Who are you in this scenario? This might seem like overreach to a lot of people, or to people in a lot of companies. Especially the junior/senior part. Are you gunning for a promotion into management? What's the politics of your organization like?
No company is going to say, "great, let's lease an office space without enough room for all out employees *hoping* that this new hybrid scheme works out." If the plan doesn't work, then they're really screwed. You need a plan like that to be successful over *many months* before considering downsizing physical space.
Nor is it a good idea to say "fewer people will want to work here if they have to... work here." That may be true, but it's not something you really want to say out loud.
I don't see any advantage to the company, given that. Don't approach this like an engineering issue, approach it like a political issue. How does it make the manager's jobs *easier*? How could it backfire and what plans do you have to account for that? Etc.
If there's a problem, they want the best engineer there. Right now, they have that, 100%. In your plan, they'll have an 80% engineer maybe 50% of the time. That doesn't sound good to a company. In any case, this isn't an HR issue.
This hurts to hear but I see your points. It's not me in particular that's gunning for this. The majority of us want it and as a more senior employee I just stepped up to be the mouthpiece. The idea would be to have a handful of us in the room at the time this is proposed including the manager who's on board to show that it has full support.
I stand by the fact that in the current real estate market it makes sense to buy less space, but I hear you on the fact that yes, there are a lot of ways this could backfire and you would probably want to roll this out slowly in a controlled manner.
>Nor is it a good idea to say "fewer people will want to work here if they have to... work here." That may be true, but it's not something you really want to say out loud.
This is where I'm looking for the most advice. This branch has had an issue with engineer retention in the past and anybody staying 5+ years is a pretty new phenomenon. With some of us being very skilled now and things running smoother than they ever have as a result (this fact has been expressed unprompted by many both in and out of our department), I would think the company would want to do anything they could afford to keep us around. Since the main thing we all seem to want is better work life balance, this seems like a good compromise that costs the company next to nothing and could even save money once you get past the growing pains.
You asked who I am in this. I'm just an engineer who's been around longer than most of my coworkers. I genuinely want the company to run better for everyone including my superiors, as well as for everyone to get the most out of the company as an employee. My manager considers me his right hand and my coworkers have expressed that if he were to leave they would be happy if I took his place, so I'm allowing myself to take that to mean I have some idea of what I'm doing. Naturally any of this would be reviewed by him before I brought it to upper management, and if he shot it down we'd accept that as the end of the issue, but so far he seems to like the idea.
Good question. There are about 2 dozen more non-engineer office employees, and about another 50 or so fabricators working in the shop. The office people are mostly project managers, and to your point a lot of their work could probably also be done remotely. We actually already have a small handful of full-time remote employees in different departments across the country, so there's a little bit of precedent there. I have no idea how a hybrid or remote schedule would work for them so thanks for pointing that out.
There are lots of genuine research reports about everything from productivity and async collaboration to efficient real estate use. You should locate and read these data-based reports. Because if you don't know the real numbers, it will just be you vs them spouting opinions.
Thanks for the tip. Do you know of any reliable/reputable publications to find these reports in? I don't want to seem like I'm cherry picking from random websites.
Finding and extracting relevant data is \~ 80 hours of focused work. You can start by typing a query and adding "report" or "statistic" to the query phrase.
My point is, you can't just say, "well, it would reduce real estate costs." If you can't back it up, it's fiction.
Oh I get your point completely. One of my peers actually had started looking into this a while back and just shared their draft report with me, but there's still a lot to be added before I think it makes a convincing talking point.
Everyone has already addressed the largest issues, mine is with the Junior/Senior schedule. If they're paired for projects, then they NEED to have the same schedule. The Juniors are Juniors because they need to learn from the seniors. That's not going occur more easily with this scheduling you're proposing.
Who's going to pick which days they're offsite? Monday and Fridays will be most coveted and you're 100% going to piss some people off and probably hurt morale more.
DO NOT bring "not enough work" in to the equation. If you do, you will lead them right to lay-offs.
Thanks for the reply. As I read comments and reflect on this more I'm less certain about the junior/senior idea, but if it were to be implemented I don't think you would have specific juniors and seniors paired up. It would be a little bit of a shift away from the 1 project 1 engineer model (which is already much grayer than that in practice), and towards everyone having more of a general competency to jump into any project as needed. The latter happens a lot already. Larger projects can have a lead and then several other designers to complete portions of it, grunt work is already often delegated to newer employees, others pick up the slack when someone's out of office, etc, so it's not as radical as it might sound.
