“Hell No, We Won’t Go!”

Companies are having trouble motivating employees to return to the office.

Photo by Ken Whytock on Unsplash.

From the home offices of the New York Times in New York City to the city government offices of San Francisco, employers are having trouble motivating workers to return to the office.

Efforts to require teleworking employees to return to in-person work have been met with resistance in many cases. In fits and starts, workforces have returned- if greatly diminished- only to be furloughed off to their home offices again due to rising community Covid19 numbers or new variants.

This continuing uncertainty, coupled with the rise of remote work tech, have led to changes in the nature of office work. Which of these changes are likely to become a permanent fixture in the workplace and which are likely to be curtailed by the pressures of the free market in a downturning economy remains to be seen.

Increasingly, the debate over remote versus in-person office work has left employees on one side of the debate and employers on the other. Office workers, perhaps not unexpectedly, have found they prefer to set their own schedules with less frequent direct oversight from their bosses.

Employers and corporate sales executives nervously watching plunging company bottom lines in 2022, also not unsurprisingly, have found they very much prefer the old direct-oversight model.

More importantly, companies are openly wondering if remote work can produce the kind of high-producing work model popularized over the last few decades of globalization. That work model has its benefits: With it, post-Industrial Age America has invented, engineered and bought to market the most incredible advancements the world has ever seen.

A device which once took up an entire room of space, and required industrial-level cooling equipment to maintain, now fits in our pocket or on even on our wrist.

The personal computer, and the internet, has changed so many things in society.

The rise of remote work may be another such change.

In addition to learning to appreciate the benefits of a flexible work schedule and a home office during the worst of Covid19, employees also had time to pursue other activities during their long hours stuck…