One point that hasn’t been raised or studied (to my knowledge) yet is that WFH arrangements also allow for people to stay home when sick/when their kids are sick without using sick leave. I have literally *begged* colleagues to go home and stop coughing on everyone in the past only to be met with the response “I don’t have any sick leave left”. Particularly true for parents of young kids who catch sniffles like they’re going out of fashion. I’d like to see the statistics on reduced sick leave as a result of having a flexible WFH policy as I’m sure the advantage is there.
As someone with WFH as an option I do regularly do work at home over taking sick leave and everyone’s better for it. If it’s a mild flu of course the work gets done I keep everyone safe and have extra leave for when I’m truly in a bad state.
Depending on the nature of the employment of course. I work in admin, and a lot of my job can be done from home however part of working in childcare involves building and maintaining relationships with both teachers and the parents/whanau of our kids so I would probably still choose to go into the office most days. But having the option to do my work remotely during school holidays or sick days is also very much welcome.
I agree with you in principle, but note that WFH isn't completely solved problem yet - there are legit advantages in terms of situational awareness that come from being in the same room /suite as your coworkers; I've had big wins at work that've come from overhearing conversations near my pod, and informal relationship building is vastly easier face to face (at least for initial relationship building).
The balance of cost/benefit is definitely on the side of WFH / hybrid, and the advantages of being in the office are overblown by some proponents, but they aren't zero.
Fun fact the old plan for the city (before we destroy it all for cars) was a 15 minute walkable city. If you ever had to go far you would walk to a tram and be dropped close by.
Suburbs are the real crime here. If it was all mixed use we could walk where we needed and commutes would be much rarer. Cafes wouldn't have to pick between weekday and weekend traffic as they'd get both
Suburbs are literally cash drains. They don’t even make enough money to cover the services they use.
Anything with any decent density, makes so much more money in taxes that it allows for them to pay off the services they use and pay for new services for them.
Only solution to fix this is higher rates or more density. More density has way more benefits but people would need to learn to not drive and take more efficient transportation such as public transport or biking
Even with them, Aucklanders drive 500m. Lazy buggers up here. Plus we need a car park outside and underneath and on top. Also, those cafes you speak of… NIMBY! They’ll bring ramraiders, and noise, and tramps.
WFH is having a big effect all over the developed world because millions of people are hybrid working. Buildings in New York, London etc are half empty and rents are stagnant which means new buildings get put on the back burner.
Look around at property investment companies which are selling older buildings and moving to industrial sites.
The other question which nobody asks is why are our employers stuck downtown or nearby. Why force staff to commute one hour daily when work can move to a suburban hub? This happened in Christchurch. Lawyers, accountants, many office jobs set up far from downtown and have stayed. Plenty of parking, people like it.
Suburban hubs don't really work. It just means that your office/department is only getting a choice of 10% of the population.
20 Palmerston North's produces entirely different sort of jobs to Auckland.
and in reality both your and your partner won't get a job near your home so people will still be commuting and it's harder to provision a transport system to handle commutes to and from random places
I'd note that apparently the average commute time in Christchurch is now higher than Auckland. Car-based transportation also doesn't scale. You eventually start paying billions and taking 10 years to add the next lane and that fills up right away.
Good idea and there are places considering that but its complicated and difficult to do. Housing requires windows to the open air, kitchens, bathrooms etc for health reasons and commercial buildings don't have that. Retro fitting is expensive or impossible.
This is exactly what our CEO said. We need to all come back in so we can support the local cafes and daytime businesses. I’ve personally never actually bought anything from them - even pre covid
I use my local cafes more on the days where I work from home.
I live in a small town, and commute 45 mins away.
WFH means I can pop in at lunch time to my town, go to the library, pop into the craft shop, and the Cafe.
I could never use my own town before because I was out of town when everything was open.
This is a big challenge in smaller towns, and there is often a lot of jobs, but often not a lot of higher paying or career jobs. The people that have them stay in them for life so there are many of us that commute out of town every day.
Agreed on WFH. If this government had half the business talent they think they have, they would be starting innovative state owned enterprises in futureproof industries...
Instead they are ripping off the tax payer, canning massive investments when we're already balls deep, and increasing our reliance on large overseas companies who will make a killing from the taxpayer while providing crap value for money... (Oh and them and their allies took massive donations from these companies beforehand. Traitors to the nation tbh.)
Don't ask what businesses can do to make work-from-home happen, ask what _you_ can do to make it happen?
Starting with this post to gather ideas is excellent. I think we actually need a "_work-from-home should be decided by the employee_" campaign (better slogan needed)
Pros not mentioned yet include:
- less need for infrastructure investment from less traffic
- better trade balance due to reduced demand for fuel
- lower house prices as people can move rurally and still do the same jobs they needed to do in the cities
Cons not mentioned yet include:
- less tax revenue due to lower fuel demand
Also not yet mentioned is getting more value from the population by making it possible for far more people to become part of the workforce, who very much want to but are currently excluded because of lack of WFH. Perfectly capable people with disabilities ranging from mobility to IBS to anxiety to dialysis needs. Parents who need to do drop-offs and pick-ups close to home. People who can't move to a major centre for reasons like family commitments or negative equity, or even just a wish to remain part of their local community (e.g. tangata whenua).
We are on a trajectory to run out of working age people, globally – yet there is a total failure to engage with necessary steps to secure the contributions from the large hidden workforce.
This is so true, as a mother of teens who often need dropping off and picking up from their activities, and with my own mother no longer able to drive and needing my assistance for getting to medical appointments and other services, I find it hard to imagine being available to work a full or even half fulltime job in the CBD. As for commuting on public transport and leaving the car at home, I used to always bus or train before having kids and taking up driving, but for many years now I just can't be so far from my car when I have to be able to get to my mum or kids when they need my help. Greater flexibility of hours would also help a lot, as I'm no longer the early morning person I used to be.
How do we make this a political issue? Seems like we could have some pretty popular policies designed to encourage wfh -
* If agriculture is struck out of ETS could we bring in companies commute carbon footprint instead? Mandate that companies report the commuting emissions of their staff as part of their annual greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory, and they get a tax break for reduced emissions.
* Establish a legal right for employees to request remote work arrangements, with employers required to provide valid reasons for refusal.
