Work From Home (WFH)

[TennNole17]

A lot of companies (not all) are having these conversations now. Employees who’ve worked (or workers hired) over the past two years have gotten used to working from home.

Two part question:

If you can do your job from home, is there a benefit to meeting in the office with people?

My main question: realistically, a LOT of jobs can be accomplished from home. What does this do to the office/commercial real estate space?

 

[BelemNole]

Yes I can my job from home - or 98% of it anyway.
We’re considering the second question now as most people haven’t really returned to the offices.

 

[3boysmom]

I’ve been working from home since 2012. I’ve never done my current job in an office environment but I’ve built a trusted group of colleagues that I’ve met on different industry trips/events. We will collaborate via text, Zoom, or Facebook messenger. We all live in different cities so in person collaboration isn’t really possible. But we chat several times a week commiserating, getting feedback on options we’re working on, marketing ideas,, etc.

 

[GOHOX69]

There's ample open commercial real estate where I work. Obviously I cannot work from home in a biotech. So we plan on buying that space cheaply and converting it to wet labs.

 

[TylerJ76]

I live alone.
I can’t imagine spending another 8-10 hours here alone working.

I like the social interaction I have at work

it would be horrible for my mental health if I was here all day every day alone.

I know, cool story.

 

[GOHOX69]

I live alone.
I can’t imagine spending another 8-10 hours here alone working.

I like the social interaction I have at work

it would be horrible for my mental health if I was here all day every day alone.

I know, cool story.

Hey, I like having my office and lab. I agree with you.

 

[FSUTribe76]

I live alone.
I can’t imagine spending another 8-10 hours here alone working.

I like the social interaction I have at work

it would be horrible for my mental health if I was here all day every day alone.

I know, cool story.

Get a spouse or a dog. That’s better than having to go into work.

 

[h-hawk]

My wife (state of Iowa employee) works from home and goes into work once a week. She has to return the files she is done with and pick up the new ones. She too enjoys talking to whoever also happens to be in the office that day. And she really likes not having to commute 5 days a week.

 

[ping72]

I’d have to get a huge salary increase to regularly go into the office ever again.

I can do everything from home with same/increased productivity. I’ll not be bullied by some insecure manager or a pissed financial leader who spent a lot on a building.

Eff the capitalist machine and its propaganda saying we need to be in the office.

 

[ihhawk]

Productivity has dropped by maybe 20%. Some folks can do it with no issues. Some simply shouldn’t work from home.

We have one coordinator that was a top performer prior to Covid. She had a baby in March of 2020 and has worked from home. Her production has dropped 50%. Tons of issues now.

 

[noleclone2]

I can work from home but as a department manager I have to be in the office at least 2-3 days a week. We try to have flex hybrid mix allows people to do what they prefer but encourage being in the office some for team building and communication. I also like social interaction.

As a manager and as a company we are having to address another fact that for every 2-3 people who can work from home there is 1 person who is a complete slacker and working from home means they are not hardly working. They are non responsive, never around, never reply to emails from anything other than their phone, and seldom answer phone. And on opposite side from the completely slacking and checked out worker from home type there is also a subset of workers who know they can’t work at home and go to office and feel like EVERYONE not working in office is a slacker. It’s kind of a mess.

 

[stout1]

I can work for home but don’t want to. I like going to the office. I like the people I work with and we are better at our jobs when we are together. During Covid my group was in the office 90% of the time.

I am in k-12 education in a non-classroom role. Our mission (educating kids) works best in person. There are kids and teachers who thrive online/remote but it is a small minority. We won’t be abandoning our real estate.

I spent the first 18 years of my career driving at least 40 minutes to work. I now have a 7 minute commute so going to the office doesn’t affect my life at all.

 

[Hawkeyenuts66]

We worked remotely for two months during covid and it sucked, never want to do it again.

 

[DogBoyRy]

A lot of companies (not all) are having these conversations now. Employees who’ve worked (or workers hired) over the past two years have gotten used to working from home.

Two part question:

If you can do your job from home, is there a benefit to meeting in the office with people?

My main question: realistically, a LOT of jobs can be accomplished from home. What does this do to the office/commercial real estate space?

I haven’t been to our companies office since 2019 and hope to retire in six years without ever going back.
The 2019 visit was for a fairly worthless 2 day meeting.

 

[yiana]

I live alone.
I can’t imagine spending another 8-10 hours here alone working.