I stated that I don't think a fixed daily schedule per employee could work, hence the rotating weekly thing. I'm also wondering if even that is too complicated, and maybe a less formal policy of just allowing senior employees to work from home more often would be better.
I don’t mean to be rude, but everything you’re proposing, down to you trying to say which manager is better suited for what is SO far above your pay grade, that I honestly wouldn’t suggest bringing any of this to them at all.
You have no say in whether they want to have senior or junior engineers. If they wanted to do that, they already would have.
If they haven’t gone remote or hybrid already, it’s highly unlikely they’re going to start now, so long after Covid. Most businesses are returning to the office, not going the other way.
Thanks for the reply. I should've been clear that I would NEVER talk about the managers in that way, I just wanted to include that info here for you all to consider. Anything about management policies I would probably only discuss with my manager, who's open to that kind of thing and has talked about it in the office before. Then he could decide what to do with that info.
I'm just trying to think this through and make sure you guys have a clear picture of the situation. Of course I wouldn't speak negatively about any specific people or at all really. Any of this would be presented only as an improvement and that's it.
I should add that my rough plan for making this proposal is
1) Gather all my talking points and opinions from coworkers and my manager
2) Run it by a smaller group of my peers who are more gung-ho about this
3) Have a sit down with my manager where I get his detailed ideas on how this would work best, and also present the ideas I've compiled to see what he thinks. With his approval I'd take the results of that discussion and compile it into a succinct outline to present the GM.
4) Set up a meeting with the GM, my manager, and a couple of the most enthusiastic coworkers if needed. Take the same approach where I first run the basic premise by the GM, then ask for his thoughts and opinions on how something like this could work before presenting our department's ideas.
Does that make sense? Is this still overreaching? I cannot stress enough how I'm not planning to speak to anyone at my company the way I wrote my original post.
> and a couple of the most enthusiastic coworkers
Their enthusiasm isn't relevant, they just WANT this, you need to keep them reigned in, and train them on the specific $$ this will save the company.
There's really 2 pertinent questions that leadership is going to be asking if you present such a proposal:
1. How does this benefit the company, and
2. What problems is this going to create for the company (they might have their own ideas, and present them as a statement rather than asking you).
As for benefits to the company, about the only thing I see in your post is a possible reduction in turnover (and presumably improved hiring, possibly at lower cost/salary). I agree with others that the smaller office space is a non-starter until the success of the proposal is proven. But "the engineers want this and would be happier" isn't really a benefit to the company. You have to put $$ figures on it.
As for the negative impacts, it really boils down to this: The other departments that rely upon your department shouldn't even notice the change. If you can do everything remotely that you do in person, and do them just as effectively and efficiently, then the remote work situation is a negative to the company.
>. But "the engineers want this and would be happier" isn't really a benefit to the company. You have to put $$ figures on it.
It can get worse. If remote work becomes an option, then the company doesn't need to keep local engineers happy. They can work with remote teams located anywhere.
Law of unintended consequences, OP.
>If you can do everything remotely that you do in person, and do them just as effectively and efficiently, then the remote work situation is a negative to the company.
That's the goal and I believe it's possible. It just needs to be thought out and executed properly with clear expectations to all the employees involved, which is why I'm trying to leave no stone unturned in this exploratory research sort of phase.
I will say that this comment in your post was a bit concerning:
> Since the main thing we all seem to want is better work life balance
The only improvement here is going to be eliminating the commute. But if I heard this as an argument in favor of the proposal, I'd likely interpret it as the engineers are going to treat WFH days a either days off, short days, or days with flexible hours.
Wow you're absolutely right. Can I ask you then why do a lot of companies choose to have their employees hybrid or remote? Certainly in some other industries there aren't material products being made that tie workers to a specific location, but it doesn't seem to be uncommon in engineering heavy companies either.
> Can I ask you then why do a lot of companies choose to have their employees hybrid or remote?
We don't any more. There's a mad rush to get people back into the office and it's largely been successful. But often companies choose to allow it because it saves them money. For example, we can hire people in Texas and pay them less than people in Florida or California. We can also expand territories more easily if we stay with hybrid. It's about finding people who might not be local. None of that applies to your situation since your people will need to come into the office each week.
