Billionaire CEOs were quick to sing the praises of working from home at the start of the pandemic, calling it the way of the future — but over the last three years, they’ve slowly changed their tune.
Late last year, Forbes reported that 90% of companies will return to the office in 2024, with 28% threatening to fire workers who don’t comply.
But it turns out that the motivations for calling workers back to the office may have less to do with employee productivity or profit margins and everything to do with catering to the egos of controlling managers who want their workers back, according to a recent study published by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh.
Mark Ma, an associate professor of business administration from Pitt’s Katz Graduate School of Business, who led the study, told BI he started the research hoping to understand why some S&P 500 firms want employees to return to the office while other firms avoid calling them back.
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“One of the most common arguments management suggests is that they want to return to office because employee productivity is low at home, and they believe returns to office would help firms improve performance and ultimately improve the firm’s value,” Ma told BI. “That’s the reason they give — but our results actually do not support these arguments.”
This was obvious. Actual work involves focusing. WFH encourages me to focus more. The office is a distracting and annoying place to be.
There’s no need to use WFH as an acronym. Can we just stop using acronyms entirely at this point? I know I’m deviating from the point, but fuck acronyms!
I would normally agree with you, acronyms are way over used. But this is an article about working from home and returning to the office. There’s nothing vague or unclear about WFH or RTO here in the slightest, and no one is going to confuse those for a different meaning.
what should we say instead?
Working remotely is a much better term. WFH implies that the employer gets to decide where the work gets done, which is completely unnecessary if the given work can be done remotely.
No, not really.
Working from home?
And we can speed it up by using an initialism, like WFH!
It’s not an acronym. It’s not pronounced “wuffuh” or whatever you’re imagining. It’s an initialism, and it’s far more efficient than fully writing out “work from home.”
one does wish you never get into a profession involving laser, or sonar, or scuba. or one where you woukd need to conduct an MRI or CT scan. or at a stock exchange with those stock tickers shortening themselves all over the place.
no malice meant, you see. it’s just that your coworkers in such jobs would find interacting with you immensely tedious.