But then how do you justify keeping “middle management” hall monitors on a payroll after admitting they’re pointless?

It’s this thinking that allows the business bro to think that they contribute to the world while they are really no better than you average insurance company.

The kinds of bosses that don’t want me working from home are the exact ones I want to hide at home from. The ones who already aren’t a micromanager I’m actually quite happy to come into the office and work with and around.

Been on both sides and Oof. Luckily now with a boss that’s happy to have me wfh but I don’t take him up on it too much cause I just genuinely like being in the office!

The kinds of bosses that don’t want me working from home are the exact ones I want to hide at home from. The ones who already aren’t a micromanager I’m actually quite happy to come into the office and work with and around.

Been on both sides and Oof. Luckily now with a boss that’s happy to have me wfh but I don’t take him up on it too much cause I just genuinely like being in the office!

The kinds of bosses that don’t want me working from home are the exact ones I want to hide at home from. The ones who already aren’t a micromanager I’m actually quite happy to come into the office and work with and around.

Been on both sides and Oof. Luckily now with a boss that’s happy to have me wfh but I don’t take him up on it too much cause I just genuinely like being in the office!

The kinds of bosses that don’t want me working from home are the exact ones I want to hide at home from. The ones who already aren’t a micromanager I’m actually quite happy to come into the office and work with and around.

Been on both sides and Oof. Luckily now with a boss that’s happy to have me wfh but I don’t take him up on it too much cause I just genuinely like being in the office!

A few issues with your method for the average manager.

What work exactly is the employee doing?

How do you know if it is being done correctly?

The average manager has no clue on either of these questions.

These managers rely on wandering around the office judging productiviy by who looks busy and holding constant meetings to hear themselves talk.

I managed a support team of about 30 people at a fully remote company. I’d check their numbers of closed cases, review cases when customer feedback was bad, and take into account any other side projects they were working on.

Praise when people did good and have one on one talks with people that were falling behind to see what the cause was so we could work on it. It’s not that hard.

And I can guarantee that they have no fucking clue if their workers are slacking off in the office as well. They seriously believe them being in the vicinitee actually encourages worker to work harder. What a bunch of clueless muppets.

I don’t understand the monitoring and observing thing. Is the employee doing their work effectively and within the allotted timeframe? If so great, if not have a chat with them. Where’s the problem?

Our entire group is remote, and my boss has a fantastic way of structuring things. We have a weekly team meeting where we discuss our ongoing projects, and at the end of each week, he wants a short summary email of the work we did this week and the work we have planned next week.

That email is a godsend on Mondays to get myself back into the swing of things and remember what I was doing.

This is correct.

They can’t adapt or change. They don’t know how as they are too comfy and stuck in their ways…

But then they force us to read “who moved my cheese”…

I manage a team of remote workers. About half of them are doing great. The other half are constantly struggling to meet their metrics/manage their time effectively. I’ve talked to them repeatedly about this and coached them on various ways they can do better but they’re not getting it. If they were in the office where I could watch them it would be a lot easier to help them because I could see where they are messing up as it happens rather than just trying to talk through it with them after the fact based off recordings and reports.

That being said. I would never force anyone to work from the office if they didn’t want to. They are all free to do so whenever they want and I advised that it might help them to get where they need to be but it’s not a requirement. At this point their success or failure is their responsibility.

Definitely. I actually look at my teams’ overall performance as well as on an individual basis. Crazy concept right!? It would also stop an interoffice politics and drama that are massive time wasters.

My company just announced they aren’t interested in remote work even though our call center is all internet driven with heavy metrics and they know that office space costs thousands or tens of thousands a month. It’s baffling.

I find it odd and oppressive how important this detailed oversight and control seems to be to employers. Home Office compatible jobs are mostly computer and thus “brain work”, and here productivity never has related linearly correlated with “time staring at monitor”. In office there would be plenty of smell talk, coffee breaks, diddling with smartphones and other ways to relax in between. These breaks are an important part of the productivity cycle, giving the mind a chance to process ideas and problems. In other countries/cultures there’s more reliance on the concept of good faith: I work at a company that uses home office contracts by default. I can go to the office if I want, but I don’t have to. Last time I’ve been there is five years ago, long before COVID. The company does not track our computer activity ( illegal here anyway) or working hours at all. Obviously it is still my duty to task the hours I spent working for clients for billing reasons, but that’s it. The bosses expect that we spend our time in a manner that is beneficial to the company. If one runs out of work, it is expected to notify one’s boss so be take can be found and assigned. Of course they still keep an eye out for slackers, but the metric never is working hours or office hours, it’s “what have you spent your time on and how has it benefitted the company?” This approach leads to us employees reciprocating the trust shown. This is the first job I never minded putting in extra hours at critical days, because I know I’ll just plan on more off hours or even off days during calmer weeks, giving myself to balance the hours. And no, I don’t have to get approval from my employer to do that, as it is expected I schedule my time offs in a manner that is least disruptive. This means I just ask a colleague working on the same or similar projects if he’s gonna be there so clients have a point of contact in case of emergency. I don’t think I ever can work for a conservative, controlling employer again after having enjoyed this level of mutual trust and maturity in the working environment. It’s almost as if I’m self-employed, but with all the benefits of being salaried.

This is true. Your job as a “boss” should not be to command and control but rather to remove obstacles preventing your workers from doing their jobs effectively.

A good boss trusts their employees to do their work, but is comfortable working with them if there is an issue with their performance.

One thing I’ve learned is people don’t read, at all, even short text.

The micromanagers they have no fucking clue what’s going on if it’s written down, they need to interrupt and have you explain what it is or they have no idea what is happening.

