The debates around working from home from employers is fairly odd. You want to recruit and retain productive and happy teammates. The responsibility is on the employer to provide that environment. Employees should have choices of in person, remote, or hybrid whenever possible.
It feels some of this stems from measuring employees by hours instead of productivity. It’s certainly not always easy but hours as a crutch is misleading. It’s important to drive accountability between individual contributors and supervisors and trust their choices.
At @DragosInc we were a hybrid and remote work environment before the pandemic and will remain so after. It’s worked very well and allowed us to recruit amazing people from all over. It’s a competitive advantage for us. It also provides a more flexible/happier environment
One thing we realized was we needed more office locations but smaller spaces coming out of the pandemic while being more flexible. As an example, we have a small group of employees in Perth, Australia. So our main office in AUS is Melbourne but we got some flexible space in Perth
The business benefited by not having a larger rented space which also reduces office space options. It also benefited by having reduced office costs. The employees got to work from home when they want but also have some smaller collaboration space when they wanted it.
Being fully in person can certainly have some benefits and not every job can do remote work (e.g. electric lineworker doesn’t get that luxury) but where possible we’ve found the overall benefits to far out weigh the costs. It is important to adapt the culture though
As an example, simple things like having cameras on during Zoom meetings whenever possible, real photos vs avatars in Slack profiles, multiple company onsites a year to fly folks in that want to, more transparent communication from leadership, etc. but these have great benefits.
Anyway, whenever I see employers complaining about adapting to the new normal, especially tech companies, my cynical side says: well, that whole “innovate or fail” y’all like saying so much - better get to innovating. Your employees have.
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