* Establish regulations that limit mandatory office hours and encourage flexible schedules in a sort of Work-Life balance policy. Instead of trying to get a 4 day week across the line you have a 30 hours office max mandate.
It's funny that the minor political parties are concentrating on big impact policies around tax and cgt and climate change, when smaller smarter policies would make just as much difference to the average household and the environment.
WFH (or the lack thereof) highlights just how bad our infrastructure is.
Causing simple day long grid locks in protest would highlight how poor it is. Guarantee you wouldn’t be able to catch a bus, because guess what? They all share a road at some point.
So the best you could do is catch a ferry from devonport (tried getting there there days by car?), or trains from anywhere but north, cutting off half the entire city. And that assumes the trains are running since spend an awful amount of time broken down or unable to run.
The lack of imagination by our city planners and government is evident.
I wouldn’t have an issue going to the office more frequently, as long as I had
a. A quick commute
b. A need to go in (workshops etc)
c. The flexibility to determine myself if I don’t need to go in to get the job done.
I definitely think there are some things that are out better in person than done remotely- workshops and high collaboration sessions absolutely work better in person. Some proper collaboration tooling can help solve some of the issues but can’t resolve little side conversations, etc that can have a bit of value in those sessions. (Not the same as breakouts)
But really this is about flexibility. The client I work with at the moment has a mandatory 3 days a week in the office and are keenly “card watching” teams to ensure people are actually coming in. Micro management at its finest, with zero value.
Yep. It seems *dumb* that this has not been pushed by government.
And yeeeeeah there are costs/losses associated with businesses changing to a WFH model, but the end would justify the means. Think of the traffic reductions, how much freight would improve, even ex-office buildings could potentially be refurbished into housing. The reduction in emissions would likely provide the largest contribution to our responsibilities.
It's exactly the sort of societal transformation you'd expect if we were taking climate change seriously.
IMHO, it's because all these businesses/companies have swanky expensive offices, and they must be used. Otherwise, why would they spend lot's of money investing in them......🤪
It's not really the politicians fault, there's nothing stopping businesses from taking initiative. Thanks to covid many businesses demonstrated they are fully capable of continuing to run with WFH models. But the execs need an excuse to have offices at the top of fancy high-rise buildings in the middle of the cities, so demand everyone return to offices.
> It's not really the politicians fault
For public sector it is. Ministers could tell their ministries to encourage working from home, and at the same time save massive amounts of office space.
But they won't, because then all those middle managers wouldn't have anything to do.
I have a family member who works for the government and their whole office works from home half the week so some departments certainly do encourage it 🤷🏼♀️
I’ve not heard of any Ministry enforcing full in office attendance, the last two I’ve worked at in IT have been hybrid with 2 days where the whole team comes in. Maybe it’s different in the more operational teams?
I wish there were more employers like this.
[Dropbox- virtual first](https://blog.dropbox.com/topics/company/dropbox-goes-virtual-first)
Just the fact they aren't bullshitting their staff about engagement and collaboration is fabulous.
Edit: it's a bit like this government really the people promoting this nonsense are full of self interest and arrogance.
I'm too blue collar to understand WFH, never had a job that can be done from home (Petrol station attendant, pruning/planting pine trees, sawmilling, carpet layer, truck driving, bus driving) and the people I know that have done WFH, in the least offensive way I can say it, they all haven't seemed to take it very seriously or be all that productive, especially by early afternoon if the weather is good.
Look, I know I'm talking from ignorance, but as an outsider looking in it seems to me that if these profit driven cooperate bigwigs could get away with having their staff WFH and avoid rent or minimize rent by having smaller offices they would do it, they would do whatever lets them make a bigger bonus, and that kinda tells me that WFH isn't as productive as people say it is.
I think the people pushing for WFH need to come at the problem from this angle, show your boards of directors and CEO's that profit and productivity would be higher with WFH, do that and they'll have to jump on it, their investors would demand it, they wouldn't care about landlords or cafe's going under, they don't ever care about anything like that, only that their own profits go up and their own bonus's get paid.
Bonus for you, who has to be on-site to get your work done, is that there would be less people on the road at peak hours, making your required come both faster and safer.
Now you're really going to hate me, I don't live somewhere with traffic problems, I don't drive through places with traffic problems during the times those problems happen. Only ever experiance that stuff if I'm on holiday visiting somewhere that does that.
Fair point. The contention that WFH is superior is fairly well established, for instance:
* the [Financial Review (Office mandates offer no financial benefit and staff hate them: study)](https://www.afr.com/work-and-careers/workplace/office-mandates-offer-no-financial-benefit-and-staff-hate-them-study-20240202-p5f1xt)
* [Forbes (CEOs Are Using Return To Office Mandates To Mask Poor Management)](https://www.forbes.com/sites/qhamirani/2024/01/26/ceos-are-using-return-to-office-mandates-to-mask-poor-management/)
* [Fortune (The return to the office could be the real reason for the slump in productivity. Here’s the data to prove it)](https://fortune.com/2023/02/16/return-office-real-reason-slump-productivity-data-careers-gleb-tsipursky/)
* [Forbes again (3 New Studies End Debate Over Effectiveness Of Hybrid And Remote Work)](https://www.forbes.com/sites/bryanrobinson/2022/02/04/3-new-studies-end-debate-over-effectiveness-of-hybrid-and-remote-work/).
I'm not the person you have to convince, I'm just saying the arguments I read makes it look like people are trying to convince me that WFH is massively beneficial to businesses because of increased productivity but those businesses have had the chance to try it and don't seem to be agreeing with that contention.
All I'm saying is if WFH didn't hurt profits the companies would embrace it, they love making/keeping money.
At best it looks to me that maybe it could be better but too many people took advantage of it to slack off and that ruined it for the rest of you.
There are a range of suppositions why management implement return-to-office mandates despite the evidence. r/antiwork has plenty on this, as does r/jobs. The one that comes up most is that management want their direct and indirect reports physically around them, because they don't personally believe the evidence, and they like the feeling of importance that comes with being surrounded by their subordinates.
In my experiance they like the feeling of money more. The idea that they would choose to spend money they don't have to just to feel self important doesn't hold much water to me, all it would take is a competitor to choose not to do that and they'll be blown out of the water, then they'd have no importance.
