The pandemic is over. Yeah! At least according to our managers behavior. Why? After Covid is like before Covid: questioning if we do really work from home or if we hang out in the garden all day. Others may wonder if we still don’t dress when working from home.
You almost could feel sorry for all managers these days… working from home worked (had to work) for the past 2-2.5 years… and all of a sudden it has to be changed… the control freaks (including excel location control lists) are back, worried about us loosing creativity or our team spirit or the emotional connection to the company we work for.
If they could choose, most of them would want us back in the office 100%. Since most of us are not willing to do so (especially the younger generation wouldn’t even consider such employer), we started working hybrid. Ever heard of it? It’s the new „2-day-work-in-the-office-week“. Sounds like a great compromise, doesn’t it? Well, it seems not to work to everyones satisfaction (so far)!
Those, who wanted to return to the office go back for gossiping and talking, but not necessarily to work. Those are keeping the others, who actually want to work, from working (those prefer to work from home).
When I’m in the office these days I have so many „let’s have a coffee“ meetings, that I hardly have time to work! Also I’m talking to so many people on that day I haven’t been talking to in the past 6 months. The summary: office days make tired, you feel like you had an overdose on human face 2 face contact & communication and you didn’t get work done. That’s great, isn’t it?
Oh, and all the technical issues: the office equipment doesn’t work anymore since people took cables back home to set up their home office space. Or how about those on-site meetings when you still need to set up Skype or Teams to also include the international team members. Let’s not start about the not working equipment in meeting rooms and how much time we waste until it works and everyone can hear or see. By now everyone has a working headset at home (noise cancellation included). We also all learnt how to switch the microphone on or off.
At the end of the office day, most of us are wondering why did we travel to the office? Just to hang out in teams meetings like any other home office day? Not to forget that you had to get up earlier, dress properly, commute to the office, find a free desk and figure out how much longer the way to the restroom is and that the canteen food sucks.
If you do decide to work from the office it could happen you are the only one which feels like a ghost town (at least you could get some work done and have no coffee date excuses!). Alternatively you may not be able to find a free desk to sit on, because our management changed to a clean desk policy: first come, first serve – not enough room for everyone.
Our management tries hard: organizing all day team events in cool locations, dinner invitations to the beer garden after work, workshops on site, free ice-cream… (and most of those ending in multi-spreader-Covid-events followed by people on sick leave for a week)… and still… people don’t want to come back. At least not every day. We got used to work remotely.
Some companies, like Apple, changed already back from a 3-day-mandatory-office-week to a 2-day-mandatory-office-week. Other companies delaying the back to the office target due to increasing Covid numbers.
In the end, and to be fair, nobody controls if we are back in the office or on which days. That is leading to the result that the office is empty on Monday’s and Friday‘s and super busy in the middle of the week. Good for the virus to catch up & keep spreading on Wednesdays. Friendly reminder: The pandemic is not over yet!
It’s complicated! Times have changed. We all got used to a digital transformation (finally! Besides, we didn’t really have a choice). It took us a while to get used to work from home, so please provide us the time to get used to hybrid work.
Good luck to all managers out there in organizing hybrid work! I don’t mind to come back to the office for a couple of days per week but please stop controlling us, and rather let us know how much you appreciate us as a team and how beneficial it can be to meet again face to face: for team work! For brainstorming! Team Building! Socializing!
I checked the box for this week: 2 days in the office and got not much done (lol). My weekend bag is packed, I’ll work from my dads home tomorrow! See you (maybe) next Wednesday in the office!
Stuttgart547 