There are a lot of news articles about “back to the office”, but they recirculate the same bad ideas. Let’s provide some new ideas for the media to circulate. It may also have the effect of making the office less terrible.
I would like my work computer to do Windows updates lightning quick in the office. It currently takes weeks, in or out of the office. Stopping in for a day makes no difference, so there is no point. Now, if there was a point, I would go in.
What would get you in the office?
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Honestly, a much much higher salary. There are lots of things I’m going to have to deal with if I were to go back to the office; namely heavy traffic, transportation expenses, added stress, clothes (I mean, I’d have to use office-appropriate clothes whereas nowadays I have to be presentable only when I have meetings), food, waking up and preparing earlier than usual (sometimes up to 3 hours earlier!) and getting home late which gives me less free time, etc.
They’re going to have to offer a really lucrative salary for me to even consider returning to the office.
A higher salary would be of help to cover additional expeses related to coming to the office.
However, we also need a nice office to come to that needs to be as comfy as the one home.
You know what? I never even thought about that. I agree 100%. That’s gonna be a tall order for companies, though. I mean, different people probably have different requirements to be comfortable.
That’s why the whole open office and/or cubicle farm office needs to die. Yes, it will take more investment, but go back to everyone actually having their own small office that they can make their own and make comfortable. This isn’t hard.
Not to disagree with your sentiment, but the economics of space and construction costs would be a hard sell here. Plus, many managers don’t think employees deserve comfort and privacy thus the push to return to the office.
Oh, I agree entirely. I didn’t mean to insinuate that what I was suggesting was reasonable and/or something they would choose to invest in. Just sharting out ideas over here. Cheers.
Adding onto this, the ability to choose to not come in and/or come and go as needed. In 5 years I haven’t had my kids in day care and it’s important for me to be able to take them to school and pick them up.
As a minimum? Pay me for the commute. I’m only doing it because of management so they should compensate me.
I’d settle for a 4 day week of 8 hour days
Nothing. Quality of life of working from home cannot be replicated. Or the office would have to be in my street, which is pretty unrealistic
Nothing for me also.
The flexibility to do things when you have a few minutes (like breaks) is worth a lot to me, it makes me more productive and less stressed about time management.
Plus I have cats and no other humans here so it’s a quiet, comfortable, loving environment, and no job can provide that for me.
I used to work in an office which was doen the street once. It still sucked.
It does not solve every other issue that work environment can bring, that’s for sure
Or the office would have to be in my street,
Could become a road sweeper?
How about a raise?
Paid commute (time and expenses) and free lunch.
I would go one further and say commute time paid at 1.5 rates, cause of the hours it needs to be done
And the hazard! Cars are super dangerous, and odds are good that if you’re commuting, there are some nearby, even if you’re doing bus, train, or bike.
An immense raise, free mass transit to the office and a free hot lunch every day would be the beginning of negotiations
Yeah I’m not even sure that’d do it for me. Like theoretically if they paid me $1M/y I’d do it, but then only until I earned enough to work at a better job or retire and just make FOSS shit
- 50% raise
- Private 12x15 office
- Free pot gummies (for Fridays, of course;)
- Free transportation to/from office
- Every day is Bring Your Dogs To Work Day
Commute is part of working hours (with a reasonable limit)
If they expect you to commute to the office every day, then you clock in when you leave your house, and clock out when you get home (assuming you’re not stopping between to do personal errands).
Let’s be real. This is unworkable. A fixed “commute” pay sure but
- the company has no way to know how long it takes to commute each day
- the company does not choose where you choose to live
- your distance from office would be a hiring factor - just a mess for discrimination lawsuits.
I am for the risk of the commute not falling entirely on the employee. But “job pays for commute” always strikes as a silly proposal.
- You can click in and out when you leave and arrive home. They absolutely can know how long it takes each way
- No but they’d fire you if you moved too far to commute, and they pay you a wage that may or likely doesn’t cover the cost of living in your area
- Hate to break it to you champ but it already is a factor for onsite workers. Despite being able to do so I was not chosen for a job because I lived too far from the office as a stated reason.
Money
A hell of a lot of it.
Nice try, Susan from HR!
Given “lots more money” is prevalent in the responses, I hope Susan in HR is reading this.
Absolutely nothing. No amount of money or threats or “perks”. I work in software and my entire career has been built on flexible, mostly-remote work; particularly creating & leading remote, geographically distributed teams. I get the best talent no matter where they are, and use tools like Slack to work seamlessly in real-time and asynchronously across many disparate time zones. This wasn’t some new thing for me when COVID hit, this is how I’ve operated for more than 20 years.
I don’t mind going places for specific purposes: visiting clients, classified/sensitive discussions that can’t be transmitted, on-site work (like installations, research, etc), or team-building events like lunches, dinners, etc… but under no circumstances will I waste my time commuting to some specific ”office” daily just because. I am an efficiency expert and I will not tolerate having my time or my teams time wasted by incompetent, out-of-touch multi-millionaires that don’t realize the 80s ended 30 years ago.
