HR software biz BambooHR surveyed more than 1,500 employees, a third of whom work in HR. The findings suggest the return to office movement has been a poorly-executed failure, but one particular figure stands out - a quarter of executives and a fifth of HR professionals hoped RTO mandates would result in staff leaving.
According to the report, most employees working remotely and in-person both feel the need to demonstrate productivity, which for more than a third of employees means being seen socializing and moving around the office. That intense need to be visible may actually be harming productivity, study author and BambooHR’s own head of HR Anita Grantham concluded in her findings.
A full 42 percent of employees who responded to the Bamboo survey said they show up solely to be seen by bosses and managers. If bosses think their presence in the office is making any difference to the amount of work getting done, the results indicate that’s not the case.
I am wildly unproductive when I WFH. I literally cannot focus on work tasks when I have so many more interesting things available to me to do. I’ve tried everything to make myself focus but the best I can do is maybe 3/4 hours of the day interrupted by doom scrolling or messing around on my personal desktop. My coworkers all WFH as well and seem to have no issues getting their stuff done so I’d never argue that WFH is bad for everyone but for me personally it is. I need the structure of going in the office. Thankfully my job gives us the choice.
Get a different job.
For years I thought I just hated working. After I was injured at work and had some off time, I picked up a book called “Discover What You Are Best At” by Linda Gail. It helped me assess my strengths and pointed me to a job I actually enjoyed doing.
Don’t leave us hanging. what was your job before and after?
It doesn’t matter.
The point is that there are thousands of jobs out there that I never even considered.
Also, when I took the test I found that the job I was least suited for [clerk] was the one I’d always looked for because it seemed easy.
We don’t know ourselves.
I’d like to do something outdoors but I can’t find a job like that which pays enough and doesn’t require a totally different education. I’m not even able to afford the things I want on the salary I have now.
Get the book. When I got it I’d never considered the career I got. There are jobs out there you never heard of.
I’m going to look it up. Thanks for the suggestion.
Good luck.
Have you tried taking your laptop to a library or coffee shop or something?
Sort of. I have to go on site to different locations we support sometimes and I will post up in a out of the way corner and do some work while I’m waiting on a local tech or something. Never had a issue concentrating then. It’s kind of a pain to work off only one laptop screen though with what I’m usually doing.
I have the opposite problem. When I work at the office so much time is spent ‘harmonizing’ with the other workers, I get a lot less done on those days than if I had worked from home and was able to focus on my tasks.
But some people can also listen to heavy metal while working, whereas I prefer silence. 😁
I get the issues with doom scrolling, but the desktop issue is pretty easily fixed. I have my home office set up with a couple KVM switches so that I can’t be on my work laptop and home desktop at the same time, because both systems use all the same peripherals. That at least makes it harder to justify switching over and being (more) unproductive during my shift.
Also, I have found it helps to have music or a podcast going in the background to help keep your focus on what you’re supposed to be doing.
If you have ADHD WFH could be a lot more challenging. Without external structure or factors aid track of time it makes it super tough to work isolated like that.
Could definitely be a factor. I’ve not been diagnosed but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn I have an attention deficit issue.
I work in corporate IT so my job is basically to sit there twiddling my thumbs and wait until something breaks. Then I remote onto the server to fix the issue. Which means I was basically working remotely anyway the server might have been in the same building as me but I was never physically going down there I was still remoting on so working from home isn’t much different for me.
I’m much more productive now because I don’t have people coming and asking me questions, for which answer is in the corporate knowledge base. Now they actually have to check it.
I’m so sorry for all these other replies you got to a simple explanation that you personally prefer working in the office. You do you mate!
Same here. Need a teammate, a working atmosphere. Don’t necessarily have to work on the same thing, but i crave a person i know also working next to me.
Your problem is a severe lack of discipline. If you need someone watching over your shoulder and putting pressure on you in order to get work done then you have a big discipline problem.
For me it’s about getting the job done. If I don’t get the job done then I’ve shown my employers that I am useless and I lose my job.
Keeping my job is about as much pressure as I need in order to be productive. For that I can put my phone down long enough to complete my tasks.
I guess I can’t relate to the concept of dragging ass all day. Aren’t you worried about losing your job? Is that not enough encouragement? Does someone else pay your bills?
I’m in the office by myself most days. There’s no one over my shoulder. It’s just something about being in a different environment. It doesn’t occur to me to go on the internet to start doom scrolling or researching stuff for personal projects. I do admit it’s a discipline issue but nothing I’ve tried to overcome it has worked. I’m open to suggestions.
The problem is with my job there isn’t a lot of “getting the job done” I’m the middle man on a lot of different things so there’s a lot of just sending emails to different people to gather information or get something I can’t do myself done. I’m pretty good about getting actionable things taken care of right away but all the setting up meetings and replying to emails stuff is tedious as hell and I find it really hard to focus on when I’m at home.
Yes, That’s why I go into the office to work.
Did you get lost and stumble into the wrong community or something my friend? Could you maybe dial it down from 11? Jeeze.