Posted on 05/10/2020 8:16:25 AM PDT by DoodleBob
It might seem like the glorious era of remote work is upon us, driven by a pandemic push. Zoom! Slack! Who needs the office? The promise of uncompromised productivity paired with freedom is alluring.
I’m a behavioral scientist, though, so color me skeptical.
While software can ostensibly replicate the features of an office, there are some underlying behavioral tricks that physical offices have mastered. We may not want to discard them so quickly.
Let’s start in a not-so-obvious place: habits.
People often complain that they can’t start new habits. “I have tried but I just can’t seem to [INSERT: exercise, meditate, start new hobby.]”
On average, Americans report having tried to lose weight seven times in their lives. That’s at least six failed attempts (maybe seven) to do something that they are highly motivated to do. The $9 billion self-help industry has made its fortune selling us solutions that help us achieve the “simple” goals we want to achieve.
I’m here to tell you good news: There is a foolproof way for you to start a new habit, achieve your goals, and improve your life. Surprisingly, this system works across cultures. It’s known to everyone. You’ve even tried it.
It’s called work.
(Excerpt) Read more at fastcompany.com ...
In the public sphere, we understand there is an underlying norm about what should happen (“I should show up to this meeting prepared”). We self-regulate on the basis of anticipated consequences of going against that norm.
Accountability is really just expecting you might have to justify your actions to others in relation to a preexisting norm. And it works.
Accountability systems (making behavior public) have been shown to work within voting, school attendance, handwashing, charity donation, and many other domains. In Ely, Iowa, voters were told that if they didn’t vote, their names would be published in the newspaper. This drove voting rates up by 6.9%. A YMCA told their members how much their peers were going to the gym. They then told these members that their attendance would be publicized next month. This increased attendance by 17% to 23%.
This article seems to be gaining traction in certain circles in this remote worker environment. But underneath the psychobabble this strikes me as the ranting from a micromanaging tyrant who is peeved that their people remain productive despite the boss' physical absence. What these types of managers want is to retain control (or worse, for senior management to realize the tyrant is not needed...), so the "advice" is a corporate virtual big brother system that reinforce the "need" for the tyrant boss..
I am less productive on an hourly basis at home.
But put in more hours working from home.
So probably a wash.
Actually, my son’s boss told them that they were more productive working from home and that when things reopen, he doesn’t see any reason they can’t do that a day or two a week going forwards.
There are things they need to do to be in the office for, but if people are working a day or two a week, they can just schedule who’s going to be in the office when and avoid overcrowding.
I have no problem remaining productive or motivated.
IF we could take the chinavirus away and life was otherwise normal, wfh would be a dream come true.
I wrote my Master’s degree thesis on teleworking back in the early 2000s. I proposed that teleworking, now colloquially known as “Working from Home,” is a net gain for employers due to flexibility afforded to workers and the reduced facility costs for employers. In the years since, my thesis still stands, and there are more and more studies performed every year that bear this out.
This article is garbage and neglects to expand for things such as work hour flexibility, work/life balance, and remote workforce enablement.
Sure. For lazy people.
Doesn’t a great deal depend on what the workers are supposed to be “producing”?
I would add that what appear to be changed habits at work result from the desire of employees to be paid: if they don't toe the line, they get fired and don't get paid (unemployment insurance notwithstanding).
Other than the intrusiveness of the suggestions or articles such as this one, a horribly dangerous trend is the one just begun (yet again), to pay people even when they're not working. For a long period of time.
If I were Kristen Berman’s boss, I’d be checking in on her often and setting specific assignments with timelines.
My office went from time cards and micromanaging every 15 minutes of the day to flex time and eventually work from home. We got more done with fewer employees with work from home.
Kristen co-founded Irrational Labs, a behavioral product design company, with Dan Ariely in 2013. Irrational Labs worked with Google, Paypal, Facebook, Ancestry, American Family Insurance, Grand Rounds, Simple, The World Bank, Aetna, Netflix and hundreds more. They are at the forefront of bringing behavioral economics to life – in order to increase the health, wealth and happiness of users.
She was on the founding team for the behavioral economics group at Google, a group that touches over 26 teams across Google, and she hosted one of the top behavioral change conferences globally, StartupOnomics.
Our field is medical. And it's something I don't want to ever have to go through again. You become fond of your patients and when you're not seeing them on a regular basis, it takes a lot out of you. To say nothing of the benefit of seeing your coworkers and knowing they've got your back and you've got theirs.
Working from home is perfectly fine for some people. For others, it's a very unique kind of outer circle of Hell.
I am more productive at home. Since going remote the only way to contact me is via email.
People aren’t calling me up to tell me 5ere life story or promise me something they’ve owed me for some time with a litany of excuses as to why it isn’t done and taking twenty minutes of my time for a thirty seconded yes/no question.
People aren’t stopping in my office door, staying behind at meetings to discuss, etc.
Ii have a lot more control on basic communication and can better focus complex tasks that take a couple of hours.
The only thing I truly miss is being able to bounce into my boss’ offices and run something by them.
Well it’s accurate. Last week “at” work was slow. Devs weren’t getting many builds out. In the office when it’s like that I’m usually in communication with the Devs, helping them solve problems, cause we have that proximity so we can spontaneously talk. Now that we’re living in remote land, that’s not so convenient. By Wednesday I was kicking on the couch reading, I still had Teams and Outlook up, so if something interesting happened I’d find out. But it didn’t. Friday I did my grocery shopping way early, opened a beer by 12:30 and that was it.
Not everyone can work from home. Depending on how your job is structured you may need to be in an office. Not everyone has a job where you exclusively sit at a computer or just talk on the phone.
Although I'm not quite sure what this means, I get the impression that the author is less interested in making accurate observations on the current work environment than she is in asserting a "need" for her company's products.
Dan Ariely writes an advice column for the Wall Street Journal. It's okay.
Definitely. For many jobs, this discussion isn’t relevant at all.
Productive People will continue to be productive at home.
The slugs will continue to be slugs.
20% of the people will continue to do 80% of the work.
The other 20% will create/cause 80% of the problems.
Back then, and still today, teleworking was seen as a way to reduce traffic congestion. It seems logical, work from Home and don’t commute would lead to fewer cars in the road, but the statistics are not that simple.
If anything has helped reduce the number of cars on the road, it is Amazon, but Uber and Lyft have added cars to the roads.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.