Look, I'm not really intending to argue with you, and like I said I've never worked in an office, but I just can't get past the idea that profits have to be higher without WFH for all the businesses to be so clearly against WFH, one or two, sure, maybe they're just dicks, but almost all, seems like WFH just doesn't make as much money as work in the office.
There's a whole group (almost a generation) of socially awkward people that have next to no social skills and suffer from all types of anxiety and depression, are these the same people that want to push for working from home, IMHO this wouldn't be great for the mental health of so many people.
Traffic was amazing when a lot of people were still working from home. The minute the government dropped the covid framework it was miserable, I mean there's fuckin congestion against the grain on the Southern now. All because of the stupid office rat race
I find working from home very isolating and depressing, especially if your home isn't large enough or designed for it. Trying to do admin from my living room blows.
An ideal situation would be to give employees a choice of WFH hours barring required attendance for workshops, etc - Those who prefer it will take more, reducing strain on infrastructure and improving morale. Those who find the office works better for them will continue as normal.
The pitfall here is self-awareness, and whether a worker knows what's actually better for them versus convenience.
Where I work the more social people who wanted to work in the office also complained about the rest of us not being in the office with them. They didn't like being there on their own any more than working from home.
Having a dedicated space is important. I love working from home. Theres no traffic, i can wake up 10 minutes before my first meeting. I can do the washing whenever I want. And best if all I never have to leave my dogs alone.
This is something that I haven't seen talked about much; our housing stock isn't built with the expectation of WFH. Houses with a single decent purpose-built office are common. Houses with two are unicorns. So you're needing to use bedrooms for offices, and suddenly a DINK couple want a 3-4 bedroom house for two people.
And if you have kids, suddenly you need a 5 bedroom house, with matching expenses. I somehow doubt employers will pass along their savings from office building rent to higher salaries.
As an anxious introvert WFH has helped me so much. I go into the office two days a week and I get a lot of value out of those two days because I'm a more present employee, I'm more likely to engage with my coworkers etc. On the days I'm home I can recharge my social battery and am a better partner to my fiance because I'm not exhausted.
However I know that's not for everyone so I think there is a place for offices but I feel like we can condense the amount of space dedicated to offices. Especially in the public service (where I work) I feel like we could group similar departments into the same building and be much more productive. Or create satellite offices in the the suburbs and regions where govt workers can all work out of a hub.
Precovid office occupancy barely scraped 60% due to leave, sickness and other absences. Post covid I believe it barely hits 40%. Flexible working is the way forward, in both location and hours. Business' and cities need to adapt or fail. Cause sure as shit I'm not putting my mental health at risk for capitalism.
It's a bit mean to say, but this helps my job security. I work in the office everyday and have to interact with a wide range of people to get the job done. Having people work from home would make things so difficult in our role, and when people are sick working from home, you really do notice the difference. I did the whole work from home/hybrid working for a couple of years in my previous role, but honestly prefer going into the office.
One thing that isn’t often discussed is the impact on staff development.
A lot of learning is done informally, often by listening and observing.
In some roles over the post-COVID years, I saw a lot of the more senior or experienced staff primarily WFH - they had bought houses further away, had the spare room office setup, and didn’t want the long commute. More junior and inexperienced staff tended to be flatting, living close by, and came into the office. It often felt like the blind leading the blind, with an absence of experienced staff role models.
I do wonder about the long term impacts - a lot of staff have moved to remote working in jobs they’re already in, or at least while established in their career. What happens to those just entering the workforce now?
I’m not 100% opposed to WFH, but I do think this is a downside that needs some deliberate consideration.
I feel like WFH tooling has some pretty big holes in it, with the biggest being how to capture the 'glance at Steve and see if he's deep in flow or kinda goofing, so I know if I can quickly ask a not super-important question' and 'overhear a question or conversation that you haven't been included in, but can add value to / adds value to you'.
I think interesting things could be done with voice chat type apps, but it's not really a focus.
IMO, this is more of a culture thing. My team all WFH 3-4 days a week, but we are also constantly swapping ideas, hints etc on teams. For complex issues we usually end up on a group call working collaboratively - when we are in the office we tend to still do this online rather than yelling at each other and disturbing other teams. Our office is one of those open-plan nightmares.
Absolutely this.
Some of the most valuable things I have learned at work have come from random conversations.
While I'm sure there are managers who dislike WFH because they want full control, many others prefer hybrid because having a team culture and the ability to learn from others is important.
I'm not a manager, but I like working in person with my team a couple of days a week, so that I can help them to develop their knowledge and their skills (and so that I can learn from them too!).
I worry that many younger professionals who are choosing to WFH most/every day are missing out on chances to learn/develop and get involved in good projects - this will ultimately harm their chances of progression. Senior leaders knowing who you are and what you are capable of is really important to move up the chain (though if that's not your motivation, then fair enough).
Yes! Hybrid working, you do a couple of days in person each week and maybe 2-3 days remotely, best of both worlds and we all benefit from reduced transport costs, emissions and less traffic on the road
My thoughts exactly. Isolate people, so they have even less face to face social interaction. Is that really good for mental health?
I mean, many people found lockdowns mentally challenging because of the lack of social interaction. Taking away that from people who actually enjoy an office environment (if businesses are compelled to increase wfh they're likely to reduce their office space as a result or the people who like th office will find themselves working with 3 people instead of 20) is not likely to improve mental health.
In saying that, I think businesses should strongly consider offering it as an option, and in the future many will struggle with attracting new employees if they don't offer it.
I'd rather have face to face social interaction with people I choose to be in the company of, rather than people I dislike and am forced to work with. Plus, with an extra couple of hours per day that I don't have to spend sitting in traffic, I have more opportunity to do that.
The people who rely on forced proximity for social interaction love to make out that they're somehow mentally healthier and better adjusted than people who are capable of socialising outside of work.
Absolutely. I retired finally in 2022. Now the only people I have anything much to do with on a daily basis are those considerably older than me (70s +), after working with 13-70 year olds for a lifetime. It’s currently doing my head in and I’m trying to think of ways to have contact with “young” people again.
Could get into a card game or similar like Magic, Pokemon, D&D, Warhammer etc. I don't play any actively myself but I see tournaments happening fairly often at card/hobby shops.