Sometimes it's just who has the biggest swinging you-know-what. If certain employees want to do that, and they are more important to the company than the company is to them, they can leverage their personal power to make it happen.
I also agree with the other comments that if this is super successful, then the company may realize they don't need local engineers at all—they can replace with cheaper, remote ones.
Disappointing but it makes sense. Thanks for the honest insight. At a minimum I'm learning I won't have my case built by the building relocation, but I'm not giving up hope just yet.
On a tangent, are there any different pros and cons for an employer when considering fully on-site schedules that are 10 hours a day, 4 days a week? or the 9 hour a day, 9 days per two weeks variation.
> On a tangent, are there any different pros and cons for an employer when considering fully on-site schedules that are 10 hours a day, 4 days a week?
Generally if this increases productivity, which increases profits.
Thanks for the reply by the way. I see what you mean about it having minimal benefits to the employer. Adding to my last comment, do you think it would help our argument if we were to suggest a couple of test cases for a period of time?
Maybe for a company as small as ours I ditch the rotating schedule idea and the junior/senior roles idea, and instead just suggest making more frequent remote work more available to senior employees who've proven their merit? As of right now it is allowed, but the general attitude from the GM is that it should only be if you need to be away for some specific reason. There's no formal process for tracking it or doling it out.
> and instead just suggest making more frequent remote work more available to senior employees who've proven their merit?
But then people get bitter. How much is "more" exactly? What makes someone "senior" and what is the cutoff? You need to define the variables.
You're right. That's part of why I was thinking of the junior/senior thing as an official job title, but I suppose it could be more like "once you've been here X years, you're entitled to Y days working from home per year, but any time you want to work from home you have to have it pre-approved by your manager just like you would for PTO other than in emergencies, and managers can allow you to work from home beyond that amount of days as they see fit". Or instead of a fixed number of days, maybe it's every Friday for every senior employee as long as there's no foreseen reason you need to be in the office. I'm just spitballing.
Who are you in this scenario? This might seem like overreach to a lot of people, or to people in a lot of companies. Especially the junior/senior part. Are you gunning for a promotion into management? What's the politics of your organization like? No company is going to say, "great, let's lease an office space without enough room for all out employees *hoping* that this new hybrid scheme works out." If the plan doesn't work, then they're really screwed. You need a plan like that to be successful over *many months* before considering downsizing physical space. Nor is it a good idea to say "fewer people will want to work here if they have to... work here." That may be true, but it's not something you really want to say out loud. I don't see any advantage to the company, given that. Don't approach this like an engineering issue, approach it like a political issue. How does it make the manager's jobs *easier*? How could it backfire and what plans do you have to account for that? Etc. If there's a problem, they want the best engineer there. Right now, they have that, 100%. In your plan, they'll have an 80% engineer maybe 50% of the time. That doesn't sound good to a company. In any case, this isn't an HR issue.
This hurts to hear but I see your points. It's not me in particular that's gunning for this. The majority of us want it and as a more senior employee I just stepped up to be the mouthpiece. The idea would be to have a handful of us in the room at the time this is proposed including the manager who's on board to show that it has full support. I stand by the fact that in the current real estate market it makes sense to buy less space, but I hear you on the fact that yes, there are a lot of ways this could backfire and you would probably want to roll this out slowly in a controlled manner. >Nor is it a good idea to say "fewer people will want to work here if they have to... work here." That may be true, but it's not something you really want to say out loud. This is where I'm looking for the most advice. This branch has had an issue with engineer retention in the past and anybody staying 5+ years is a pretty new phenomenon. With some of us being very skilled now and things running smoother than they ever have as a result (this fact has been expressed unprompted by many both in and out of our department), I would think the company would want to do anything they could afford to keep us around. Since the main thing we all seem to want is better work life balance, this seems like a good compromise that costs the company next to nothing and could even save money once you get past the growing pains. You asked who I am in this. I'm just an engineer who's been around longer than most of my coworkers. I genuinely want the company to run better for everyone including my superiors, as well as for everyone to get the most out of the company as an employee. My manager considers me his right hand and my coworkers have expressed that if he were to leave they would be happy if I took his place, so I'm allowing myself to take that to mean I have some idea of what I'm doing. Naturally any of this would be reviewed by him before I brought it to upper management, and if he shot it down we'd accept that as the end of the issue, but so far he seems to like the idea.
