[HN Gopher] SBA executives 'beyond doubt' that teleworking emplo...
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SBA executives 'beyond doubt' that teleworking employees are more
productive
Author : dtmmax33
Score : 78 points
Date : 2021-04-16 11:52 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (federalnewsnetwork.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (federalnewsnetwork.com)
| sb_student wrote:
| If we gave managers/business owners the choice of
|
| (1) a traditional in-office, no WFH environment and a smaller
| profit, OR (2) a partial/full WFH setup and a larger profit,
|
| my gut sense (I can't back it up) is that a huge percentage of
| businesses would forgo profit for the psychological benefit of
| seeing their employees daily. Maybe it makes them feel more in
| control, or more important, or just loneliness.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| I am more productive but my team as a whole is less productive.
| Highly individual tasks are great for this whole setup but
| anything requiring high degrees of coordination seems to have
| suffered.
| m463 wrote:
| I think coordination was terrible in the beginning. But over
| time folks have worked out lots of things.
|
| I've seen gradual, but sustained improvement in WFH skills.
|
| For example, teleconferencing skills. People have learned to
| share their screens, then people gradually adapted to have an
| agenda on-screen to show and step through, people figured out
| how to send links and files during a meeting. Even silly stuff
| like how to contact someone who forgot about a meeting.
|
| And some of it is more democratized. Regular folks are figuring
| out how to do peer-to-peer meetings, which were normally
| organized and driven by managers. This also goes for other
| tools like wiki, shared documents, teams, calendars, email,
| slack.
|
| Another thing is a gradual spool up of WFH support. It took a
| while for people to figure out a webcam that works, or a
| microphone or headset. Or a chair, or a room setup, or just a
| rhythm.
| sologoub wrote:
| I've experienced the opposite - as others have noted, making
| communication just a bit more structured and accessible to
| others in our org helped get clearer on what/how/why AND
| incorporate voices often left out because they are not the
| loudest in the room (or don't want to speak up in a large
| public setting). Just on the merits of inclusion, video
| conferencing has been a big win for me.
|
| Yes, there are adjustments and downsides, but net net, I feel a
| lot more confident that my team are being heard and no one is
| overlooked because of social tendencies, etc.
| addicted wrote:
| The big thing they seem to have done is a good job scaling up.
|
| But likely the primary reason they were able to scale up so
| rapidly was that in the midst of a pandemic, there were millions
| of workers looking for jobs and after the twin impacts of the
| Great Recession and the pandemic in less than a decade, a much
| larger cohort who were likely more predisposed towards the safety
| of a government job than pretty much anytime in the past half
| century.
| znpy wrote:
| The biggest changes I've seen is that whenever I meet something
| new that I'm not familiar with, I learn way faster in the
| tranquility of my home than in the office.
|
| That means I get productive more quickly and thus more
| productive. In the last year I was able to pick up a lot of
| technologies that I've been putting off for years because I
| couldn't find quiet time to sit down and bang my head against the
| documentation.
| passivate wrote:
| People around the world are different, companies are structured
| differently, work cultures vary. We should not try to
| "homogenize" everything. And as such, why use data from a global
| set to apply it to a local set?
|
| If teleworking works for your company, great keep doing it! If it
| doesn't, don't do it. And lets not demonize when a company makes
| a decision that is right for them in their particular case.
|
| For our company, we've made the decision to not allow
| teleworking, and it is only approved temporarily on a strict case
| by case basis. I think it has helped our work culture and
| productivity over the many years.
| 01100011 wrote:
| Oh great, we can have this debate again.
|
| WFH is either the greatest thing ever, or the worst, depending on
| many factors(kids, quiet space, your need for socialization, your
| career positioning, etc).
|
| WFH part time is either the greatest thing ever or the worst,
| depending on if you need to maintain an extra office and remain
| living in an expensive tech hub.
| someonehere wrote:
| Reading this makes me happy. I almost read this as the door is
| open for more people to apply and work remote. That to me means
| someone who would have never considered working for SBA or moving
| to work there, can now be employed from anywhere there is
| internet.
|
| Maybe this is how we revitalize towns that were wiped out by
| outsourcing the labor pool (read China manufacturing)?
| emodendroket wrote:
| If nobody ever needs to be in an office it would seem like
| there is more temptation to hire outside the US for these jobs
| too.
| dleslie wrote:
| I am _ridiculously_ more productive at home.