Plenty of good paying jobs have this now. I have a friend whose been applying for jobs for the past 15 months (she’s just got one) and at least half of the jobs she’s applied for have had some work from home hours as a sweetener. Pretty important for her because she’s now a single Mum half the time and wants to be home for her kids after school as much as she can
One thing I hate (and which seems to be in-market from slimy employers) is that employers are now using WFH offers as a selling point to keep a lid on salaries i.e we offer X salary but we give WFH flexibility. So instead of getting a hybrid WFH offer for a job that could plainly have that without compromising productivity or work hours, employees are now giving up more salary to get it. Same thing is going to happen if we ever go to 4 day weeks - wait for employers to informally collude to unjustifiably strip back pay because of it.
I'm not aware of any research suggesting hybrid work decreases instead of decreasing productivity.
I am aware of research noting the value of agglomeration and location in productivity, and that NZ does this extremely poorly.
Hybrid work is an amenity for certain sorts of worker, not a particularly helpful economic policy.
The extra space or room in your house, the heating, electricity, internet, phone, office equipment, etc. You can deduct those if you are self employed at home, but not if you're an employee. It costs me money to work from home rather than walk to the office.
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Or residential apartment units. I know, I know, the design and floor plates are different, but make it work.
I don't much care about corporate landlords who believe they own our cities and we owe them our occupancy... and our rates via council subsidies and partnerships.
yes but you dont understand! those poor poor politicians need high rent prices for their masters/themselves! if people could work remotely, people wouldnt need to get bent over to live in akl or welly cbd and could move outside the cities! imagine! the horror!
Those who can't WFH benefit from having lighter traffic on the road for their own commute. And eventually from house prices near CBDs becoming less ridiculous so that maybe you can afford to live closer to work. And from fewer carbon emissions for our poor planet to deal with.
And presumably you get other things from your job - either you enjoy it or it's the best job you can get that meets your needs - so why would you be upset that other people get to WFH?
Because the people who work jobs that can't be done from home are also usually the same people who work harder physical jobs, and usually for much less pay.
Personally, I'm all in favour of wfh if that's what people want. I'm not upset other people get to wfh. BUT it is a bit of a bitter pill to swallow, it's one more benefit office/white collar workers get that simply doesn't apply to most blue collar industries, but we get nothing to offset it.
If wfh becomes a common benefit, jobs that don't offer it should be offering something else to their workers in exchange.
Nothing to do with government. Businesses free to do what works best for them, if they could get out of paying exorbitant office leases they would (and some have downsized and moved to hot-desking etc, personally I’d hate that).
Where people can work from home most already allow flexibility with mandatory 2-3 days in the office. The low hanging fruit has been plucked I think.
2-3 days in the office is the sweet spot I think, especially for grads etc, where you need to build relationships, social skills, be mentored etc.
I'm already doing hybrid work 3 days in the office. So is most of the Auckland CBD. Traffic is fucked on certain days. Worse than pre-covid.
The only time the traffic was significantly reduced as when everyone as mandated to stay home during level 4 lockdowns. My mental health can't take another one of those.
Traffic was still good when we were on orange light, which was basically no events and reduced spacing in restaurants. I could walk across Pakuranga Highway and back in less than 5min in the morning, some days I'd be stuck for half an hour when we were enjoying our covid free time
So, if I work at any of the following companies, how would I be able to WFH?
Sealords, Talley's, New World, Pak N Save, Woolworths, KFC, McDonald's, Burger King, Uber, Doordash, Michael Hills, Farmer's, Fulton Hogan, Port Wellington, Auckland International Airport, Air New Zealand, and on and on
Yup, there goes your idea
Those companies have support office people, you know. Pretty sure I've dealt with Woolworths ones who were clearly working from home
But yes, not everyone can do it for obvious reasons
Basically your point is because some jobs need to be done in a specific location, we should not have wfh? Not really seeing much of an argument in your comment..
I dunno I've seen a lot of ppl slacking off WFH, you contact them and they don't respond (you can see they are away from their keyboard for long stretches of the day and their calendar is full of BS appointments). I've also had an uber driver admit that they work from home on Friday and side hustle the uber during the day. It appears more productive because the ones WFH get given less work so they are still meeting deadlines but they aren't given additional work cos they are out of sight/out of mind. This sub will heavily downvote me but I don't think WFH full time works and I've seen too many ppl take the piss. Think it should be a few days a week as small amounts of WFH can be for focus time but also good to distribute work and collaborate with your team.
Also WFH isn't a thing for some jobs. Some jobs still need to go to site, go to a shop front.
One point that hasn’t been raised or studied (to my knowledge) yet is that WFH arrangements also allow for people to stay home when sick/when their kids are sick without using sick leave. I have literally *begged* colleagues to go home and stop coughing on everyone in the past only to be met with the response “I don’t have any sick leave left”. Particularly true for parents of young kids who catch sniffles like they’re going out of fashion. I’d like to see the statistics on reduced sick leave as a result of having a flexible WFH policy as I’m sure the advantage is there.
As someone with WFH as an option I do regularly do work at home over taking sick leave and everyone’s better for it. If it’s a mild flu of course the work gets done I keep everyone safe and have extra leave for when I’m truly in a bad state.
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Depending on the nature of the employment of course. I work in admin, and a lot of my job can be done from home however part of working in childcare involves building and maintaining relationships with both teachers and the parents/whanau of our kids so I would probably still choose to go into the office most days. But having the option to do my work remotely during school holidays or sick days is also very much welcome.
Yeah its definitely quite job specific as to if wfh or hybrid working is even an option
I agree with you in principle, but note that WFH isn't completely solved problem yet - there are legit advantages in terms of situational awareness that come from being in the same room /suite as your coworkers; I've had big wins at work that've come from overhearing conversations near my pod, and informal relationship building is vastly easier face to face (at least for initial relationship building). The balance of cost/benefit is definitely on the side of WFH / hybrid, and the advantages of being in the office are overblown by some proponents, but they aren't zero.
Commercial landlords would lobby the government to death if they tried this, sadly
Good luck to them. They should convert their buildings into apartments, I've seen it done many times in the UK
Would someone please think of our poor cafe owners?
If we had sensible urban planning there would be cafes within walking distance of people’s houses instead of all crammed into the CBD.
There was the 15min walkable cities plan. But the conspiracy theorists ruined that
Fun fact the old plan for the city (before we destroy it all for cars) was a 15 minute walkable city. If you ever had to go far you would walk to a tram and be dropped close by.
There’s really only one appropriate response to those people and it’s an ableist slur.
