Is the office dead?

originally posted by: Bluntone22

No..
The office will fill back up when employers see how little work gets done when employees are not supervised.

That and employers will subcontract workers at home. You get this much for this task that is due Friday.

I disagree, much depends on the job, but cubicle work can be done at home. I'm in upper management and I been home since Mar 17 and I'm more productive at home. My team is about 30 people and they need to teach in person, but when they are done with that they go home and finish filling out student records, checking email, doing other projects such as document review at home, so literary they do not need a desk anymore at work, and last year we had 70+ cubes in my area and now we need none of them. I had two offices in two different towns 65 miles a part, and I need nether now.

Now when you talk productivity...

Research suggests that in an eight-hour day, the average worker is only productive for two hours and 53 minutes.

That is with supervision...lol

I think working from home was something companies wanted to try, but were afraid to try it. Now that we were forced to do it we are seeing that it works as well or better than being physically in the office for 8 hours. There is a paradigm shift from hours physically at work as a measurement for productivity to just productivity overall.

As example, we work a 9 hour day and get every other Friday off... typically my instructors work 4/6/8 hours per day of direct instructions. Those other hours are basically wasted hours if they do not have other projects to work, and I don't have 80 projects constantly in the works, so they end up doing not much of anything productive outside checking mail reviewing next day's lesson etc, BUT they had to sit there physically at work to count their time. Since I do not measure productivity based on hours alone they are all 100% productive when their direct teaching is accomplished whether 4/6/8 hours. Also, direct teaching none stop for like 6 hours wears you out a good deal, so 8/9 hours per day is not sustainable to maintain a long term healthy group of instructors.

They now can do those hours outside of direct teaching at home, check email, review lesson plans, being on call if needed. HUGE moral increase and more incentive to be productive as people now ask me for extra work.

All this while reducing our foot print of 80 cubes and offices...That is about 15k+ savings per employee per year.

a reply to: Edumakated

That's how I see it as well. Had covid hit twenty or thirty years ago, wow. Not though it pushes the potential for that ''re-set'' to remake our entire economic system to the forefront of current events.

a reply to: Xtrozero

It works for some people but others need the time clock to be motivated.
Of course some jobs are much easier than other to have out of office employees.

I'm curious how the end of the pandemic will change things as well. The people working at home are expecting this to be temporary and believe they will return to the office fairly soon.
I wonder how many bad habits will return if this is more of a permanent thing?.

originally posted by: Bluntone22

I'm curious how the end of the pandemic will change things as well. The people working at home are expecting this to be temporary and believe they will return to the office fairly soon.
I wonder how many bad habits will return if this is more of a permanent thing?.

I think it depends on what the job is and if it is at a professional level, so I'm not sure what type of job has a manger constantly over watching to create productivity. Maybe you can give me an example or two.

I wonder what will people do if they need to go back to work full time after working from home for a year plus. Skype meetings help a good deal, 5 mins with an employee about their work for the day works extremely well. We just need to figure out what works, BUT in the end huge reduction in office foot print is a very enticing and going to happen.

How many workers are drinking on the job at home? Sometimes a little booze encourages new thoughts and ideas, to a point. Promotes a little motivation, just don’t show the long skinny glass in the zoom meeting, that’s not grape juice.

a reply to: 38181

Just drink from a China cup. Little pinkie finger out, of course. Everyone thinks it has tea in it.

There is only mega desk!

I feel so bad for all of the middle management micro managers out there. I have known many in my time and without and office for them to go to, I am not sure what they would do with themselves.

a reply to: Fools

I feel your pain. Known a few, hated them all!

originally posted by: Xcalibur254
I kind of hope that at least the option to remain working at home is offered. It's especially useful on days like today where everything I had to do was pretty much wrapped up by 10.

One of the reasons this never caught on prior to this is productivity. When working from home people tend to do the minimum amount of work, to keep from being replaced. Only a small percentage of people are self-motivated enough to be trusted to work from home.

Now, it's been forced on the companies doing it due to a pandemic. It's nothing new and the reasons most companies backed away from it quickly have not changed.