|
| When I hear folks complain about the pains of working from home,
| what I often hear are their stories about how they were
| needlessly disruptive to their coworkers.
|
| Having impromptu hallway meetings mean that your peers, and
| subordinates, must keep an ear open for such events should they
| risk being left out of important decision making processes.
|
| Having watercooler conversations means that your office-mates
| must take effort to overcome their human desire for social
| communication in order to focus on their task at hand.
|
| And so on.
|
| Generally, I find having a team that works wholly remote means
| that we schedule communications clearly and are able to maintain
| the focus on our work before us.
| Guest42 wrote:
| I think WFH works well because it takes extra effort to reach
| out to someone and therefore is used more as a necessity. For
| me, the office has lent itself to a number of one-off tasks
| that didn't end up being important that distracted working on
| the recurring production items that make a larger impact.
| Removing the starting and stopping lends itself to more
| productivity and being able to answer the phone as opposed to
| having to step out of the office after going down the elevator
| has been great.
| dleslie wrote:
| I agree! Having a _minimal_ barrier to communication acts as
| a filter, in a similar way that requiring registration acts
| as a quality filter for a forum. Folks must gather interest
| in the meeting, rather than interrupt and demand focus; this,
| at minimum, gives them some time to reconsider the concepts
| that they want to raise with their coworkers.
| biomcgary wrote:
| Not just any minimal barrier. Extroverts wired to speak
| spontaneously (i.e., have high Foxp2 gene expression) are
| the most likely to disrupt others for non-functional
| reasons. Requiring verbal communication to be initiated
| through written means is a great way to increase the
| signal-to-noise threshold for communication. Meanwhile,
| those who are not spontaneously verbal have a relatively
| low barrier (a sentence in chat).
| dleslie wrote:
| Interesting! Do you have further reading I might be able
| to consume?
| Guest42 wrote:
| Thank you, I have never seen that explanation and it
| certainly maps to behaviors that I've seen.
| c3534l wrote:
| There are a _lot_ of people who don 't have nice home
| situations. Screaming babies, cramped spaces, constant
| interruptions - that sort of thing. For a programmer/tech
| worker that has a decent place to live, I'm not surprised you
| think it's easy.
| darksaints wrote:
| That seems pretty dismissive of the people who have trouble
| working from home because they have _more_ distractions at
| home. Not everybody can be child free, single, and live in a
| quiet place.
| dleslie wrote:
| I have a wife and two children six and under. Working from
| home has far less distractions than any office I've ever been
| in.
| pmarreck wrote:
| It may depend on the person and the job.
|
| Pre-pandemic I lasted only 4 months at a remote job. I kept
| asking to meet them (they were in Atlanta, me in Long Island,
| but most of them were scattered), meeting stakeholders in
| person gives me a charge which aids my focus and overall
| productivity. Anyway they kept deferring, and then one day sort
| of out of the blue and without warning (literally... the day
| prior the supervisor's supervisor did a call with me and it
| went well), the supervisor and a longstanding coworker both
| just started grilling me hard and when they didn't like my
| answers (note that I was still learning the very complex
| application codebase at this point) the supervisor basically
| decided it's not working out.
|
| This past year has terrified me with the idea that all tech
| work will now be done remotely. Fortunately I'm working on my
| own projects directly for clients but unfortunately it's not
| paying very well at the rate I'm being productive (which is
| "not very"). I am FAR more productive when working physically
| with other people (who also know intuitively when to not
| interrupt because they're also programmers).
| exotree wrote:
| Why did you take a job that you knew was remote but insist on
| meeting the stakeholders in person? You shouldn't have taken
| that job with that expectation.
| dleslie wrote:
| I'm roughly 6 years into working from home; the pandemic
| isn't really a new experience for me.
|
| The first year was concerning because it was different and
| weird, but it rapidly became normal. Now, I reflect on how
| _slow_ office work was and find myself frustrated for my past
| self.
| thelean12 wrote:
| Your description of ideal working conditions sounds so robotic
| to me. Schedule everything! No off the cuff conversations!
| Screw the human desire for socializing, we've got shit to do!
|
| Right now my team is comprised of no one that I've met in
| person. I feel absolutely no connection to them and feel so
| incredibly disconnected from my work. Like I've been playing
| the same video game for 8 hours a day for a year and nothing
| I'm doing is real.
