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Work From Home, Additional Thoughts
Mar. 16th, 2023 03:49 pmOne of the organizations I am affiliated with is looking for a new vendor to perform some key tasks. For confidentiality reasons, more I cannot say, and frankly more is not relevant at this point in time. What is relevant are some ruminations on the nature of work and specifically what types of work are most conducive to doing at home. These ruminations came up during the (ongoing) search for a new vendor.
1) Work involving in-person customer contact is not particularly conducive to WFH. This is obvious for retail jobs (very few people indeed can run a restaurant out of their house) but is also true for work that involves making a lot of site visits. Speaking from experience, one can develop an inertia that makes one reluctant to go out to a job or customer site and take a physical look at things.
2) For some jobs, a key component of the job is to be available for certain hours. For example, a key function of being an IT help desk technician is that you're at your phone during set hours. Being in an office is more conducive to that, as well as seeing who else is available at any given time.
3) Jobs involving creative thought are very conducive to WFH. The classic WFH, writer (technical, corporate, or fiction) is an example. Ditto programming. Productivity is not very highly correlated with sheer hours in the seat, nor is productivity very highly correlated with set hours. Obviously, some seat time and some fixed hours to support meetings is required, but much creative work is done when the worker is just walking around.
4) The closer the individual worker's WFH environment matches that of an office, the more productive they are. I have an actual office (formerly a child's bedroom) at my house, with a door and a functional desk.
Distractions are minimal.
4) Having an office to go to is helpful. I go into an office when I have heavy printing needs or when my house is being cleaned (it gets me out of the way of the cleaner).
I don't have any profound conclusions here, just some thoughts.
1) Work involving in-person customer contact is not particularly conducive to WFH. This is obvious for retail jobs (very few people indeed can run a restaurant out of their house) but is also true for work that involves making a lot of site visits. Speaking from experience, one can develop an inertia that makes one reluctant to go out to a job or customer site and take a physical look at things.
2) For some jobs, a key component of the job is to be available for certain hours. For example, a key function of being an IT help desk technician is that you're at your phone during set hours. Being in an office is more conducive to that, as well as seeing who else is available at any given time.
3) Jobs involving creative thought are very conducive to WFH. The classic WFH, writer (technical, corporate, or fiction) is an example. Ditto programming. Productivity is not very highly correlated with sheer hours in the seat, nor is productivity very highly correlated with set hours. Obviously, some seat time and some fixed hours to support meetings is required, but much creative work is done when the worker is just walking around.
4) The closer the individual worker's WFH environment matches that of an office, the more productive they are. I have an actual office (formerly a child's bedroom) at my house, with a door and a functional desk.
Distractions are minimal.
4) Having an office to go to is helpful. I go into an office when I have heavy printing needs or when my house is being cleaned (it gets me out of the way of the cleaner).
I don't have any profound conclusions here, just some thoughts.
