The global pandemic and likely recession hasn’t had much effect on the job offers coming into my inbox. What also hasn’t changed is how many of these offers are irrelevant to me–recruiters just spitballing without considering whether I’m actually really likely to move across the country for a three month contract (I’m not and who would be?), or if I’m really a web developer (I’m not) rather than someone who writes web content (which anyone who took the time to read my profile would have realized). What I am finding particularly curious though is the now frequent provision “remote until the COVID-19 crisis is over.” Considering these are all short-term contracts, typically six months, a year at most, what exactly do they mean by “over,” considering that a potential vaccine is 18 months away at the most optimistic?
Presumably “over” doesn’t really mean “over” (any more than a year contract might actually last a year), but until state governors relax sheltering restrictions. At which point, returning to the workplace when this is “over” is likely to involve some recalibration–no more herding people into tiny cubicles stacked next to one another but rather spacing them out, maybe even the return of honest-to-god offices (for a little more on that, see my TalentZoo post A Room of One’s Own); temperature taking required for admittance; masks and social distancing. My question is, why bother with all that? Why not just let people continue to work remotely?
Okay, certain kinds of jobs require physical presence. Most office work doesn’t. There’s very little difference to messaging your manager in the cube next to you than doing it from home. Or working in front of your computer in a cube or in your home office set-up in the spare bedroom. Except maybe you have to wear pants in the office.
The argument for having people at the office is to promote team building and camaraderie, that humans are social creatures needing to interact physically with one another (although the number of meetings I’ve attended where people are paying more attention to their phones than the person running the meeting would tend to dispute that). However, this need for social interaction also tends to conflict with actually getting work done. Think of how many times a colleague leaning over cubicle wall to tell you about their kid’s high school project (as if you cared) while your spreadsheets weren’t getting filled up.
And, yes, some people just aren’t built to work remotely. Then again, people in general aren’t built for isolation and social distancing. But sometimes you just have to buckle up and deal. This is certainly one of those times.
So why do companies have this expectation that people should be back in the office any time soon, particularly during a time when being in the office could actually imperil their health? Because that’s the model they’ve always used. Managers somehow feel that they can’t manage unless they can actually see people. Which is another way of saying they can’t control people if they aren’t in the office. Which might mean they aren’t very good managers. Or, perhaps considering how spyware…er, I mean business software productivity tools…can monitor remote workers in real-time whether people are actually working or watching You Tube (likely they’re probably doing both), perhaps managers consider that a threat to their jobs.
In any event, it’s somewhat disheartening that particularly at a time when new ways of thinking are essential to both the health of people and the economy, the fallback position is that we’ll just continue to do what we’ve always done as soon as this is all “over.” Even if it’s not likely to be over for a long time.