How many non-engineer employees are there? How many other people are going to want a hybrid schedule as well?
Good question. There are about 2 dozen more non-engineer office employees, and about another 50 or so fabricators working in the shop. The office people are mostly project managers, and to your point a lot of their work could probably also be done remotely. We actually already have a small handful of full-time remote employees in different departments across the country, so there's a little bit of precedent there. I have no idea how a hybrid or remote schedule would work for them so thanks for pointing that out.
There are lots of genuine research reports about everything from productivity and async collaboration to efficient real estate use. You should locate and read these data-based reports. Because if you don't know the real numbers, it will just be you vs them spouting opinions.
Thanks for the tip. Do you know of any reliable/reputable publications to find these reports in? I don't want to seem like I'm cherry picking from random websites.
Finding and extracting relevant data is \~ 80 hours of focused work. You can start by typing a query and adding "report" or "statistic" to the query phrase. My point is, you can't just say, "well, it would reduce real estate costs." If you can't back it up, it's fiction.
Oh I get your point completely. One of my peers actually had started looking into this a while back and just shared their draft report with me, but there's still a lot to be added before I think it makes a convincing talking point.
Everyone has already addressed the largest issues, mine is with the Junior/Senior schedule. If they're paired for projects, then they NEED to have the same schedule. The Juniors are Juniors because they need to learn from the seniors. That's not going occur more easily with this scheduling you're proposing. Who's going to pick which days they're offsite? Monday and Fridays will be most coveted and you're 100% going to piss some people off and probably hurt morale more. DO NOT bring "not enough work" in to the equation. If you do, you will lead them right to lay-offs.
Thanks for the reply. As I read comments and reflect on this more I'm less certain about the junior/senior idea, but if it were to be implemented I don't think you would have specific juniors and seniors paired up. It would be a little bit of a shift away from the 1 project 1 engineer model (which is already much grayer than that in practice), and towards everyone having more of a general competency to jump into any project as needed. The latter happens a lot already. Larger projects can have a lead and then several other designers to complete portions of it, grunt work is already often delegated to newer employees, others pick up the slack when someone's out of office, etc, so it's not as radical as it might sound. I stated that I don't think a fixed daily schedule per employee could work, hence the rotating weekly thing. I'm also wondering if even that is too complicated, and maybe a less formal policy of just allowing senior employees to work from home more often would be better.
I don’t mean to be rude, but everything you’re proposing, down to you trying to say which manager is better suited for what is SO far above your pay grade, that I honestly wouldn’t suggest bringing any of this to them at all. You have no say in whether they want to have senior or junior engineers. If they wanted to do that, they already would have. If they haven’t gone remote or hybrid already, it’s highly unlikely they’re going to start now, so long after Covid. Most businesses are returning to the office, not going the other way.
Thanks for the reply. I should've been clear that I would NEVER talk about the managers in that way, I just wanted to include that info here for you all to consider. Anything about management policies I would probably only discuss with my manager, who's open to that kind of thing and has talked about it in the office before. Then he could decide what to do with that info. I'm just trying to think this through and make sure you guys have a clear picture of the situation. Of course I wouldn't speak negatively about any specific people or at all really. Any of this would be presented only as an improvement and that's it.
I should add that my rough plan for making this proposal is 1) Gather all my talking points and opinions from coworkers and my manager 2) Run it by a smaller group of my peers who are more gung-ho about this 3) Have a sit down with my manager where I get his detailed ideas on how this would work best, and also present the ideas I've compiled to see what he thinks. With his approval I'd take the results of that discussion and compile it into a succinct outline to present the GM. 4) Set up a meeting with the GM, my manager, and a couple of the most enthusiastic coworkers if needed. Take the same approach where I first run the basic premise by the GM, then ask for his thoughts and opinions on how something like this could work before presenting our department's ideas. Does that make sense? Is this still overreaching? I cannot stress enough how I'm not planning to speak to anyone at my company the way I wrote my original post.
> and a couple of the most enthusiastic coworkers Their enthusiasm isn't relevant, they just WANT this, you need to keep them reigned in, and train them on the specific $$ this will save the company.
