Bosses mandated them back to the office. They took legal action instead.

Washington Post via MSN ^ | May 6, 2024 | Danielle Abril, Taylor Telford

[MD Expat in PA]

It works both ways. If I can work from anywhere, the employees can also be from anywhere. This is a good way to hire third world employees without bringing them in the country.

I suspect that may have been partly the intent when corporations created remote work.

That’s not how it works however. At least not legally.

For one thing, If I hire a remote worker, working remotely in another country, I can’t pay them from my US payroll. And paying them as an “independent contractor” via an AP check or wire transfer has the same issues legally as trying to do the same for a US employee. If they are an employee, you can’t legally pay them as if they are a vendor or independent contractor.

But it does create what is called Nexis, and the same applies to hiring workers in other states where my company does not have a physical presence, i.e. a brick-and-mortar location.

I used to have to deal with this all the time previously, especially with outside salespeople hired and working in states where we had no previous liability or any physical office. It required me to apply to that state for tax withholding and unemployment accounts and triggered other things like sales tax and corporate returns and workers compensation accounts in some states. The employee’s home address now became our physical business address in that state.

But the sudden increase in remote workers during COVID created nightmares for us in payroll because of this. And more so in states like Pennsylvania and Ohio and other states that have local and local school taxes.

In PA because of local taxes for example, remote workers in PA, even though we had an office in PA, caused us to apply for withholding accounts in pretty much all the local jurisdictions where employees were working from home as work locations.

If I hire and have a remote worker living and working in another state or in another country, I’ve just created a remote office location, a physical business location/presence even if I don’t have a brick-and-mortar location there. So, I have to set up for withholding the remote location’s taxes and follow the remote location’s employment rules, including things like minim wage regs if higher than the federal and rules around paying employees at termination.

There are some circumstances where a US company has a worker, whether a US citizen or a non-US citizen living and working in another country, in which case they often utilize a PEO (professional employer organization) in order to pay the employee, withhold and pay the appropriate taxes and benefits and other compliance issues local to where the employee lives and works.

At my last job we had both US and Canadian locations and separate payrolls for US and Canadian employees.

But a manager hired a Canadian employee and assigned him to one of our US office locations. The employee was going to eventually relocate to the US but at the time he was hired, did not have a US work visa and he was living in and working remotely from Canada.

We had to push back and tell the manager and the employee he could not be paid from the US payroll and had to be temporarily assigned to one of our Canadian locations and paid from the Canadian Payroll. And this created some problems with things like assigning him to a US manager as a Canadian employee in the HRIS system… other issues too, lots of work arounds involved.

And our accounting department wasn’t all too happy because they had to make intercompany journal entries to move the wage and tax expenses and liabilities from the Canadian business entity to the US business entity but there was no other way around it.

We had another Canadian employee hired to a US location who had a US work permit/visa and a temporary US address (a hotel) until he got a permanent US address, but he only had a Canadian bank account.

But we could not pay him from our US payroll via direct deposit as it did not allow for direct deposits to any foreign bank accounts. We could process a paper (live) check in USD and mail it to him at his temporary US address, but without any US bank account, he may not have been able to cash it anywhere and depositing a US check to his existing Canadian bank account was problematic as he’d have to travel back to Canada to deposit in person and there would be a substantial delay before the funds were available.

I spent several hours on the phone with him and his manager explaining the problem and the employee was able to open a US bank account very soon after.

[Myrddin]

I have been working at home off and on since 1983. It has been steady since Sept 2014. Prior to that date, I had an engagement that required being in a "closed" space. The "office" environment comes with endless distractions. Loud phone conversations and in-person yammering. I was part of the study group for the first "Peopleware" book by Larry Constantine. Every time you get interrupted, it takes 15 to 20 minutes to return to the focused "flow" state where you are most productive. An interruption every 15 minutes destroys productivity. The office environment is the epitome of continuous interruptions.

[Alberta's Child]

Great post. You’ve been a source of wisdom on this issue since the Branch Covidian hysteria began in the spring of 2020. :-)

[Alberta's Child]

Back in March 2020 I warned business owners in my professional circles that they were going to regret ever going to a work-from-home business operation -- for these very reasons.