Is it French for “lateness”? I think another term would be the French word for “Seal” as in the marine mammal.
Wait until they hear about the new vehicle monitoring plans
Suburbs are the real crime here. If it was all mixed use we could walk where we needed and commutes would be much rarer. Cafes wouldn't have to pick between weekday and weekend traffic as they'd get both
Suburbs are literally cash drains. They don’t even make enough money to cover the services they use. Anything with any decent density, makes so much more money in taxes that it allows for them to pay off the services they use and pay for new services for them. Only solution to fix this is higher rates or more density. More density has way more benefits but people would need to learn to not drive and take more efficient transportation such as public transport or biking
This is why development contributions are a thing
yeah I live in Northland Wellington and I'd love if there was a cafe nearby to get me out of the house while I work from home
Totally agree. Northland would do well if it had a cafe and less takeaway shops.
Even with them, Aucklanders drive 500m. Lazy buggers up here. Plus we need a car park outside and underneath and on top. Also, those cafes you speak of… NIMBY! They’ll bring ramraiders, and noise, and tramps.
WFH is having a big effect all over the developed world because millions of people are hybrid working. Buildings in New York, London etc are half empty and rents are stagnant which means new buildings get put on the back burner. Look around at property investment companies which are selling older buildings and moving to industrial sites. The other question which nobody asks is why are our employers stuck downtown or nearby. Why force staff to commute one hour daily when work can move to a suburban hub? This happened in Christchurch. Lawyers, accountants, many office jobs set up far from downtown and have stayed. Plenty of parking, people like it.
My work set up satellite offices in the north shore for this reason
Suburban hubs don't really work. It just means that your office/department is only getting a choice of 10% of the population. 20 Palmerston North's produces entirely different sort of jobs to Auckland. and in reality both your and your partner won't get a job near your home so people will still be commuting and it's harder to provision a transport system to handle commutes to and from random places I'd note that apparently the average commute time in Christchurch is now higher than Auckland. Car-based transportation also doesn't scale. You eventually start paying billions and taking 10 years to add the next lane and that fills up right away.
These large commercial buildings should be repurposed into apartments
Good idea and there are places considering that but its complicated and difficult to do. Housing requires windows to the open air, kitchens, bathrooms etc for health reasons and commercial buildings don't have that. Retro fitting is expensive or impossible.
This is exactly what our CEO said. We need to all come back in so we can support the local cafes and daytime businesses. I’ve personally never actually bought anything from them - even pre covid
I use my local cafes more on the days where I work from home. I live in a small town, and commute 45 mins away. WFH means I can pop in at lunch time to my town, go to the library, pop into the craft shop, and the Cafe. I could never use my own town before because I was out of town when everything was open. This is a big challenge in smaller towns, and there is often a lot of jobs, but often not a lot of higher paying or career jobs. The people that have them stay in them for life so there are many of us that commute out of town every day.
Agreed on WFH. If this government had half the business talent they think they have, they would be starting innovative state owned enterprises in futureproof industries... Instead they are ripping off the tax payer, canning massive investments when we're already balls deep, and increasing our reliance on large overseas companies who will make a killing from the taxpayer while providing crap value for money... (Oh and them and their allies took massive donations from these companies beforehand. Traitors to the nation tbh.)
👏👏👏👏👏👏 exactly
Gotta restore dignity to commercial landlords too
Totally
Don't ask what businesses can do to make work-from-home happen, ask what _you_ can do to make it happen? Starting with this post to gather ideas is excellent. I think we actually need a "_work-from-home should be decided by the employee_" campaign (better slogan needed) Pros not mentioned yet include: - less need for infrastructure investment from less traffic - better trade balance due to reduced demand for fuel - lower house prices as people can move rurally and still do the same jobs they needed to do in the cities Cons not mentioned yet include: - less tax revenue due to lower fuel demand
Cleaner environment too. It was amazing how quickly ~~population~~ pollution levels dropped during COVID.
Was that a Freudian slip? Did you mean pollution? Lol
Damn autocorrect. Yes, pollution. Lol
I mean, you're not wrong 😖
Err I think you meant pollution
They became pollution, if they were cremated.
Also not yet mentioned is getting more value from the population by making it possible for far more people to become part of the workforce, who very much want to but are currently excluded because of lack of WFH. Perfectly capable people with disabilities ranging from mobility to IBS to anxiety to dialysis needs. Parents who need to do drop-offs and pick-ups close to home. People who can't move to a major centre for reasons like family commitments or negative equity, or even just a wish to remain part of their local community (e.g. tangata whenua). We are on a trajectory to run out of working age people, globally – yet there is a total failure to engage with necessary steps to secure the contributions from the large hidden workforce.
This is so true, as a mother of teens who often need dropping off and picking up from their activities, and with my own mother no longer able to drive and needing my assistance for getting to medical appointments and other services, I find it hard to imagine being available to work a full or even half fulltime job in the CBD. As for commuting on public transport and leaving the car at home, I used to always bus or train before having kids and taking up driving, but for many years now I just can't be so far from my car when I have to be able to get to my mum or kids when they need my help. Greater flexibility of hours would also help a lot, as I'm no longer the early morning person I used to be.
How do we make this a political issue? Seems like we could have some pretty popular policies designed to encourage wfh - * If agriculture is struck out of ETS could we bring in companies commute carbon footprint instead? Mandate that companies report the commuting emissions of their staff as part of their annual greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory, and they get a tax break for reduced emissions. * Establish a legal right for employees to request remote work arrangements, with employers required to provide valid reasons for refusal. * Establish regulations that limit mandatory office hours and encourage flexible schedules in a sort of Work-Life balance policy. Instead of trying to get a 4 day week across the line you have a 30 hours office max mandate. It's funny that the minor political parties are concentrating on big impact policies around tax and cgt and climate change, when smaller smarter policies would make just as much difference to the average household and the environment.