|
| I'm quite scared of hybrid or full remote solutions for my
| company. I don't want to switch companies right now but if they
| go full or hybrid WFH I might have to, just to keep my sanity.
| dleslie wrote:
| We actively talk over slack. There's a #random channel, a
| #stonks channel, et al. There's plenty of banter.
|
| But _anyone_ can mute those and focus. I _cannot_ mute a
| coworker talking loudly next to my desk.
| exotree wrote:
| What is disconcerting about hybrid? This seems to be the
| solution that strikes a good balance between your needs and
| the needs of your other coworkers who probably appreciate the
| increased flexibility.
| dleslie wrote:
| Have you ever tried to have a party at two locations?
|
| It doesn't work.
| exotree wrote:
| That's... not at all the same concept. There are a lot of
| companies pre-pandemic that had hybrid offices. Many
| global companies have had zoom rooms and other
| teleconferencing solutions for years.
| gregmac wrote:
| Curious:
|
| Do you do regular video calls? Do you ever discuss anything
| aside from work? Even during a "work" discussion, do people
| make jokes, laugh, etc?
|
| Do you have chat (slack) channels, and are they active? Does
| anyone ever spontaneously post something like "hey, anyone
| feel like talking about x that I'm trying to sort out?" Is
| chat pure business or do people ever discuss anything else?
|
| These are all kind of leading questions, but the things that
| I think are key to making it work.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _When I hear folks complain about the pains of working from
| home, what I often hear are their stories about how they were
| needlessly disruptive to their coworkers._
|
| What I hear are complaints about the consequences of the
| pandemic. That people have to work _and_ babysit their kids
| during school. That both they and their partner are forced to
| share a workspace. That they miss changes of scenery, or that
| their home workspace isn 't adequate enough to get work done.
|
| Before the pandemic, I would regularly rotate venues for where
| I got my work done. I'd go to different coffee shops and
| libraries. If I got bored of those places, I'd make it a point
| to go into different venues in different neighborhoods. When it
| was nice and warm out, I'd get work done in beach towns and
| enjoy the sea breeze. Several times a year, I'd book a hotel or
| short-term rental and work from a completely different city. At
| one point I rented a co-working space.
|
| During the pandemic, most of those places are closed. I can't
| travel, and I don't want to. If I want to enjoy the sea breeze,
| I better have enough battery life and reception to get my work
| done in a park. Yet I'm lucky in that I'm not forced to share
| my personal work space at home with others, and I'm not forced
| to be a babysitter on top of the job I'm paid to do.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| Quarantine work from home isn't work from home.
|
| https://www.hanselman.com/blog/quarantine-work-is-not-
| remote...
| heavyset_go wrote:
| I agree.
| newusr415 wrote:
| I advocated for remote work pretty aggressively. I've been
| doing it now for about a year due to the pandemic, with the
| option of doing it permanently at my current employer.
|
| I'm not sure I'm that enthusiastic about it anymore. Life just
| seems a lot more boring to me. Every day is the same and it's
| become incredibly repetitive. I've been getting somewhat
| depressed about having this repetitive lifestyle for the next N
| years. I hadn't really felt this way before. It could be
| unrelated to remote work of course.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| The SBA is referring specifically to their own employees doing
| SBA work, not necessarily telework in general.
|
| Interestingly, they attribute the additional productivity to the
| fact that their telework employees are simply working more hours:
|
| > "It doesn't matter to me where your eight-, 10-, 12-hour day
| is, but as long as we're getting coverage from that perspective,"
| Rivera said.
|
| > While some federal managers have expressed skepticism with
| telework productivity, Deputy CIO Luis Campudoni said employees
| are, if anything, putting in longer hours than they normally
| would working in the office.
|
| > "From an eight-hour workday that you would normally experience
| in the office, now, without asking the workforce, certainly get
| 10-12 hours of work done on a daily basis. It's because of that
| flexibility, people appreciate that," Campudoni said.
|
| I would also expect productivity to go up if everyone was working
| 25-50% more hours under the new system. I don't know if that's
| sustainable though. If these jobs are paid hourly and the extra
| hours aren't mandatory then the employees aren't necessarily
| getting a bad deal. However, if the extra hours are unpaid or the
| 12-hour days become mandatory, this could fall apart fast.
| lostcolony wrote:
| I think a lot of it has to do with the nature of the work.