I like the social interaction I have at work

it would be horrible for my mental health if I was here all day every day alone.

I know, cool story.

Yeah living alone as young professional would be about the only scenario right now that would get me to go into the office. But I’m married and have a nice office at home so viva la WFH

 

[iowahaha1]

I work from home and love it. I could sit in a cubical if I wanted to but that sucks 8 hours a day. I can actually work from the golf course, bar or basically where ever I want to. I have a core group of friends I meet for lunch daily. I do think if I were single I might want to go into work once in awhile to help with social interactions such as happy hours afterwork. But being married and a having a good core group of friends, I would never want to go back to a cubical setting.

 

[hawkbirch]

Two years ago I thought working from home was impossible. Now I love it. I think my virtual court days are numbered so I’m hoping to end up with in person court and the rest from home. My work/life balance is almost perfect right now and I’d prefer that not change.

 

[SSG T]

I'd love to work from home, but I have to be in the office at least part of the time.

The contractor I used to work with got a different job and I could be replacing him. He hasn't been to the office 5 times since I went on terminal leave 1 1/2 years ago. Honestly, that would be the biggest draw.

 

[Hawk_4shur]

I think this is a fascinating and complex problem facing business today. I'm glad I'm retired.

For 40 years I worked in an office. I developed a "switch" in my brain (not on purpose) - office = work, home = not work. I found it nearly impossible to work at home - I just couldn't concentrate.

But, I didn't need to - I've never had more than a 20-25 minute commute.

I can see productivity gains in some people, loss of productivity in others. But we are moving to WFH in a big way in this country.

It seems to me that commercial office space may open up just like all of the abandoned Big Box stores.

 

[thewop]

I've worked from home for 9+ years after 11 in an office.

Pros: My productivity is better from home, way less time lost in meetings, side conversations only tangentially related to my role, etc.

Con: no camaraderie. I don't know whether my coworkers have pets, don't know all their kids names, don't know they're taking care of their sick mother, etc. We're not friends outside of work, only colleagues who meet long enough to meet the objective and that's it. We're not meeting for drinks, etc.

That's the only thing I miss about an office.

 

[anon_b29nm7v7dwp6r]

How companies handle this will pick the winners and losers in the next 20-30 years. A fair percentage of workers are not ever returning to the office…and if you try to force the issue your retention will tank, and you will lose the war for talent. And if you can’t keep your employees, you may as well fold up shop…

 

[BioHawk]

As we found out, remote teaching doesn't work very well so I don't think I will ever work from home again.

 

[QChawks]

like many others COVID pushed me to full-time WFH for over 2 years. I'd come into the office every once in awhile during that time usually for client/supplier visits.

however, at first I really enjoyed it. although as time went on I missed the social interactions. While I'm usually on MS Teams calls 5-6 hours a say it's not the same. In the last month I've started coming to the office nearly day and once school starts back up I plan to come back full time.

I can see why people prefer it and I know it's something we'll continue to offer for those that do.

 

[ATLNole1]

Our company is still operating on a flex schedule so I go into the office when needed but work most of the time at home. Our office typically had about 2,000 people before pandemic and now it is probably around 20% occupied on any given day. My work is mostly international focused anyway so if I go into the office I just sit on Teams which I can do from home.

Our company is now consolidating and selling two satellite campuses in town so everyone will work in the main building. Some of our smaller international locations went full time work from home and ditched their office space.

 

[Flie]

I've been remote since the start of the pandemic and all of my teams are remote now. A few people in management positions still go into the office maybe 1-2 days per week and we get to keep our existing offices. The rest of the building is setup for people to reserve space if they need to come in for whatever reason. People can reserve meeting rooms, offices, cubes etc...

Productivity has not dropped off in any measurable way and being committed to the remote work setup has enabled us to recruit nationally vs being limited to the region or to people willing to relocate.

 

[Colonoscopy]

I live alone.
I can’t imagine spending another 8-10 hours here alone working.

I like the social interaction I have at work

it would be horrible for my mental health if I was here all day every day alone.

I know, cool story.

Heyyyy. That's what I'm doing.

 

[3 and Out on D]

A friend of mine started working from home during the pandemic and just continued working from home. I asked him about when he was going back into the office and his company went to working at home as they found out they improved their productivity. He's happy as can be.