I predicted that they'd NEVER get back to "normal" if their work-from-home arrangement extended beyond the original "two weeks to flatten the curve."

I was right.

[Alberta's Child]

One big problem for the employer is that their original Branch Covidian lockdown lunacy could very well have been a major factor in their employee's "crippling anxiety."

As I told one of my fellow board members in the example I cited previously from 2023:

"The leadership of this company can't blame our employees when they accepted our stupid lockdown orders in 2020 at face value. Now they don't want to come back to the office because they think of their fellow employees as biohazards. You have nobody to blame but yourselves for this mess."

[1Old Pro]

I think this topic is one where the words “new normal” are actually appropriate.

[Sir_Humphrey]

The employers may win the philosophical argument in that they were hired knowing they had to come in the office so they (the employees) can't complain once the pandemic (nonsense) is over. IOW, these are still the same conditional you were hire under. I get it.

But the reality is that with today's technology there is no reason to be in the office 5 days a week. Sure the employer can require it but in today's world there are plenty of companies that permit remote work or at the very least a hybrid. If my company was insistent on this, I'd find another company to work for.

Employers must either adapt or be prepared to lose employees; even "valuable" employees.

[fuzzylogic]

IMHO...as a member of senior management, there’s a balance. There’s some reasons why I like some flexibility but at the same time, there’s many reasons, especially in an engineering organization, that everyone being in the office is crucial. It also benefits the development of new/young employees, which is critical to future success.

There’s many angles that must be considered on this topic, complex dynamics.

[T.B. Yoits]

Getting out in the world with other people is so much better for your mental well being.

Tapdancing on landmines in an office is bad for mental health. One slip up, a "misgendered" coworker complains and you're gone.

Harassment lawsuits have dropped off exponentially since remote work was implemented.

[T.B. Yoits]

If I can work from anywhere, the employees can also be from anywhere. This is a good way to hire third world employees without bringing them in the country.

Employees are well aware that any job that could have been outsourced overseas already has been.

[T.B. Yoits]

I personally hate working from home. As another poster mentioned earlier up thread, I prefer getting out of the house every day and meeting people.

Trying to force coworkers to fill the role of friends is just wrong.

[T.B. Yoits]

Who gives a rip if the workers don’t want to go back- fire em and hire office workers Instead if they refuse.

There is no "back to the office" for workers who were never there. We've expanded our team to hire from three states away and the remote workers are far better than the locals. It's not even close.

[T.B. Yoits]

Then remote learning should be just as effective as doing it in person. And it IS - for a small minority. For most? No.

Would love to see the data to back that up.

The internet is full of learning opportunities that you'd never, ever get in person.

[kosciusko51]

Trying to force coworkers to fill the role of friends is just wrong.

I worked at a small company for over 20 years. I thought some of them were my friends until they became petty tyrants over covid policies. One of the many reasons I work for another company now.

[T.B. Yoits]

I worked at a small company for over 20 years. I thought some of them were my friends until they became petty tyrants over covid policies.

One thing that no one wants to address is that the trust is gone. Employees don't trust their bosses who pushed to have them unwillingly take part in a bio experiment and they also don't trust their coworkers who wished the same.

There are some coworkers who I could never trust knowing how deficient they are in their thought processes and morals. I'm suspicious of all their work now. I don't want to meet them face to face ever again.

[Mr Rogers]

“Would love to see the data to back that up.”

So...was it a mistake to force kids back to school after COVID? Or were they learning BETTER at home?

[Codeflier]

Agreed - the commute being gone is the only positive I see.

[Codeflier]

In the scenario you describe, you are still working in the same place where you sleep.

[Codeflier]

I hated it. I did it for about 2 months and was going crazy. It felt like there was no distinction between home life and work.

I have two offices in my house. The one in my Master bedroom has the better view...I looked over to my left about 6PM one day and realized I had spent about 19 hours of the last 24 in my bedroom. That depressing realization made me see how that was no way to live.

I immediately told them I was going back to the office whether they liked it or not. This was very early in the shutdowns in 2020.

I also noticed that the production of some employees went way down after we went all remote.

[Codeflier]

Guess it depends on where you work.