What's the issue with the typical things companies are doing?

My company is remote Monday and Friday, in the office Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. I think it's a great balance.

My company has "anchor days". Basically 3 days of mandatory in-office M, T, W. Other departments have elected to anchor on T, W, and Th.

Thursday and Friday we work from home. It's been a great compromise.

how about not complicating it and let people work where/when they want.

Because low performers perform significantly worse from home

Only a certain tier of employee is better off at home

So then get rid of them?

I've noticed the majority of people who abhor work from home are middle of the road micro managers who get mad they can't flex their authority like they could in the office

Work from home is here to stay, cats outta the bag. Adapt or die

You guys are so lucky to get those four day weekends every week.

Bexar Ag said:

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So then get rid of them?

I've noticed the majority of people who abhor work from home are middle of the road micro managers who get mad they can't flex their authority like they could in the office

Work from home is here to stay, cats outta the bag. Adapt or die

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So true. I know a guy exactly like this. He mainly does it to kiss the ass of leadership though.

Demand a 5 day in office week! Im tired of you people messing up my fishing on Thursdays and Fridays!

My department had people scattered all over the DFW area. To mitigate the pain of the commute, we would rent temp/day suites type places that were more centrally located to everyone. That's when we were only in "person" one day a month.

Now we are in the office one day a week, with anyone outside of 30 mile radius on a once a month/as truly needed basis.

I feel like businesses need to do a much better job monitoring and weeding out those that really aren't as productive from home. Just my experience, but some of the ones that complain the loudest about being ".just as productive from home", might be right but that's because they were marginal contributors IN the office, and they maintain that same level of performance remotely. (Not targeting anyone on this thread btw)

To successfully manage WFH, you have to shift from measuring activity to measuring outcomes.

Activity is how a lot of in person offices measured productivity. Hours in the building, # of calls made, # of meetings scheduled.

Outcome based is # of sales made, # of deals closed, etc.

If you are measuring activity, WFH is going to be a real challenge for your managers.

Decent book on the topic: How the Future Works: Leading Flexible Teams To Do The Best Work of Their Lives

Troy91 said:

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To successfully manage WFH, you have to shift from measuring activity to measuring outcomes.

Activity is how a lot of in person offices measured productivity. Hours in the building, # of calls made, # of meetings scheduled.

Outcome based is # of sales made, # of deals closed, etc.

If you are measuring activity, WFH is going to be a real challenge for your managers.

Decent book on the topic: How the Future Works: Leading Flexible Teams To Do The Best Work of Their Lives

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Activity is and has always been meaningless. Outcomes should always be the measurement. I work in software development and everything is about outcomes.

Too many companies and managers have no idea how to properly measure outcomes. And those are the ones screaming loudest that people need to come back into the office.

jtraggie99 said:

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Troy91 said:

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To successfully manage WFH, you have to shift from measuring activity to measuring outcomes.

Activity is how a lot of in person offices measured productivity. Hours in the building, # of calls made, # of meetings scheduled.

Outcome based is # of sales made, # of deals closed, etc.

If you are measuring activity, WFH is going to be a real challenge for your managers.

Decent book on the topic: How the Future Works: Leading Flexible Teams To Do The Best Work of Their Lives

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Activity is and has always been meaningless. Outcomes should always be the measurement. I work in software development and everything is about outcomes.

Too many companies and managers have no idea how to properly measure outcomes. And those are the ones screaming loudest that people need to come back into the office.

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Man, whole F500 corporations need to adapt. If I get my work done in 15 hours a week it is because I am efficient and I need more work (to be clear, I ask for more work), these same people that crush deliverables should be rewarded and compensated equivalently.

They will never change, stupid old school mentality. Milk their workers for every ounce then find new ones. Rinse, repeat

This is a lazy take and it sounds like you havent managed a lot of people. There is a huge difference in managing a team of 5 and a team of 200. The labor market is still relatively tight so you can't fire everyone. However forcing people to come back is a good way to thin your roster without having layoffs. You will lose mostly poor performers, as even the threat of it sends them scurrying.

You can be a lower performer and still have plenty of value. I define lower performer as the bottom 60%. The bottom 5-10% are not long for the job anyways. Most of the work force is a lower performer. I get the the adjectives are wrong here.

We have KPIs we have measured for decades and the shot up when everyone went home, at first. Then they fell off about 20% from historical averages.

Why did this happen and how did work from home play a role?

1. Being connected to email and teams/slack all day is not conducive to getting work done (numerous studies back this up) in order to stay connected from home it's hard for lower performers to prioritize disconnecting and work.

2. Meetings (also not productive time) are up, because the impromptu hey I can grab 5 mins is much more difficult in the virtual world, especially when you aren't connect (see #1). Meeting ls are also less effective because everyone multitasks (see #1) and prepare less because they will always have their materials on their computer to fall back to. In the office meetings were computer free but for the meeting leader. All materials had to be prepared in advanced

3. Once the lower performers didn't have the peer pressure to perform that came from they got satisfied with giving the bare minimum. It's easy to close your laptop at 4:30 and go do something else at home. It's harder to walk past a room of your colleagues working hard to leave. That and you live in your personal to do list. Instead of taking 5 mins to talk to your colleague about that new opportunity we end up doing our laundry

4. Most everyone feels less accountable to a picture on a screen than to and a flesh and blood person the have met in real life that they have a personal relationship with. Our hires who were hired during the pandemic have much less connection to their colleagues, the culture and the company. They are often satisfied with the bare minimum (see 3) yet they expect to be promoted similar to past classes of people (we are up or out) who had higher KPIs and were more connected to the mission. People doing the best minimum hurts top performers the most because they are the ones who pick up the slack.


I am not a work from the office zealot, I think WFH has tremendous value depending on your task and performance level. If you are in the top 40% you should get some leeway but you should be in 1-3 days a week. Bottom 60% should be 2-5 days depending on level. New hires should be in the office everyday

We all get rewarded based on profitability, so the more efficient you are the better we do, but we still expect that everyone puts in 40-50 hours per week if they wish to be promoted in the org

Really appreciate the discussion on this and I got out of it what I was hoping for. Have a good weekend, everybody!

what good is it to require new employees to be present if your top people you want them learning from are only around a day or two a week?