 

[bhawk24bob]

Do the math on what you save on needing a car, maintenance, gas, insurance, money spent on breakfast and lunch, time spent commuting, etc. If your employer isn’t going to compensate for those costs, why would you go into the office for them as opposed to either finding a company that will compensate for that or bridge the gap to wfh?

 

[TennNole17]

It seems to me that commercial office space may open up just like all of the abandoned Big Box stores.

This will be really interesting to me.

 

[Rifler]

During the pandemic our firm allowed employees to work from home at their discretion, but for the most part it seemed to be the younger ones with children using the option as a way to solve a day care problem,.. I kept going to the office every day and still enjoy it.

 

[Formerly Rockymtnole]

Golf courses are packed since the pandemic started, and it’s not just retirees.

Like anything, I suspect most people are making flexible work arrangements a win-win, but probably also a lot of people taking advantage of their employers.

 

[hawkmart]

It's either work in a cubicle and be on teams calls or wfh and be on teams calls. My immediate team members are scattered all over so in person collaboration everyone is so fond of never actually happened even before all this except for 3-4 weeks a year when the company flew everyone in. I don't know of many people in my dept going back full time, only hybrid. We were given the option to remain full time wfh if we wanted. My younger go-getting self would probably be going into the office. Now that I'm old, f that. Converted a spare bedroom into a pretty nice home office setup that I spend my days in with my dog at my side. If it came down to it though, I wouldn't complain too much if we were forced to return for a day or two a week. Don't see that happening though, there's a lot of remote work options that opened up in the world of IT with companies that embraced it and recruit everywhere.

 

[WDSMHAWK]

I live alone.
I can’t imagine spending another 8-10 hours here alone working.

I like the social interaction I have at work

it would be horrible for my mental health if I was here all day every day alone.

I know, cool story.

Same boat. The 6 months in 2020 when our offices were completely closed and Des Moines was "shut down" it felt like I was in solitary confinement.

I'm not a real talkative guy but I was dying to get back into the office when they finally gave us the option just so i could be around other people.

 

[Rifler]

Anyone else concerned about what the general loss of social interaction is going to do to a lot of these new work from home folks?,.. I've got a couple friends that have been doing the work from home thing for the past two years now and when I do infrequently bump into them out and about they appear uncomfortable and in a hurry to remove themselves from any interaction...

 

[Capital1Hawk]

A lot of companies (not all) are having these conversations now. Employees who’ve worked (or workers hired) over the past two years have gotten used to working from home.

Two part question:

If you can do your job from home, is there a benefit to meeting in the office with people?

My main question: realistically, a LOT of jobs can be accomplished from home. What does this do to the office/commercial real estate space?

This is a great topic. We can work from home. Most businesses are downsizing so will be hard to justify extra rent expense with less than half going to the office.

I struggle working from home so will go in 2-3 days per week. I will say this when we have an all staff meeting I notice the average person has gained quite a bit of weight. Not sure this new environment is healthy and America is already obese so probably going to get worse on that front. Invest in healthcare!

 

[stout1]

Do the math on what you save on needing a car, maintenance, gas, insurance, money spent on breakfast and lunch, time spent commuting, etc. If your employer isn’t going to compensate for those costs, why would you go into the office for them as opposed to either finding a company that will compensate for that or bridge the gap to wfh?

If you weren't WFH beforehand they were already compensating you for that. You agreed to work for $X with the expectation you were in the office. Now that you don't have that expense they can lower you pay because the agreement changed.

Works both ways...

 

[Jan Itor]

There's ample open commercial real estate where I work. Obviously I cannot work from home in a biotech. So we plan on buying that space cheaply and converting it to wet labs.

Says the lawyer

 

[hawkifann]

My last job was fine to do from home, I did it for 12 years….but I was with a company spread geographically across the country with very few here in Charlotte. I could go to the office and communicate via Zoom or I could be in the office and communicate via zoom.

There is value in face-to-face meetings, but if people are spread, then that’s not a daily option anyway. My favorite way to deal with that is to have 2-4x per year in-person gatherings with some/all of the team.

 

[seminoledq]

I like working from home and I don't have a choice now. Switched jobs a year ago and the company is based in CO. Most everyone is now remote with some of the Denver staff going to the office periodically. we are in the process of trying to get out of, or at least shorten, the current office lease. It's a lot of money going to waste each month.

 

[GOHOX69]

Says the lawyer

And scientist. By the way, our custodian is awesome.