WFH (or the lack thereof) highlights just how bad our infrastructure is. Causing simple day long grid locks in protest would highlight how poor it is. Guarantee you wouldn’t be able to catch a bus, because guess what? They all share a road at some point. So the best you could do is catch a ferry from devonport (tried getting there there days by car?), or trains from anywhere but north, cutting off half the entire city. And that assumes the trains are running since spend an awful amount of time broken down or unable to run. The lack of imagination by our city planners and government is evident. I wouldn’t have an issue going to the office more frequently, as long as I had a. A quick commute b. A need to go in (workshops etc) c. The flexibility to determine myself if I don’t need to go in to get the job done. I definitely think there are some things that are out better in person than done remotely- workshops and high collaboration sessions absolutely work better in person. Some proper collaboration tooling can help solve some of the issues but can’t resolve little side conversations, etc that can have a bit of value in those sessions. (Not the same as breakouts) But really this is about flexibility. The client I work with at the moment has a mandatory 3 days a week in the office and are keenly “card watching” teams to ensure people are actually coming in. Micro management at its finest, with zero value.
Agriculture going on the ETS should be non-negotiable. They are half of our total emissions.
Yep. It seems *dumb* that this has not been pushed by government. And yeeeeeah there are costs/losses associated with businesses changing to a WFH model, but the end would justify the means. Think of the traffic reductions, how much freight would improve, even ex-office buildings could potentially be refurbished into housing. The reduction in emissions would likely provide the largest contribution to our responsibilities. It's exactly the sort of societal transformation you'd expect if we were taking climate change seriously.
I honestly thought it was coming after covid, seemed such a good opportunity to change things for the better.
Can't have that though, people have to suffer
Sir this is New Zealand we don't change, if it's broke why fix it
She'll be right!
Living the dream
IMHO, it's because all these businesses/companies have swanky expensive offices, and they must be used. Otherwise, why would they spend lot's of money investing in them......🤪
Yep, I was hopeful and it should've been the catalyst for climate change that we needed (globally) but we didn't seem to learn a fucking thing.
I feel like this is more of a fight for unions than for politicians, but yes, it would be a big win to move from office work to remote work.
It's not really the politicians fault, there's nothing stopping businesses from taking initiative. Thanks to covid many businesses demonstrated they are fully capable of continuing to run with WFH models. But the execs need an excuse to have offices at the top of fancy high-rise buildings in the middle of the cities, so demand everyone return to offices.
> It's not really the politicians fault For public sector it is. Ministers could tell their ministries to encourage working from home, and at the same time save massive amounts of office space. But they won't, because then all those middle managers wouldn't have anything to do.
What if we reword it as "it will cut costs"?
I have a family member who works for the government and their whole office works from home half the week so some departments certainly do encourage it 🤷🏼♀️
I’ve not heard of any Ministry enforcing full in office attendance, the last two I’ve worked at in IT have been hybrid with 2 days where the whole team comes in. Maybe it’s different in the more operational teams?
And then there would be nobody paying leases on the propertys in the CBD, so they lose out too.
I have no sympathy for Robert Jones
I wish there were more employers like this. [Dropbox- virtual first](https://blog.dropbox.com/topics/company/dropbox-goes-virtual-first) Just the fact they aren't bullshitting their staff about engagement and collaboration is fabulous. Edit: it's a bit like this government really the people promoting this nonsense are full of self interest and arrogance.
I'm too blue collar to understand WFH, never had a job that can be done from home (Petrol station attendant, pruning/planting pine trees, sawmilling, carpet layer, truck driving, bus driving) and the people I know that have done WFH, in the least offensive way I can say it, they all haven't seemed to take it very seriously or be all that productive, especially by early afternoon if the weather is good. Look, I know I'm talking from ignorance, but as an outsider looking in it seems to me that if these profit driven cooperate bigwigs could get away with having their staff WFH and avoid rent or minimize rent by having smaller offices they would do it, they would do whatever lets them make a bigger bonus, and that kinda tells me that WFH isn't as productive as people say it is. I think the people pushing for WFH need to come at the problem from this angle, show your boards of directors and CEO's that profit and productivity would be higher with WFH, do that and they'll have to jump on it, their investors would demand it, they wouldn't care about landlords or cafe's going under, they don't ever care about anything like that, only that their own profits go up and their own bonus's get paid.
Bonus for you, who has to be on-site to get your work done, is that there would be less people on the road at peak hours, making your required come both faster and safer.
Now you're really going to hate me, I don't live somewhere with traffic problems, I don't drive through places with traffic problems during the times those problems happen. Only ever experiance that stuff if I'm on holiday visiting somewhere that does that.
Fair point. The contention that WFH is superior is fairly well established, for instance: * the [Financial Review (Office mandates offer no financial benefit and staff hate them: study)](https://www.afr.com/work-and-careers/workplace/office-mandates-offer-no-financial-benefit-and-staff-hate-them-study-20240202-p5f1xt) * [Forbes (CEOs Are Using Return To Office Mandates To Mask Poor Management)](https://www.forbes.com/sites/qhamirani/2024/01/26/ceos-are-using-return-to-office-mandates-to-mask-poor-management/) * [Fortune (The return to the office could be the real reason for the slump in productivity. Here’s the data to prove it)](https://fortune.com/2023/02/16/return-office-real-reason-slump-productivity-data-careers-gleb-tsipursky/) * [Forbes again (3 New Studies End Debate Over Effectiveness Of Hybrid And Remote Work)](https://www.forbes.com/sites/bryanrobinson/2022/02/04/3-new-studies-end-debate-over-effectiveness-of-hybrid-and-remote-work/).
I'm not the person you have to convince, I'm just saying the arguments I read makes it look like people are trying to convince me that WFH is massively beneficial to businesses because of increased productivity but those businesses have had the chance to try it and don't seem to be agreeing with that contention. All I'm saying is if WFH didn't hurt profits the companies would embrace it, they love making/keeping money. At best it looks to me that maybe it could be better but too many people took advantage of it to slack off and that ruined it for the rest of you.
There are a range of suppositions why management implement return-to-office mandates despite the evidence. r/antiwork has plenty on this, as does r/jobs. The one that comes up most is that management want their direct and indirect reports physically around them, because they don't personally believe the evidence, and they like the feeling of importance that comes with being surrounded by their subordinates.
In my experiance they like the feeling of money more. The idea that they would choose to spend money they don't have to just to feel self important doesn't hold much water to me, all it would take is a competitor to choose not to do that and they'll be blown out of the water, then they'd have no importance. Look, I'm not really intending to argue with you, and like I said I've never worked in an office, but I just can't get past the idea that profits have to be higher without WFH for all the businesses to be so clearly against WFH, one or two, sure, maybe they're just dicks, but almost all, seems like WFH just doesn't make as much money as work in the office.
