Dell had it all figured out. The venerable computer company wouldn’t force people back into the office. Instead, it would just insist that all staffers show up at the office for at least three days a week.
If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be laid off — they just wouldn’t be promoted. (Unspoken was that this new policy would serve as a way of “thinning the herd.”)
Given a choice between not getting promoted or continuing to work at home, half of the employees have elected to stay home, thank you very much.
I’m sorry, Dell. This is 2024, not 2014. Now that people have gotten a taste of working from home, they’re not going back to the office. You’d think that would be clear by now — now just at Dell, but almost everywhere.
Why? Let me count the reasons:
- No commute on crowded highways;
- A better life/work balance;
- Cost savings;
- Flexibility to choose where to live (and work).
- More control over your workplace.
I’ve been working from home for decades, which makes me something of an exception compared to a lot of workers. But my experience holds for people who got their work-from-home start during the Covid-19 pandemic.
I used to work out of a Manhattan office, but I lived in New Carrollton, MS. How did I do it? I took Amtrak to work on Monday and returned home on Friday. I’d joke that I walked to work — first to my local train station and then from Penn Station to the office. There were just a few hours in the middle when I’d work from the dining car.
More often than not, though, I’d just work from home.
When I decided to move to Asheville, NC, in 2001, my bosses agreed to let me move because, as I told them then, I could always catch a same-day flight if they really needed me in the office. But, as I told them, I doubted there would be any reason I’d need to be there.
I was right. While I still fly to New York City occasionally for work, I never had to be there for the job.
Better still. I had more time to be home — and I saved money to boot. It’s cheaper to make a sandwich in my kitchen than to get lunch at a deli near the office in midtown Manhattan. Finally, I love living in mountainous and green Asheville rather than the flat and asphalt-covered area inside the Washington, DC beltway.
In short, I’m happy working at home and have been for more than two decades. Most people who work from home feel the same.
Companies might want people’s rumps back in office chairs, but according to a recent Gartner report, 48% of employees say their company’s mandates prioritize what leaders want rather than what employees need to do good work.
Yes, that’s right. At far too many companies, the desire for control trumps what people really need to do their best work.
In particular, Caitlin Duffy, the Gartner HR practice director, said: “High-performing employees are more easily able to pursue opportunities at organizations that offer hybrid or fully remote policies.”
If they don’t get those work-from-home opportunities, they’ll leave. That, in turn, “means losing high-performers to attrition, costs organizations in terms of productivity, [can cause] difficulty in backfilling the role, and the overall loss of high-quality talent available to fill critical positions,” Duffy said.
Ding! Ding! Ding!
Here’s another piece of evidence that people are not, in capital letters, returning to the office. According to the latest Moody’s commercial real estate analysis, office vacancy rates have never been higher. Just over one in five offices is now vacant. (The only reason that percentage isn’t higher is that companies have yet to be able to get out of long-term leases.)
Might I note that once that lease has ended, companies won’t have to pay for that office space. It’s a win-win —unless your business is commercial real estate.
Put it all together, and what do you get? You get the new work culture of the early-mid-21st century and beyond. It’s all work from home from here on out, folks.
Deal with it. And enjoy it.