|
| I know where I currently am, my hours have smeared to cross 12
| hours of the day. I have meetings as early as 8 AM, and as late
| as 7 PM, routinely (sometimes even later). That's to
| accommodate people in other timezones.
|
| But, my middle of the day is oftentimes empty. I'll use that
| time to go out to a botanical garden, or play a game, or work
| on personal pursuits, or nap.
|
| It's hard to say whether I'm more productive or not; I changed
| jobs mid-pandemic and so I don't have much to compare to (and I
| left my prior job because I was bored; I'm a manager, and
| wasn't feeling productive, but that's because everything I was
| empowered to change I had running so smoothly it didn't need my
| attention, and all I was doing was small boring implementation
| stuff so the team could have the interesting work).
|
| But I can say that the extra hours aren't really helpful toward
| being productive (and that I've taken steps to keep them from
| being harmful). So I'm not sure that people doing stuff across
| 12 hours of the day really equates to 12 hours of work.
| VectorLock wrote:
| I'm okay with spending the X% percent of hours I would be
| commuting doing productive work, and double-okay with my
| employer reaping the productivity benefits from it.
| gnicholas wrote:
| People who have an unenjoyable commute, like stop-and-go-
| traffic, probably feel this way. But people who commute while
| exercising (bicycle riders) or consume books/podcasts/news
| while commuting probably wouldn't be so inclined.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| I'm perfectly capable of consuming books/podcasts/news on
| my own and not because of a mandatory, tiring, expensive
| and dangerous commute.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| Does it matter though?
|
| I mean that literally, does actual data matter? The data in
| support of telecommuting has been around for years if you want to
| find it, heck you even pay employees less in some circumstances
| as they can live in lower COL areas (plus cost savings in fewer
| offices/smaller offices/rental instead of ownership/etc).
|
| But the reality is that a certain type of employee rises through
| the ranks: Those who have a strong aptitude towards interpersonal
| connection (i.e. extraverts). They're also a loud[er] group. They
| benefit more from in-person than telecommuting, and they also
| often make the decisions.
|
| Do you really expect a group of decision makers, who gained power
| via their interpersonal skills, wanting to give up that skill
| advantage and potential turn their business into a meritocracy?
|
| COVID was a rare blip, because it tipped the scales just enough
| to make their position untenable, but in five years I do not
| anticipate any broad change in landscape. Heck even before a lot
| of people had a chance to get vaccinated many businesses are
| RUSHING back into the office, why? The same inexplicable reason
| we're there to begin with.
| sokoloff wrote:
| It was a world-wide pre/post test to be sure. I think that most
| companies will be better off to go back into the offices
| because the alternative is to carefully think through the work
| and write a lot of things down.
|
| People would rather talk than write, on average.
| solosoyokaze wrote:
| > _It was a world-wide pre /post test to be sure. I think
| that most companies will be better off to go back into the
| offices because the alternative is to carefully think through
| the work and write a lot of things down._
|
| Companies that do this will be at a distinct advantage over
| companies that rely on informal, ad-hoc, in-person
| conversations. There are many companies that have been
| started during the pandemic that are remote first and have
| the process to back it up. I don't think in-person companies
| can compete between lack of access to talent, undocumented
| communication, office politics, employee stress and fatigue
| due to commuting, living in a high cost of living area and
| the previously mentioned politics...
|
| I'd also say a lot of management is actually unneeded, which
| also comes to light in remote first companies.
| dleslie wrote:
| It's strange that you're being down-voted, considering how
| important business intelligence is to success, and the
| concerns about commuting, housing costs et al are likewise
| well-founded.
|
| I think there's folks who simply miss the social
| environment of an office, and are loathe to consider that
| perhaps they were counter-productive for their coworkers.
| ping_pong wrote:
| Both Yahoo and IBM rolled back their very flexible WFH
| strategies. I don't think super flexible WFH is a lasting trend,
| because it's obvious that is doesn't work for most of the people.
| I personally love WFH and I know a lot of HN do too, but I think
| human nature is that it probably won't work very well for most
| companies.
| e40 wrote:
| Doesn't work for "most of the people" is highly dependent on
| the company and position.
|
| It works very well for 80% of the positions at my company. I'm
| sure there are companies for which it only works for a small
| percentage. The ultimate YMMV.
| emodendroket wrote:
| I find most of my work goes well but anything that requires
| coordination a lot of time gets wasted waiting to hear from
| people.
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