whatever makes the most productive sense while keeping worker morale up. If that's WFH, that should be supported (and actually supported, not give the option to WFH, but not give the tools required to make it functional). If it's the office, well, make sure you know the office actually is what you need, and is not some sunken cost fallacy BS or so managers can feel like they have a watchful micro-managing eye on their workers.

Yeah, one thing I want to know about those studies that are like "wfh is bad" is what the actual work culture was like for the places surveyed and how much effort they put into making it viable.

My employer is very strict about work-life balance. But a lot of employers abused wfh to erode it away.

One of the things I learned in this WFH life.

I always focused my life around the workplace, I mean, my first job in Software was in a company that has the workplace outside the city and I had to spend 2 hours commuting everyday (and this if rain does not delay my bus to work/home), then in the next works I tried to stay closer to work (to the point that one of my jobs has the workplace, 10 minutes away walking from my home)...

Then I moved to the United States and still wanted to live near downtown to prevent doing long commutes... until Covid arrived and I was forced to stay at home.

Happily for my work WFH is not a big issue, is only to keep connected to the networks I need, write my code, test my stuff and that´s all.

But, I never imagined that I will not miss the office so much, I mean, when I was working in Chicago I was doing 2 days of WFH in order to keep connected with a team from India the most and prevent them to stay overhours, and while I miss some good partners to chat and hang around, I think I missed the commute itself.

Taking the bus to work and then to walk the remain of the blocks was to switching in/out of the work and then in the daily WFH routine it was only by switching in/out the computer, and it was not the same...

Now I am working over an hybrid model in Spain, while I would want to make it completely on-site, I also understand that there are not enough places to cover the place in case everyone wants to go to office, and now less considering that my wife is near a surgery, but sometimes WFH is very distracting, sometimes is not easy to put everything together and you tend to forget details and fail, but at least you have a good slept compared to get a commute in the office days (not so long for me, still 45 minutes long, but it worth it).

I do think there's a very large quality of life difference between a simple public transit commute and having to drive. Because a 45 minute drive means 45 minutes of active attention, especially during rush hour. A 45 minute bus or train ride means you can read a book or whatever.

If I took the train, it'd be longer than the drive, but it'd be preferable. The problem is that the timing sucks (I'd have to start late and end early) and the train station is another 25 minutes from the office by public transit.

But I would love to be able to just sit down and read a book or play a video game or something for an hour or so instead of having to fight my way through traffic in both directions. That would legit make going into the office a lot more palatable.

Edited by Zendervai on Mar 26th 2024 at 12:55:13 PM

I get to sit and read most of the way (15 minute walk to and from the train station aside, which only sort of stops me from reading), it definitely makes the trip more bearable than if I was having to concentrate on... anything.

Still feels largely performative most of the time, since even if the rest of my team did come in on the same days (I think the only one anyone really agrees on is Wednesday), that doesn't help when there's no way to make sure people can sit near each other. Or when some people live too far away to even do that more than once or twice a month. At least I get more monitors to use, that's a plus.

Where I'm from, we have no worthwhile public transportation to speak of. I'm about 20 minutes from my work via driving, and if I were to take our public transportation, it would take 2 hours between walking and meeting transfers. So when people are commuting for an hour, that's an hour driving. There is no way to get to work without being active other than being part of a carpool or a taxi. That sort of deal greatly increases the cost estimate for WFH, since you have to include the amount of time required to get ready and travel in an office, compared to getting into your home office and starting up your work computer. Just not having to worry about wearing a neat and tidy business casual outfit itself is a major timesaver. Add in everything else, and you can save an hour to and hour and a half of personal time each day at least by not having to go to an office, that isn't paid for. And the increase to my electricity bill is smaller than the decrease to my gas expense, so even paying to power my office is cheaper in the long run. That's just part of the calculus every worker should make when they consider their options, but it should be an option allowed as often as possible.

The thing I'm more grateful for on that front than anything is that there's no real dress requirements. Hell, I've seen band t-shirts occasionally.

Really simplifies things to just keep wearing the same stuff regardless. The wonders of not facing clients, I guess.

I feel this. Some of the ideas brought up at our last meeting asking about ways for WFH to be more appealing, and suggestions were brought up like "discounted vending machines" or "cheap lunch access." And sorry, no, adding more ways for me to give you money back for the privilege of coming to the office is not going to do it for me.