I'd expect companies will return to normal after the pandemic is no longer with us. The purpose of a business is to make the most profit possible. The only way it can work is if they abandon hourly wages and pay based entirely on output. When people manage to wrap up minimal expectations by 10AM, only a very few call in to say what else do have for me to do and they quickly move to upper management.

a reply to: Never Despise

Yesterday, I drove by the office bulding of a
big insurance company. The building is for sale.
"For Sale" sign says 79,000 sq. ft. office space.
I did some Googling and got the scoop.
The company has already transitioned
around 300 employees to "work from home".

originally posted by: TerryMcGuire

That's how I see it as well. Had covid hit twenty or thirty years ago, wow. Not though it pushes the potential for that ''re-set'' to remake our entire economic system to the forefront of current events.

Now is prefect timing... Highspeed internet, social networking, how people actually use their computers today...etc etc...
This is just the next step, but COVID made it extremely fast in without COVID it might have been 10 more years to truly start to taker hold as an industry standard. I have people moving now to other states to live and work remote that 1.5 years ago would have been impossible to consider.

originally posted by: RavenSpeaks

Yesterday, I drove by the office bulding of a
big insurance company. The building is for sale.
"For Sale" sign says 79,000 sq. ft. office space.
I did some Googling and got the scoop.
The company has already transitioned
around 300 employees to "work from home".

Safety tip...do not invest in business real estate any time soon...

I wonder if a place like that would be converted to "professional" apartments/condos... All designed for the home office one/two bedrooms.... that is like 70+ apartments...

Office space is 20 to 35 per sq ft... Atlanta to DC range

900 sq/ft luxury appt at 2000k a month would rent out at 26 per sq ft.

a reply to: Hypntick

Hope so doing my Masters Thesis on it right now and what my research is showing at the moment is trouble coming sooner or later, if it hasent already hit and just hasent made the news yet.

Right now trying to figure out which Cyber AFSC, in the USAF to cross train into, seems like my degree blends well with 4 different ones.

a reply to: Xtrozero

When we argue about the new world order or the big re-set, all to often I am lambasted by others who say we have to fight it we have to fight it as if all we need to do is to take out the Democrats that are all in favor of it or take out Trump who would control it all if he could manage it.

My point is technology is the riding horse, it is carrying us onward to that world with innovation accelerating speed. It is globalization staring us in the face because that technology is world wide and it is for the most part international corporations that are owning it and pushing it. From what I can see neither the Ds or the Rs are Luddites but rather embrace these new technologies. We see that consumer bases also thrill to much of what it offers. New gizmos and such.

As technology advances we do not remain static, we change with it, to some degree individually but more as each generation adapts to the technological environment it matures into. So to my perspective we are already in a global society. Economically we certainly are with product delivered one place from far across the world as common practice.

The important question to me is not whether or not we try to stop it but rather how do we recognize it and organize ourselves to deal with it.

Thing is if you don't need to have people working in your own building as a Corporation then at some point down the line you're going to go for the best option financially and that will mean employing someone working in their home office at the best rates and at some point in time that's going to mean all those at present done by local people home jobs are going to be done in the cheapest location.

We can expect to see a massive transfer of office type jobs to the cheapest locations. There's going to be a massive shift as happened in manufacturing and call centres to places like east Asia. What will ten happen to the millions of previously employed local office workers in the West?

a reply to: ufoorbhunter

Starvation, hopelessnes and ocmpmlete reliance on big brother goverment to take care of them from cradle to the grave.

originally posted by: Irishhaf
a reply to: ufoorbhunter

Starvation, hopelessnes and ocmpmlete reliance on big brother goverment to take care of them from cradle to the grave.

and that's exactly what we are seeing here in lot of the UK right now

a reply to: Oldcarpy2

Same with the depos and court hearings here.

I prefer the video meetings, as I have to travel so far to the courthouse.

originally posted by: TerryMcGuire

The important question to me is not whether or not we try to stop it but rather how do we recognize it and organize ourselves to deal with it.

Lots of pluses and minuses... A big minus is jobs, mainly low skill jobs that machines will takeover. You want to see a COVID level of speed here just raise min wage to 15 bucks. That would be COVID on crack as to how many jobs disappear or are replaced by machines.

We already been there with machines taking over in other industries, so nothing new, but we will see a higher percentage of people who just can not work and that will need to be addressed. I really think the movies are getting it right where you start to see a cast system once again of the haves and have nots at a much wider range.