A Study for Your Workaholic Boss

[jedishrfu]

In this Australian 4-year study, it shows that working from home makes your employees happier, healthier, and they get more sleep.

https://farmingdale-observer.com/20...onclusion-working-from-home-makes-us-happier/

 

[Borg]

All the things that my wife has lost recently except for her health.

 

[javisot]

Going to my workplace is the closest thing to relaxing (Husband of a woman who works all day, father of a child who does not sleep)

 

[pinball1970]

In this Australian 4-year study, it shows that working from home makes your employees happier, healthier, and they get more sleep.

https://farmingdale-observer.com/20...onclusion-working-from-home-makes-us-happier/

Just a comment before I read the study because I have thought about this a lot since 2020.
I do not want to be influenced before I post.

I do not doubt the conclusions of study, being happier WFH but I think I maybe too set in my ways.

The reason I say this is that we started WFH going into and coming out of the COVID pandemic.

Saving money, time and stress for a 2-3 hour commute every day I totally get that. All of my colleagues reported on the benefits as well as feeling safer w.r.t. picking up the virus.

Also all those little things around the house that are left once you leave for work, even something as simple as collecting your mail, a call from the school, a visit from your gardener, you are there on hand and your working day is not disrupted significantly.
I get that too.

For me when I WFH, I missed the all the rituals plus I used public transport, so that was a time to catch up on the news, continue with my book at the time and PF!

The commute for me compared to someone caught in rush hour traffic was a polar opposite.

The other thing was the weird feeling I was at home and not at work, my brain telling me I am in home, not work mode.

When I worked in the lab, grabbing my lab coat and making sure all my bits and pieces were in the right pockets was like a mental switch, like doing my football boot laces before a match.

Let's go to work (footy was let's go to war!)

Finally the human connection, a part of my working day involves interaction with people. Not just other technologists but sales, IT, designers and support staff.

I will read the study with interest and feedback.

 

[Ibix]

Does anybody have the actual study? The closest thing to a reference in the article is "a team of researchers from the University of South Australia".

 

[harborsparrow]

I started working from home in 2010, doing mainly database coding. So the pandemic didn't bring anything new to me on that front. I hated commuting, I hated dealing with certain co-workers, and I hated all the extraneous meetings that being in the office inevitably resulted in.

I think WFH is very idiosyncratic for each person and studies are going to have to generalize too much. E.g., there are people who want to go to the office because it gives them contact with people or helps them escape their children (a surprising lot of parents, actually). And there are people like me who can concentrate better without interruptions due to other people's phone calls etc. and who want to harbor their strength or protect their health by avoiding a long commute. And there is simply geography; on Freelancer.com, I can hire a sysadmin for a day or a week who happens to live on the other side of the globe (and they are actually extremely skilled; a small outfit like mine could never afford those skills with "in office" situations).

People who bash WFH are, in my experience, mostly those same kinds of control freaks who over the years reengineered software workplaces from having individual offices to people being placed in cubicles, where surprisingly often the managers can walk around on a balcony looking down on them, and if some a**hole has a conference call on speakerphone, every cubicle around hears it, or if they play music loudly and it leaks out of their earphones, there is nothing their neighbors can do. And if they are unwilling to miss work, they come in with coughs and give their germs to everyone.

Nowadays someone has invented a label and slapped it onto people like me who can't do extremely detailed work such as writing code while there are noise distractions. Apparently, I am "neurodivergent". Give me a break!

The final complaint I have about in-office corporate environments (which I experienced for years) is that I want to eat a healthy diet, and being at the office, with a commute, made that difficult. Someone who eats like I do will not like the food available in restaurants, nor even mostly those in corporate cafeterias. WFH allows me to eat healthy, exercise when I need to, and concentrate without being bombarded by other people's noise or need for socialization.

And lastly, not commuting is better for the planet and, well, everyone.

 

[Frabjous]

Generalizing horribly…
In my experience, the productivity of good and bad workers is independent of location. The middle workers produce more in the office.

 

[javisot]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect

If we assume a job is so trivial that lighting, humidity, location, etc. aren't an issue, good employee social behavior positively influences productivity. This is supposedly what modern career management theories are based on, but I understand that these theories are becoming obsolete with this new way of working.

 

[Hornbein]

Nowadays someone has invented a label and slapped it onto people like me who can't do extremely detailed work such as writing code while there are noise distractions. Apparently, I am "neurodivergent". Give me a break!

Just take these pills for the rest of your life and you'll be normalized. Trust me.

The final complaint I have about in-office corporate environments (which I experienced for years) if that I want to eat a healthy diet, and being at the office, with a commute, made that difficult. Someone who eats like I do will not like the food available in restaurants, nor even mostly those in corporate cafeterias. WFH allows me to eat healthy, exercise when I need to, and concentrate without being bombarded by other people's noise or need for socialization.

When I worked in Silicon Valley my lunch was often a yam baked in the microwave. People always said, it'll explode. They never did.

Eating actual food was considered weird. So I wondered, what do They eat? Lipton's Cup Of Soup, processed stuff encased in Styrofoam and shrink wrapped in plastic. Hi tech fare.

Then I came to Japan and baked yams are popular. Here I'm normal. So there.

Tokyo is a very quiet city. People here don't like noise. It can be extreme. At the symphony the rustling of pants when crossing my legs is considered loud.

[Moderator's note: Post edited for content.]

 

[PeterDonis]

Thread closed for moderation.

 

[PeterDonis]

After some cleanup, the thread has been reopened.

 

[pinball1970]

And lastly, not commuting is better for the planet and, well, everyone.

Agree.

 

[pinball1970]

Does anybody have the actual study? The closest thing to a reference in the article is "a team of researchers from the University of South Australia".

This is the study https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0248008