No. I went remote 11 years ago. I have no intention of going back to an office ever again.
3x base salary at least. No-thought commute, so maybe provide transportation for me. I currently live what is about 1.5hrs away each way now and there isn’t a public transportation option.
Commute time should count towards my “8 hour work day”. No distracting desk drive bys. Provided breakfast and lunch or an optional lunch stipend or whatever to cover if I go somewhere near the office.
Not sounding great for the company? It isn’t meant to. It would be nearly impossible to get me to go back to the office, as it should be.
I’m not being unreasonable. I am at least twice as productive since working from home and even simple internal reports can prove that. I’m also 2-3x happier and less stressed, nothing can really replace that.
My doc asked me to buy a thing that graphs my blood pressure. I happened to be using it before and after I quit my increasingly toxic RTO job and landed a tricky interview with a job with ‘remote except where legally required’ in its union contract.
The graphing is neat. It goes steadily up, up, up, up and then goes back down starting on the day I quit.
An office in my city and within 10-15 minutes walking distance.
A shit-tonne more money. Like, more than the extra time spent travelling to and from work worth of salary.
Honestly, you are paid by the hour, so why not travel hours?
Worked for a guy back in the early 2010s that paid for travel to the work site, was pretty rad
That brings some weird factors into play. If I’m slightly more qualified to work a job than another candidate, but I live across town and the next best guy lives down the street, it’ll be hard to justify choosing me over a factor unrelated to my performance.
Also, what if I move way into the country or the next major city over? (I live in Denver, and it’s not uncommon for people to commute from Colorado Springs). If that adds 2+ hours of daily round trip commuting to my day over something that was 100% my choice, it’s not really fair to the employer either. I’m not a “think about the businesses” type normally, but that is kinda BS for someone to make a decision that increases someone else’s costs (or decreases their output) by 25%
Yeah, there of course should be a limit. But these things take your time and time is money.
To bring another opinion to all the other comments, each week I’m trying to go into the office more often than I already do (2-3/5 times per week currently) which I feel is not much, but after reading some comments, you guys must think I’m a maniac already lol.
Now why would someone do that? First, I got a new job like half a year ago and I absolutely love it. First of all, my current commute time is around 25 minutes, door to door, in clean public transportation. Second, we got free water, Softdrinks, Coffee, Snacks, even fruits and cereal in the office. So no matter what I need to energize, it’s there. At home, I usually don’t. Or I do, but still, it’s better to have ‘free’ you know?
Also, I love my colleagues. They’re very young on average, incredibly skilled and highly intelligent. Also from many different countries. It’s always fun talking to them and getting different insights on all kinds of things. We also usually take smaller breaks to play table tennis or table football.
Home office is great too, for days I really need to focus or have a lot of meetings. Or have private appointments, deliveries, or whatever. I can also take Homeoffice whenever I want and no one cares at all.
But still, it gets boring and lonely. Being in the office is great for my social factor and currently feels more like going to see friends, rather than working.
See you’re very clearly a textbook introvert so on-site work around people feels rewarding to you.
I also like going to the office to socialise. But I absolutely don’t plan on getting any of my actual work done on those days.
If I wanted to work, I would stay home.
See you’re very clearly a textbook introvert
Wtf how could you tell, it’s 100% correct
Whoops rofl I meant the opposite of what I typed.
Lol wtf haha. I’m not really an extrovert tho, I just really enjoy being around people and having fun… even though I can never start a conversation with someone myself, if I haven’t known them for years already.
I’m also awful at keeping up conversations, my smalltalk game is straight up non-existent. Maybe one leads to another or so. But when I warmed up with others I tend to love being around them. At least for a while, sometimes I need to refresh my social battery again, but I feel we’re all kinda like that
Fair fair fair. I’m definitely not going to tell you what you are, but this:
sometimes I need to refresh my social battery again, but I feel we’re all kinda like that
Is really textbook extrovert, haha. Like I love hanging out with people too, and chatting, and grabbing pints, etc. But because I’m an introvert, it drains me. So if I go to a big event, I need a couple of weeks to myself before I feel like I have the energy to do that again.
I mean it actually is the exact to me but I realized, if I do that I just drift off into it more and more extreme. Until I feel quite lonely so now I push myself to be less like that haha
A couple of things:
- commute time counts as work time
- no open plan landscape office
- no ‘clean desk’ policy but the ability to personalise your workplace
- dishwasher and general kitchen stuff not being a ‘shared responsibility’ but someone’s job.
- office being in a nice neighborhood with fun things to do after work or during lunch
My employer spent the past ~10 years de-personalising our offices, and now they wonder why people don’t like to hang out in their sterile ‘clean’ building.
Ha the shared kitchen responsibilities is such a good call.
Damn we were putting up with so much bullshit in the office