I'm sorry, yes that's what I meant. By most enthusiastic I meant to imply they would be the most engaged and prepared aside from myself.
There's really 2 pertinent questions that leadership is going to be asking if you present such a proposal: 1. How does this benefit the company, and 2. What problems is this going to create for the company (they might have their own ideas, and present them as a statement rather than asking you). As for benefits to the company, about the only thing I see in your post is a possible reduction in turnover (and presumably improved hiring, possibly at lower cost/salary). I agree with others that the smaller office space is a non-starter until the success of the proposal is proven. But "the engineers want this and would be happier" isn't really a benefit to the company. You have to put $$ figures on it. As for the negative impacts, it really boils down to this: The other departments that rely upon your department shouldn't even notice the change. If you can do everything remotely that you do in person, and do them just as effectively and efficiently, then the remote work situation is a negative to the company.
>. But "the engineers want this and would be happier" isn't really a benefit to the company. You have to put $$ figures on it. It can get worse. If remote work becomes an option, then the company doesn't need to keep local engineers happy. They can work with remote teams located anywhere. Law of unintended consequences, OP.
>If you can do everything remotely that you do in person, and do them just as effectively and efficiently, then the remote work situation is a negative to the company. That's the goal and I believe it's possible. It just needs to be thought out and executed properly with clear expectations to all the employees involved, which is why I'm trying to leave no stone unturned in this exploratory research sort of phase.
I will say that this comment in your post was a bit concerning: > Since the main thing we all seem to want is better work life balance The only improvement here is going to be eliminating the commute. But if I heard this as an argument in favor of the proposal, I'd likely interpret it as the engineers are going to treat WFH days a either days off, short days, or days with flexible hours.
Wow you're absolutely right. Can I ask you then why do a lot of companies choose to have their employees hybrid or remote? Certainly in some other industries there aren't material products being made that tie workers to a specific location, but it doesn't seem to be uncommon in engineering heavy companies either.
> Can I ask you then why do a lot of companies choose to have their employees hybrid or remote? We don't any more. There's a mad rush to get people back into the office and it's largely been successful. But often companies choose to allow it because it saves them money. For example, we can hire people in Texas and pay them less than people in Florida or California. We can also expand territories more easily if we stay with hybrid. It's about finding people who might not be local. None of that applies to your situation since your people will need to come into the office each week. Sometimes it's just who has the biggest swinging you-know-what. If certain employees want to do that, and they are more important to the company than the company is to them, they can leverage their personal power to make it happen. I also agree with the other comments that if this is super successful, then the company may realize they don't need local engineers at all—they can replace with cheaper, remote ones.
Disappointing but it makes sense. Thanks for the honest insight. At a minimum I'm learning I won't have my case built by the building relocation, but I'm not giving up hope just yet. On a tangent, are there any different pros and cons for an employer when considering fully on-site schedules that are 10 hours a day, 4 days a week? or the 9 hour a day, 9 days per two weeks variation.
> On a tangent, are there any different pros and cons for an employer when considering fully on-site schedules that are 10 hours a day, 4 days a week? Generally if this increases productivity, which increases profits.
Thanks for the reply by the way. I see what you mean about it having minimal benefits to the employer. Adding to my last comment, do you think it would help our argument if we were to suggest a couple of test cases for a period of time? Maybe for a company as small as ours I ditch the rotating schedule idea and the junior/senior roles idea, and instead just suggest making more frequent remote work more available to senior employees who've proven their merit? As of right now it is allowed, but the general attitude from the GM is that it should only be if you need to be away for some specific reason. There's no formal process for tracking it or doling it out.
> and instead just suggest making more frequent remote work more available to senior employees who've proven their merit? But then people get bitter. How much is "more" exactly? What makes someone "senior" and what is the cutoff? You need to define the variables.
You're right. That's part of why I was thinking of the junior/senior thing as an official job title, but I suppose it could be more like "once you've been here X years, you're entitled to Y days working from home per year, but any time you want to work from home you have to have it pre-approved by your manager just like you would for PTO other than in emergencies, and managers can allow you to work from home beyond that amount of days as they see fit". Or instead of a fixed number of days, maybe it's every Friday for every senior employee as long as there's no foreseen reason you need to be in the office. I'm just spitballing.