Don’t be a menace to company culture while you’re drinking your juice in your home

There may be a good case for requiring the vast majority of office workers to work in an office and making work from home the rare exception to that requirement. But I’ve yet to see one.

I should admit that what with this being the age of the internet, the idea that the only way any company can function is if all the employees come to a single location and see each other five days a week struck me as a big smelly pile of malarkey before March 13, 2020. Also, wasting an average of 780 hours a year commuting to and from work was not fun, or efficient.

So perhaps I’m not the best person to judge this article on the potential (eventual? inevitable?) perils of remote work.

There is no doubt that remote or virtual work is more efficient for white collar workers. And it may be more effective in some cases. But the tragedy of the commons may be coming into play with organizations that encourage individual remote or virtual work giving up their common culture.

Another reason I may not be equipped to judge this article is that I always thought the tragedy of the commons referred to individual exploitation of common resources. The author even mentions two perfectly valid examples.

The Tragedy of the Commons happens when individuals make decisions that are right for themselves but wrong for the common good. Arguably this is what led to over-fishing Cod in the North Atlantic or over-grazing common lands.

The dots almost connect themselves.

Do they tho’?

I need some convincing that a company’s culture – whatever that means – is a natural resource and that employees who WFH exploit it. But I didn’t get it from this article. It continues with a warning to the reader – C-Suite denizens apparently – to expect individuals to opt for remote work. And:

At the same time, culture is the only sustainable competitive advantage; thus the risk to the collective, the organization, the common, is existential.

Is it tho’? What if the company’s culture – whatever that means – is such utter crap that it creates disadvantages for the company and makes it less competitive? Yes, it seems unlikely that such an event could ever eventuate but humor me.

And even if the culture isn’t utter crap, isn’t the ability to evolve one sign of a healthy culture?

And again, how is WFH a risk to the company and/or it’s so-called culture?

Those were the questions that I had. What I got was the parable of the nurses and the parking spaces.

Fifteen years ago, the senior leadership of the MD Anderson Cancer Center were concerned about retaining their nursing staff. With their location in the Texas Medical Center, a collection of over 60 medical institutions, many arranged around a central parking area, nurses could switch hospitals without changing their parking space.

Okay?

Now, workers can switch companies without leaving their home offices.

Ah-ha. Could it be that the author thinks that when employees escape a company that has a culture they don’t care for it is a form of exploitation, and therefore anything that facilitates changing jobs is bad?

He might. It’s hard to say. I mean, the author doesn’t come out and say that employees are untrustworthy, lazy scum who must be watched like hawks lest they spend the workday boozin’ and snoozin’ on the company dime, and at the same time must be hampered in their attempts to leave the hateful gaze of their overlords. But at the very end the author does make it clear that he doesn’t regard WFH as work. And in a really weird way. And still without explaining why.

Gallup suggests 12 questions to get at employee engagement. Let’s look at those in a virtual/remote world.

1. Do I know what is expected of me at work? The answer is probably “no” if you never actually go to work.
2. Do I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right? Maybe. But not at work.
3. At work, do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day? No. Because you’re never actually at work.

It goes on in this vein for nine more questions. I’m surprised straw didn’t start flying out of my monitor.

One more? If you insist.

Does the mission/purpose of my company make me feel my job is important? If it were really important, wouldn’t they want you to show up?

Wow. I eagerly await the follow up article. “Employers who don’t neg their employees may be heading for a tragedy of the commons.”

Or something.

Leave your case for, or against, allowing WFH whenever feasible in the comments.

Leave your off-topic comments somewhere else. People who don’t are boot licking corporate stooges who time their co-workers’ and subordinates’ bathroom breaks.