Employers: Make WFO more like WFH
Talent deserves the best of working from home — at work
Since the dawn of humanity, employers believed they’re the boss of employees.
No longer. In the current tight labor market for top talent, invaluable 30-under-30 LinkedIn professionals are taking ownership of employers.
Today’s young urban professionals are more enlightened than the old workaholic, money-grubbing “Yuppies.” They demand more pay for less work, faster promotions and optimal work-life balance with less deadly stress. They deserve more respect, empowerment, mentoring and exceptional performance ratings for meeting expectations. Setting OOO boundaries beyond business hours is a given.
To recruit and retain people, their most important asset, successful employers need to establish corporate cultures that promote “equity and community and allow each team member to thrive” and an “environment in which each team member can feel proud of their work,” according to the HR consultant Workhuman.
Most of all, amazing young talent demands the right to work wherever, whenever, however they want. Especially from home.
The work-from-home v. work-from-office issue separates bad employers from good.
Bad employers:
— Put profits over people. They Bataan death march talent back to the office full or part time. Their HR is like Mao Zedong’s Red Guard enforcing a productive corporate culture or else.
— Need people in the office to monitor and ensure their productivity and whip them (usually metaphorically) if they don’t hit ever-increasing KPIs.
— Discard the desiccated husks of their humanity after draining the last ounce of productivity out of them. Not unlike the late 19th century Chicago meatpacker did to Jurgis Rudkus in Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle.”
Good employers:
— Put people over profits. They trust talent to be just as productive, even more so, when they work from home. They recognize cost savings from shrinking corporate office footprints and want to squeeze every ounce of productivity in any way that works.
— Express regret when, after a few bad quarters of failing investor expectations, have to terminate positions in yet another reorg restructuring rightsizing to ensure optimal productivity.
— Include big nonprofits that care deeply about humanity. “In 2023, nonprofits were forced to make tough decisions — including mergers, layoffs, and program cuts — to stay afloat,” The Chronicle of Philanthropy reported.
Studies show employees are more productive in the office, while studies show employees are more productive at home.
It’s confusing. What should talent-owned employers do?
Simple: Make working at the office more like working at home.
For example, offer:
1. Spacious private cubicles
Like a cool studio apartment. With private commodes, bespoke fridges stocked by the employee’s mom with exactly what they like however allergic or picky an eater, and a bed in case they need a nap to recover from the work stress.
Throw in a fainting divan in case they swoon from back-to-back meetings or a toxic boss in cargo shorts spewing incomprehensible Gen Z corporate slang.
Employees who identify as introverts and superior to social people yet demand their indulgence — no small talk, please — especially appreciate retreating to recharge.
2. Wear who you are
Clothes don’t make the man, woman or nongender person. Studies show comfort increases productivity. For instance, wearing keffiyehs can be more productive for changing hearts and minds into canceling Israel than those hip-hugger bell bottoms that canceled the Vietnam war.
3. Welcoming home life to work
Some progressive employers already permit dogs even if they sometimes attack employees. But it’s not the dog or dog parent’s fault. The bony white legs on Toxic Cargo Shorts Boss looked just like a rawhide chew treat.
Take Your Child to Work Day is still a thing after the white western cis male colonizing land-stealing patriarchy protested Take Your Daughter to Work Day.
Why not invite everyone to work who’s at home? Such as roommates, mates, spouses, fuck buddies who ignore signals it’s time to leave, ganja-addled old frat bros crashing on your sofa to “get back on their feet,” and the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade of home repair professionals. Include visiting in-laws and wailing infants, toddlers, tweens, teens and returning college grads who control the household into their late 20s.
4. Breaks for anything
At home, you can be away from your desk for as long as you want, whenever you want, for any reason you want. No need to lifesplain for greedy employers that do violence to your agency.
Say your dog, child or you have “the trots.” Any time you need, you can walk the dog, take your kid to the pediatrician because you introduced them too early to Ethiopian cuisine for their palate learning, or perch for hours on your ሽንት ቤት due to the Ethiopian cuisine while watching TikToks on your phone to your alimentary content.
5. Socializing opportunities
Some employees still love/sadly need to engage with colleagues in person. A certain needy someone sang bigly that people who love people are the luckiest people.
But for many superior introverts who bravely express their self-truth misanthropy on HuffPo, extraversion is among the DSM-5 classification of mental disorders and a cry for help.
Yet work socializing has its benefits. You can personally network to denigrate colleagues and leverage boss mentoring to take their job in the next reorg restructuring rightsizing to ensure optimal productivity.
6. Opening windows
No! Not Microsoft! Nobody knows what will happen after the latest update for usability that makes it unusable and causes apocalypse and that electronic burning smell.
Employees need to open actual windows at the office like at home. At the office, who knows what toxic air we’re huffing all day in sealed, sick, climate-controlled office buildings even if it’s LEED Platinum for the planet not necessarily you.
At home, you can open the windows, freely breathe the sweet fresh air, bask in the warming or cooling breezes, thrill in the trilling of birdsong, and adjust the HVAC above hypothermia.
You can also grouse on Nextdoor about deadly noise pollution from wage workers you care deeply about but don’t care for their loud garbage trucks, leaf-blowers and street construction that you, as a taxpayer, had a right to demand.
Indispensable young professional talent of the world, unite!
Jeffrey Denny is a Washington writer.