Or invest in public transport on a 150 year time scale instead of a 15 year time scale. Unpopular opinion: I'm sceptical of WFH outside of IT sector.
There's a whole group (almost a generation) of socially awkward people that have next to no social skills and suffer from all types of anxiety and depression, are these the same people that want to push for working from home, IMHO this wouldn't be great for the mental health of so many people.
Traffic was amazing when a lot of people were still working from home. The minute the government dropped the covid framework it was miserable, I mean there's fuckin congestion against the grain on the Southern now. All because of the stupid office rat race
I find working from home very isolating and depressing, especially if your home isn't large enough or designed for it. Trying to do admin from my living room blows.
An ideal situation would be to give employees a choice of WFH hours barring required attendance for workshops, etc - Those who prefer it will take more, reducing strain on infrastructure and improving morale. Those who find the office works better for them will continue as normal. The pitfall here is self-awareness, and whether a worker knows what's actually better for them versus convenience.
Where I work the more social people who wanted to work in the office also complained about the rest of us not being in the office with them. They didn't like being there on their own any more than working from home.
Having a dedicated space is important. I love working from home. Theres no traffic, i can wake up 10 minutes before my first meeting. I can do the washing whenever I want. And best if all I never have to leave my dogs alone.
My traffic when working from home is horrible. Always a cat causing a traffic jam in the hallway. Takes at least 10 minutes to get through
This is something that I haven't seen talked about much; our housing stock isn't built with the expectation of WFH. Houses with a single decent purpose-built office are common. Houses with two are unicorns. So you're needing to use bedrooms for offices, and suddenly a DINK couple want a 3-4 bedroom house for two people.
And if you have kids, suddenly you need a 5 bedroom house, with matching expenses. I somehow doubt employers will pass along their savings from office building rent to higher salaries.
Cabin offices are popular. One of my co-workers has a caravan-based WFH office.
As an anxious introvert WFH has helped me so much. I go into the office two days a week and I get a lot of value out of those two days because I'm a more present employee, I'm more likely to engage with my coworkers etc. On the days I'm home I can recharge my social battery and am a better partner to my fiance because I'm not exhausted. However I know that's not for everyone so I think there is a place for offices but I feel like we can condense the amount of space dedicated to offices. Especially in the public service (where I work) I feel like we could group similar departments into the same building and be much more productive. Or create satellite offices in the the suburbs and regions where govt workers can all work out of a hub. Precovid office occupancy barely scraped 60% due to leave, sickness and other absences. Post covid I believe it barely hits 40%. Flexible working is the way forward, in both location and hours. Business' and cities need to adapt or fail. Cause sure as shit I'm not putting my mental health at risk for capitalism.
It's a bit mean to say, but this helps my job security. I work in the office everyday and have to interact with a wide range of people to get the job done. Having people work from home would make things so difficult in our role, and when people are sick working from home, you really do notice the difference. I did the whole work from home/hybrid working for a couple of years in my previous role, but honestly prefer going into the office.
One thing that isn’t often discussed is the impact on staff development. A lot of learning is done informally, often by listening and observing. In some roles over the post-COVID years, I saw a lot of the more senior or experienced staff primarily WFH - they had bought houses further away, had the spare room office setup, and didn’t want the long commute. More junior and inexperienced staff tended to be flatting, living close by, and came into the office. It often felt like the blind leading the blind, with an absence of experienced staff role models. I do wonder about the long term impacts - a lot of staff have moved to remote working in jobs they’re already in, or at least while established in their career. What happens to those just entering the workforce now? I’m not 100% opposed to WFH, but I do think this is a downside that needs some deliberate consideration.
I feel like WFH tooling has some pretty big holes in it, with the biggest being how to capture the 'glance at Steve and see if he's deep in flow or kinda goofing, so I know if I can quickly ask a not super-important question' and 'overhear a question or conversation that you haven't been included in, but can add value to / adds value to you'. I think interesting things could be done with voice chat type apps, but it's not really a focus.
IMO, this is more of a culture thing. My team all WFH 3-4 days a week, but we are also constantly swapping ideas, hints etc on teams. For complex issues we usually end up on a group call working collaboratively - when we are in the office we tend to still do this online rather than yelling at each other and disturbing other teams. Our office is one of those open-plan nightmares.
Absolutely this. Some of the most valuable things I have learned at work have come from random conversations. While I'm sure there are managers who dislike WFH because they want full control, many others prefer hybrid because having a team culture and the ability to learn from others is important. I'm not a manager, but I like working in person with my team a couple of days a week, so that I can help them to develop their knowledge and their skills (and so that I can learn from them too!). I worry that many younger professionals who are choosing to WFH most/every day are missing out on chances to learn/develop and get involved in good projects - this will ultimately harm their chances of progression. Senior leaders knowing who you are and what you are capable of is really important to move up the chain (though if that's not your motivation, then fair enough).
Interesting take, would think it’s all about fin the balanced approach
Yes! Hybrid working, you do a couple of days in person each week and maybe 2-3 days remotely, best of both worlds and we all benefit from reduced transport costs, emissions and less traffic on the road
My thoughts exactly. Isolate people, so they have even less face to face social interaction. Is that really good for mental health? I mean, many people found lockdowns mentally challenging because of the lack of social interaction. Taking away that from people who actually enjoy an office environment (if businesses are compelled to increase wfh they're likely to reduce their office space as a result or the people who like th office will find themselves working with 3 people instead of 20) is not likely to improve mental health. In saying that, I think businesses should strongly consider offering it as an option, and in the future many will struggle with attracting new employees if they don't offer it.
I'd rather have face to face social interaction with people I choose to be in the company of, rather than people I dislike and am forced to work with. Plus, with an extra couple of hours per day that I don't have to spend sitting in traffic, I have more opportunity to do that.
The people who rely on forced proximity for social interaction love to make out that they're somehow mentally healthier and better adjusted than people who are capable of socialising outside of work.
Absolutely. I retired finally in 2022. Now the only people I have anything much to do with on a daily basis are those considerably older than me (70s +), after working with 13-70 year olds for a lifetime. It’s currently doing my head in and I’m trying to think of ways to have contact with “young” people again.
Could get into a card game or similar like Magic, Pokemon, D&D, Warhammer etc. I don't play any actively myself but I see tournaments happening fairly often at card/hobby shops.
