At my company they sent nearly everyone who doesn’t need to work in the field on work from home. (It doesn’t apply to me since I’m a maintenance operator)
I have seen a lot of posts and news articles about companies foaming at the mouth ready to bring their employees back and I don’t understand it.
My company has decided that they are going to continue WFH for about 70% of our salaried employees indefinitely post pandemic. Upon doing an investigation the WFH employees have been just as productive, happy, good for moral, and have higher communication with staff in the field Because they just respond with a teams call Instead of wasting time walking to and from production areas.
EDIT: they have also seen no loss in productivity without the third party software that watches you through your camera or tracks mouse activity.
So the conclusion was with little to no downsides they now don’t have to pay for electricity, coffee, and most costly thing they could not cut, all the PPE required to move around a chemical plant to these employees.
Now we have a bunch of buildings that were sad depression mazes of cubicles that sit empty and are being planned to be tore down to make space for more production areas. While the people who had to report to them get to sit in their home and not in the hell landscape made of different shades of gray.
WFH not only makes the employees happier but it makes the company more money. I wonder what statistics middle management is throwing at these execs for them to not see this.