My workplace has leaned pretty hard into work from home for those who can do it. The hospital keeps adding doctors who want to do their own research, but hasn't bothered to give us more space for research staff. The best solution is to have anyone whose job doesn't actually require them to be on-site work from home as much as possible. I typically spend at most one day in the office, which I mostly spend doing those rare few tasks that are easier in the office, and reminding my coworkers that I exist.

The only downsides I've found to work from home is that it's a bit harder to connect with my coworkers. Most of the job-related communication can easily be handled over instant message, and I'm far more productive when I have more control over the background noise and light level. Most of the objections to work from home that I hear about in the wild come from managers of the micro variety. Thankfully I don't have that problem. My boss is smart enough to realize that she can't do my job as well as I can, so she's better off letting me do it.

So, I wanted to ask about company leave policies. Specifically, in my company, we had what I understand is called a sandwich leave policy where if you say, take a leave before and after one weekly off for instance, the 3 days will be sandwiched together and you will have to apply for 3 (or 4 in case you have 2 weekly offs) instead of just 2. From what I gather, the purpose of said policy to dis-incentivise employees from taking long periods of leave in factories where it was considered that many people taking long leaves together will hurt productivity.

https://flamingoapp.com/sandwich-leave-policy/#Why_You_Should_Not_Use_the_Sandwich_Rule_in_Your_Business

So do companies of other nations have such or similar policies or is it unique to this part of the world? And for that matter do workplaces elsewhere use different methods to restrict or discourage taking of long leaves by their employees?

Edited by xyzt on Mar 29th 2024 at 5:47:37 PM

So in countries where you are legally required to receive paid time off (which I’m pretty sure is all of Europe) that would be illegal unless they started giving you extra pay. If I take a Friday and a Monday off as paid leave I use up two days of paid leave and receive my regular pay for the month, if I was deducted four days of my leave allocation I’d need to receive extra pay for the month equivalent to two working days.

As stated in the article

In western countries I believe the way staffing shortages due to overlapping leave are dealt with is by one of two methods.

Many businesses have expected periods of low-productivity (school half-terms, Christmas, Summer and Easter bring main ones in the U.K.) and plan around them or use them to do maintenance work (some places will make all the office staff take two weeks off so they can have engineers come in over that time).

The other method most common in businesses expecting consistent outputs or subject to demand surges during holiday seasons (so bars at Christmas and New Years) is a leave authorisation system. So management need to agree for a person to take time off otherwise it becomes an unauthorised absence. When I worked in the bar trade it was super rare that anybody got to take New Years off because it was so busy, I got it off one year because I worked the Christmas Eve shift and we were more of a family space anyway.

Normal offices will also use this method when it comes to critical staff, I once had to get everyone in my team to put their Christmas leave plans in a common spreadsheet so that the department head could ensure that we didn’t have any long periods where no management were in outside of formal holiday days.

Some countries to put some limits on this practise, normally requiring that good notice of a refusal be given, the U.K. legal requirement is that you get as much notice as time you planned to take off. So if I book two weeks of holiday, once it’s two weeks before it starts my boss can’t cancel it anymore.

Generally businesses also want staff to take time off during certain periods. In the U.K. you’re legally entitled to 28 days paid time off a year (assuming standard 5 day work week), businesses want that leave taken when demand is low because workers have higher productivity after time off and you’d rather they be highly-productive in a high-demand period then be being paid to sit around doing nothing during a low-demand period. This obviously presumes contractual working periods rather than ad-hoc hours set weekly or monthly.

Edited by Silasw on Mar 29th 2024 at 1:47:37 PM

I've only been an office worker, and it was always either staff requesting specific periods off, subject to manager approval (which was usually granted) or managemement asking a whole team about their plans to coordinate time off (so at least one person would be present in case something came up in a low-demand period or enough people would be present in a high-demand one). There's also a very small part of an employee's leave allocation that can be decided by the employer (and if it's not used in a specific time frame, it goes under the employee's control). In all cases, only the number of days actually taken off would be used up.

That seems frankly bizarre. Like, the employee's voluntary time off work should not be being dictated by the employer.

That can happen in the U.K., an employer has the ability to make you take annual leave, they just have to give you appropriate notice. The TUC have guidance on it.[1]

Doesn't make it less bizarre and unreasonable though.

It's more like your employer telling you not to come to the office on this specific day (with notice), and it's paid time off. Also, while I don't know the exact number, I'm confident you need only one hand to count them, with fingers left over.

No, it's completely reasonable. Companies have a legitimate reason to be able to control when they furlough employees to some extent, and so long as that's up-front in either the contract or the relevant hiring laws, that's fine.