I have always believed that if you put people in a position where they can cheat more than half will cheat and rationalize it away. There's no way I would let people work from home if I was running a company. I was reading an article a while back about how much more crowded golf courses are throughout the day since companies started letting their employees work remotely. You think there might be a correlation?
Why do you think 83 percent of CEOs want people in the office? Why does musk. Why do insurance defense lawyers have a monitor tracking their time at the computer and not just get the benefit of the doubt. Who do contingency lawyers often have billable? Bc bosses want to know the time is being put in.
I 100 percent still get more done there. Now in fairness I walk to the office and don’t have a commute. I get people with a long commute eat a lot of water time. But at home I fck around more. Eat. Etc.Says the guy who sits in his office with the TV on all day...
No contingcy side at big contingency firms. Bc the bosses wanted to know how many hours they were putting in.
It certainly CAN. You simultaneously suggest we are all motivated by different things and we all work less well from home. Isn't it the job of a manager to look at 10 employees and tell seven their WFH isn't cutting it?
My favorite is making the whole team run sprints while the offender had to watch and think about what he’s caused 😂
Well, that can be an effective psychological motivational tool. My example was more about a teacher who has no idea about classroom management.
This.
On Twitter half the day too....sounds inefficient.
We have a 1940's understanding of work time in the 21st century. Results based pay would be better. Many jobs outside customer service are task centered. An accountant is paid to perform a task. There are periods of the work cycle where you are not going to need to do a 40 hour week or an 8 hour day. Same goes for many other types of jobs. As long as the job is completed efficiently and accurately (and on time) why do I care if the employee was chained to their desk for 8 hours?
The idea is you can always get more out of em. I largely agree with you and twenty. If a development director has 5 clients that donate 2 mil a year great. Why make her sit at a desk. But then maybe salary isn’t the way to go. And for gov maybe the general schedule isn’t either.
Salary is the way to go. It is just changing the idea around what that salary is buying you. In a factory it buys you time on a line. For a programmer it buys you work towards a final piece of software. For an accountant it buys you balanced and reconciled books. You pay the salary so that they are solely focused on your workload. And if they can get that done in 30 hours a week on average then you are getting the same as forcing them to spend 40 hours. A time frame incentivizes employees to just stretch the time because there is often not another task waiting for them.
You’ve lost me. If they can get that done in 30 hours then why are you paying a salary for another 10. Use that 10 to someone else. Make them PT. If they get a salary and work 30 hours the employer is getting “cheated” in the sense that I believe @NPT intended. I have six businesses. Soon 5. The involvement is 40 hours to 20 minutes a week depending on which one, season etc. so if a person can get shit done in 30 why not pay them an agreed upon contract rate, or commission, and let them side hustle whatever. If we have one million gov ees who are being paid a 40 hour a week salary and they are home getting it done in 30 that makes no sense to me. That’s a million times ten hours wasted not appropriately compensated. And mind you I’ve never taken a business course and the only successful businesses I’m part of I don’t run.
Think of it like this. You’ve got your dirty paralegal. You tell her this week I need you to respond to discovery in these four cases. And I need you to request meds in these three cases. And do two demand letters. She gets it done from home in 30 hours. That’s what you get.
I had to back to thd office after two years at home during covid. It is what it is. It's that or find a new job and I didn't want a new job.
Yup. And I have no doubt you’re in a leadership position so part of that is setting an example
you think maybe the next attempt to whack him will be successful?
I know a guy and his girlfriend who refuse to go back into an office. They now do contract jobs and literally have three or four different jobs in a year. If someone tries to make them come in they quit. I assume they have to buy their own insurance which must be crazy expensive. They also just cannot believe I had to go back into the office. They act like my employer is some evil group out to get it's employees.
I agree, Murt. You might want to go over diversification of their portfolio with them, though. Just brush 'em up on it. Wink wink.
I wonder who will own the third party? Maybe they can use some H1Bs to bring down the labor costs. #DOGE 😉
You aren't truly paying for an 8 hour day with 8 hours of work. You are paying them to stay in the office for 8 hours while they complete the task you assigned them. Most of us don't work in factories anymore where people are making widgets.
www.seattletimes.com
No, most jobs pay you to be at work for 8 hours while you do what is assigned to you. Workers do what is asked of them and then fill the rest of the time with time wasters....like talking about how awful Woodson was at the end of the game today with the guy a cubicle over.