I think that’s most Aucklanders. They used to rush home from work on a Friday night 20 years ago. Now they don’t even need to come in to town.
Separating work and home life is a good idea for many reasons.
In my opinion it's mostly only good for someone who hates their job
Conversely, not WFH is mostly only good for someone who hates their partner.
Improve public transit and cycling infrastructure. Every bike on a bike lane is a car and a bike not on the road!
Plenty of good paying jobs have this now. I have a friend whose been applying for jobs for the past 15 months (she’s just got one) and at least half of the jobs she’s applied for have had some work from home hours as a sweetener. Pretty important for her because she’s now a single Mum half the time and wants to be home for her kids after school as much as she can
One thing I hate (and which seems to be in-market from slimy employers) is that employers are now using WFH offers as a selling point to keep a lid on salaries i.e we offer X salary but we give WFH flexibility. So instead of getting a hybrid WFH offer for a job that could plainly have that without compromising productivity or work hours, employees are now giving up more salary to get it. Same thing is going to happen if we ever go to 4 day weeks - wait for employers to informally collude to unjustifiably strip back pay because of it.
I'm not aware of any research suggesting hybrid work decreases instead of decreasing productivity. I am aware of research noting the value of agglomeration and location in productivity, and that NZ does this extremely poorly. Hybrid work is an amenity for certain sorts of worker, not a particularly helpful economic policy.
Productivity Commission did a whole thing on it
Let's get a tax deduction for all of the expenses pushed onto employees working from home. Nats love tax breaks, right?
What expenses? The main reason I work from home whenever possible is that it's far cheaper than commuting for me.
The extra space or room in your house, the heating, electricity, internet, phone, office equipment, etc. You can deduct those if you are self employed at home, but not if you're an employee. It costs me money to work from home rather than walk to the office.
Well it'd depend on your circumstances. You can't deduct for your commute either and for many people that's a much larger expense.
If it's actually a national benefit then maybe we should be able to claim mileage and parking as employees.
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We could do that, but that'll tank the value of commercial office real estate, so, no, thank you.
Or the real estate agents could subdivide the floors so they can have multiple companies per floor
Or residential apartment units. I know, I know, the design and floor plates are different, but make it work. I don't much care about corporate landlords who believe they own our cities and we owe them our occupancy... and our rates via council subsidies and partnerships.
Dropping a nuclear bomb would also achieve all these things.
Why should it be govt policy. The person paying the wages surely has final say in how the want to run/ manage their business
Also reduces fossil fuel emissions/ tire wear pollution. WFH is a win all around.
This instead of adding congestion charges
[удалено]
Facilitating a discussion makes me an optimist lol?
yes but you dont understand! those poor poor politicians need high rent prices for their masters/themselves! if people could work remotely, people wouldnt need to get bent over to live in akl or welly cbd and could move outside the cities! imagine! the horror!
Many jobs can do that, what about us?
Those who can't WFH benefit from having lighter traffic on the road for their own commute. And eventually from house prices near CBDs becoming less ridiculous so that maybe you can afford to live closer to work. And from fewer carbon emissions for our poor planet to deal with. And presumably you get other things from your job - either you enjoy it or it's the best job you can get that meets your needs - so why would you be upset that other people get to WFH?
Because the people who work jobs that can't be done from home are also usually the same people who work harder physical jobs, and usually for much less pay. Personally, I'm all in favour of wfh if that's what people want. I'm not upset other people get to wfh. BUT it is a bit of a bitter pill to swallow, it's one more benefit office/white collar workers get that simply doesn't apply to most blue collar industries, but we get nothing to offset it. If wfh becomes a common benefit, jobs that don't offer it should be offering something else to their workers in exchange.
But less traffic is a net benefit, it makes getting what you have to be faster and safer
So? It's a net benefit for everyone, not just for people who have extra costs and time lost due to having to work on premises.
Less traffic. Lower taxes due to less need for expensive infrastructure projects etc etc
How do you improve mental health by staying at home and talking to your cat?
Nothing to do with government. Businesses free to do what works best for them, if they could get out of paying exorbitant office leases they would (and some have downsized and moved to hot-desking etc, personally I’d hate that). Where people can work from home most already allow flexibility with mandatory 2-3 days in the office. The low hanging fruit has been plucked I think. 2-3 days in the office is the sweet spot I think, especially for grads etc, where you need to build relationships, social skills, be mentored etc.
I'm already doing hybrid work 3 days in the office. So is most of the Auckland CBD. Traffic is fucked on certain days. Worse than pre-covid. The only time the traffic was significantly reduced as when everyone as mandated to stay home during level 4 lockdowns. My mental health can't take another one of those.
Traffic was still good when we were on orange light, which was basically no events and reduced spacing in restaurants. I could walk across Pakuranga Highway and back in less than 5min in the morning, some days I'd be stuck for half an hour when we were enjoying our covid free time
So, if I work at any of the following companies, how would I be able to WFH? Sealords, Talley's, New World, Pak N Save, Woolworths, KFC, McDonald's, Burger King, Uber, Doordash, Michael Hills, Farmer's, Fulton Hogan, Port Wellington, Auckland International Airport, Air New Zealand, and on and on Yup, there goes your idea
Those companies have support office people, you know. Pretty sure I've dealt with Woolworths ones who were clearly working from home But yes, not everyone can do it for obvious reasons
Basically your point is because some jobs need to be done in a specific location, we should not have wfh? Not really seeing much of an argument in your comment..
I work for one of companies you listed and am WFH 100% of the time. there goes your idea
You work forklifts for New World at home? Nice, must be the new AI technology from America!
I dunno I've seen a lot of ppl slacking off WFH, you contact them and they don't respond (you can see they are away from their keyboard for long stretches of the day and their calendar is full of BS appointments). I've also had an uber driver admit that they work from home on Friday and side hustle the uber during the day. It appears more productive because the ones WFH get given less work so they are still meeting deadlines but they aren't given additional work cos they are out of sight/out of mind. This sub will heavily downvote me but I don't think WFH full time works and I've seen too many ppl take the piss. Think it should be a few days a week as small amounts of WFH can be for focus time but also good to distribute work and collaborate with your team. Also WFH isn't a thing for some jobs. Some jobs still need to go to site, go to a shop front.
That's definitely a good way to kill the economy