Their boss goes “how’s the team doing, what are they working on” and they look like shit because they don’t actually read your status updates or standup or project board.

I really think that’s 80% of the problem here. We went remote without retraining and rethinking who the bosses are for that environment.

My friend works from home he does all his work and in the down time he’ll run errands, work out, and play pool at his local bar. Whatever. His work is fully completed and submitted and his performance views are top notch.

I had 2 people like that back when the pandemic started, the only “grown-ups” in the team - married and with children. They were doing some tasks manually but you could tell it’s stressing them out because you could see them work until 8-9PM, sometimes even later. And you would constantly hear their kids in the background - probably a difficult adjustment to make at home in the beginning.

So I had to sit them both down and sell them on the idea of automating everything. They liked it (they prefer automating things also), but mostly said they’d never have time for it, because of all the priority stuff they need to work on. So I asked them to work on automating the tasks in-between other, more important ones, and if they were ever getting bothered by management, send them to me and I’d run interference. We came up with a plan, we had milestones for ourselves, the whole thing.

I had to lie in some meetings and claim we were working on what management wanted(and take a lot of shit for being late sometimes, or just flat out saying ‘no’ to requests, which didn’t get me any fans either), but it was worth it in the end. A year and a half later, they were done. Instead of working together until 8PM, they were each working 2h per week by the end. The rest was their time to enjoy, I never asked how they spent it. Along the way, it was even visible how each automated task would clear their schedule even more.

A few months in, they started being really great together and working as a team, completely covering when the other was missing, not needing their hand held with anything… Just awesome to work with them. 4-5 months after we started, they were no longer doing overtime - there was no need to, the tasks which took the longest were now a script. 8-9 months in, you’d have trouble catching them both at work at the same time - they’d cover one for the other, and tasks would still get done. Easy to say to upper mgmt “yeah, they’ve been doing this intensive activity which usually takes a lot of time” - no questions asked. They would never drop the ball, and in return I’d never bother them about how they got organized, I trusted them completely to deliver on time and take care of the hiccups. Beautiful stuff.

We kept this to ourselves until we left the project (just a few months after we were done), at which point I had them create a presentation for management, showing how they improved the situation (wanted them to show off their achievements, it’s not often that we get to do it. And maybe also allow the people taking over to understand why this was so important and to continue using the automated way instead of the manual way). I specifically asked for a page with statistics, cause I wanted to make sure the point got across. They proudly had that slide showing how the workload went from 80-100 man hours per week to 4 man hours per week. Upper management saw it, I could see the guy’s eyes light up at this. Unfortunately they never understood how to use it and how to apply it to future teams. I checked back this year, they’re using the manual way. Their loss.

Probably one of the best duos I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with. People with full lives and responsibilities, who got their work done, were reliable, were self-organizing, and the only thing they needed were some guidance and some backup when they were being pressured to finish some random donut’s idea of “important tasks”, and in return I could always sleep easy knowing that I don’t need to worry about anything if it’s in their responsibility, cause they will get it done. I appreciated them while working with them, and even more since not working with them.

When the pandemic hit and I knew I was going to be working from home, I feared that my productivity would plummet and I’d miss the office. I reassured myself that it would only be a couple of weeks and then everything would go ban to normal. (Boy, was I naive!)

When I started working from home, though, I found that I loved it. I’m more productive without people chatting me up or managers looking over my shoulder.

I’m even eating healthier. When I went into the office, I’d pack all the food I’d think I needed for the day. I’d always overpack and then, with the food sitting right there, I’d snack throughout the day. Now, I can take the time to prepare healthy meals in my kitchen for lunch and snacks, while close, aren’t within arm’s reach.

I’m now permanently work from home and loving it. If I ever looked for another job, Work From Home would be a huge selling point. I’m not going to say I’d never go into another office, but if I had two job offers except one was work from home, I’d pick that one.

It’s actually not that hard. If the assigned tasks are being fulfilled within set parameters there’s really nothing to observe and keep track of.

Apologies for nitpicking, but they do need to track if the task is completed or not, especially when there’s a chain of tasks that need to be completed in a certain order for the overall goal to be completed.

Otherwise, yeah, I was coming here to post the same thing, you don’t need to watch your workers while they’re working, you just need to confirm that they finish the tasks you assign them. If they have blocks on their tasks they’ll let their manager/lead know.

Yeah tracking task completion and quality of the tasks done is all I’d care about too.

I’d even go as far as to set up a bounty board for one time tasks up for grabs. Each one comes with a payout according to how much additional work someone’s gotta do to get it done, with big emergency items paying out vastly more than small time stuff that can be done at any time.

Stuff related to achieving company stretch goals would be given the pay bonus but also some fun extras like extra PTO or a “gift card” for a grocery trip or some other necessity expense. Basically just cutting them a grain dole check since subsidizing major household expenses is a proven means of giving people the space for social advancement.

It’d be my way of saying “I know you don’t have to do this in your contract duties, so have a little incentive for the extra helping hand!”

So that underpaid employees can spend most of their money on gas and sandwiches from the cafeteria round the corner

They pump it out because it’s what the people at the top of the societal pyramid want. And those are the top are really the ones with all that commercial real estate that’s wasting away.

But how will the managers know if the employees are being abused enough in workload? We can’t have people doing an adequate amount of work. They need to suffer for the company.

drinking alcohol during work hours is against company policy bud

im a commie but i can understand why workers need to stay in line or seek more Relaxing work.

of course if drinking is not against policy im drinking too if i dont got to anywhere

/idk lil drunk