No, I never stated "we all work less well from home." Please see post #108.
Yes, she has an incentive to get done what you want her to get done in a quicker time. She completes her assigned task and then she has freedom to go on and do what she wants.
No it isn't. Why?
Because she eventually learns this. Now you are in a position where you are telling her that she is going above and beyond your normal demands. That is going to make her feel like you need to compensate her more. If you don't, then her completing that work quickly and efficiently and then getting assigned more work begins to feel like a punishment for doing her job well. That is the psychology that the vast majority of people perform under. You asked me to do X in Z time. I completed it in Y time and you assigned me A, B, and C which were above your expectations of me. So I expect that my level 1 compensation should be moved to level 1 + %ABC of extra work to compensate me for being above your expectations. If an extended period of giving ABC is not eventually compensated then you will get X in Z time, not Y and a reasonable excuse will be given as to why, but the actual answer is because people don't like being whipped like a race horse.
It is all work for all 40 hours but are they actually getting more work or are they getting the same output over a greater amount of monitored time. I would bet you it is closer to what I am saying then it is to them actually getting some 25% uptick from all their employees.
From a small employer perspective, good employees do more than assigned. It's impossible to name and identify everything you want done within a certain amount of time. There is always more work than hours in the day to do it. Maybe corporate America is different (if so, I guess they're paying for redundancy, which isn't necessarily a bad thing).
This reminds me of the “what/how do you do to motivate your team” interview questions (in higher ed).
The people who worked directly with me were busy when I was busy, when I slowed down so did they. Weeks when I was in the office 50+ hours, the staff was very busy. I’d often finish the day when most had gone home by leaving files with notes attached on several different desks.
Working at home was fine but zoom meetings aren't like real meetings imo. It had advantages like no commute but no personal interaction gets old. I mean maybe if you don't like being around people it rocks. I know people who could work from home but choose not too they want to be in the office. And the one I know who refuses to work in an office just seems to lack normal conversation skills. But each case is different.
I must have missed the profound insight you provided when I pointed out that DJT is punishing legal refugees in his war on illegal immigration. You sabotage every thread with your constant drivel. That’s why I rarely post here. It’s not worth reading paragraph after paragraph of your cut and paste responses
I think that there is usually something more that can be found to do but most people generally have a set amount of productivity they are going to give you on any given day. Even your best employees are not giving you 8 hours. Anyone honest with themselves knows that they aren't dialed in 100% of the time that they are at work. There may be certain days or a stretch of days where that happens like as you approach the last few days before a deadline, but that is usually followed by a letdown the days following completion. They are still working and still giving their "8 hours" but it isn't like the 8 they were giving right before the deadline.
Yes. The carrot I mentioned. Your best employees will take what you assigned and instead of completing it in Z time will do it in Y time and then help you with tasks A,B,C as long as there is an incentive to go above and beyond. However, even your best employees will start to weigh the compensation against what they are being asked to do. The smaller your business, the less coworkers your superstar has to compare themselves to.
If we are being honest, that kind of attitude is kind of why employees check out. "Why are you approaching this transactionally?" asks the owner or CEO.
I worked in IT and I never got done because there was always more to do and I was suppose to work 8 hours a day so if I worked only 6 I would have been cheating the company. So I meant that I would guess that more than 50% people who worked from home would not work their 8 hours/day. They may rationalize that they're not cheating it to justify what they do but they're still cheating. The last years that my wife worked she was suppose to work 9 hours/day and get every other Friday off. There were a lot of others at the plant that she worked at that were suppose to work 10 hours/day but she got there before a lot of them and a lot of them left before she did. It was all research so there was always something to do so the only conclusion I can come to is that they were cheating. She didn't have to punch a time clock so even going to the office doesn't stop cheating but I'd bet it eliminates a lot of it. You said "If we have one million gov ees who are being paid a 40 hour a week salary and they are home getting it done in 30 that makes no sense to me" and I agree completely' but on the other side of that is if they only work 30 minutes when there is plenty to do then they are cheating also and that is what I think a lot of people do when they work from home (notice that I didn't say everyone because there are people that will work from home and put in a lot of extra time). When I worked there was always other projects lined up behind the one I was working home so I couldn't stop work at 6 hours and say I had met my goal for the day.
That movie should be a must watch for every supervisor. It is an exaggeration but that attitude is the reality for the average worker.
