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remote work
A Death in a Cubicle Undermines the Case for In-Person Work
How can an employee die at her desk and remain undiscovered for so long in a place supposedly designed to enhance collaboration and human connection?
Sep 03, 2024
The recent, tragic story of Denise Prudhomme, a 60-year-old Wells Fargo employee who was found dead at her cubicle four days after she came into her office, challenges the prevailing narrative about the supposed social and collaborative benefits of in-person work. Prudhomme's death went unnoticed in an environment that is often portrayed as fostering better communication and team cohesion. This disturbing reality casts serious doubt on the claims made by many corporate leaders that bringing workers back to the office is essential for their well-being and collaboration. The story reveals a stark contrast between the idealized vision of in-office work and its practical shortcomings.
Corporate leaders frequently argue that remote work results in isolation and a loss of team spirit, emphasizing that the physical presence of employees is necessary to maintain a connected and innovative workplace. Yet, Prudhomme's case suggests otherwise. Despite being in the office, her presence—or rather, her tragic absence—went unnoticed for days. This raises a profound question: How can an employee die at her desk and remain undiscovered for so long in a place supposedly designed to enhance collaboration and human connection? Several employees noticed a foul odor but attributed it to faulty plumbing rather than the grim reality. This oversight reveals a significant disconnect between what companies claim about in-person work and what actually happens on the ground.
The death of Denise Prudhomme is a stark reminder that the supposed benefits of in-person work are often overstated or misunderstood.
Recent research adds another layer to this discussion. The Survey of Working Arrangements and Attitudes (SWAA), led by Nick Bloom and his colleagues, shows that employees spend only about 80 minutes on in-person activities during a typical office day. The rest of their time is spent on tasks like video conferencing, emailing, and using communication tools—tasks that are equally manageable from home. These findings highlight the inefficiencies of in-office work, where the supposed benefits of collaboration are minimal, and the majority of the workday could be performed just as effectively outside the office.
The push for in-office work is often framed as an attempt to combat isolation and enhance teamwork, but the truth seems to lie elsewhere. Instead of being about employee welfare, it may be more about outdated managerial control and resistance to change, as found in recent research led by Professor Mark Ma from the University of Pittsburgh, alongside his graduate student Yuye Ding. This compulsion not only creates a toxic work environment but also perpetuates a lack of genuine engagement among employees. The death of Prudhomme, unnoticed by her colleagues, serves as a grim reminder of the consequences of such a culture.
The Wells Fargo incident also underscores the limitations of traditional office environments. Many workplaces are structured in ways that can be isolating. This reality challenges the narrative that in-office work fosters better mental health and social engagement. If the physical presence of employees was genuinely the solution to isolation, how could such a tragedy occur without anyone noticing for so long? It becomes evident that the drive to return employees to the office is not necessarily about their well-being or improved collaboration but often about control, visibility, and maintaining the status quo.
To genuinely improve workplace dynamics and employee satisfaction, companies should reconsider how they structure in-person workdays. By focusing on meaningful in-person engagements and allowing remote work for tasks that do not require physical presence, companies can reduce unnecessary commuting, increase productivity, and significantly improve employee well-being.
The death of Denise Prudhomme is a stark reminder that the supposed benefits of in-person work are often overstated or misunderstood. The reality of her unnoticed death in a supposedly collaborative office setting reveals the emptiness of corporate claims about the need for physical presence to foster better teamwork and social connections.
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Let’s Raise the Standard for Workplace Accommodations This Labor Day
Disabled workers are a growing portion of the labor force and a vital asset to our economy, but pandemic-era accesibility gains could end up being temporary if we’re not careful.
Sep 04, 2023
This Labor Day, it’s time to talk about disabled workers.
This issue is personal for me. I debated for years about whether to disclose my disability status to potential employers.
I have rheumatoid arthritis, which is largely managed thanks to medication. I’m extremely lucky—I get to choose whether and how to disclose my disability, instead of needing to disclose it to get access to tools I need to succeed on the job. Usually, the only visible evidence of my disability at work is when an occasional flare-up gives me pain.
We’re at a crossroads: We can either continue to build on this progress that has opened doors for an entire section of the labor force—and for improved labor policies in general—or we can undo those great strides and shut disabled workers out.
At least 1 out of every 4 Americans has a disability, and conditions like long Covid may have bumped that number even further. Millions of disabled American workers rely on a variety of visible and invisible workplace accommodations to help them do their jobs and do them well.
As the U.S. Department of Labor explains on their website, workplace accommodations “may include specialized equipment, modifications to the work environment, or adjustments to work schedules or responsibilities.” That can mean anything from adaptive technology to ergonomic office furniture to a hybrid or fully remote work schedule.
We still have a long way to go to make American workplaces around our country more accessible, inclusive, and more likely to hire and retain disabled workers. Labor Day is the perfect time to talk about how to raise the standard across the country when it comes to disability accommodations in the workplace.
Three years into the pandemic, changes in remote and hybrid work policies have transformed the job market for disabled workers, vastly expanding opportunities for employment and making it more feasible for disabled workers not only to survive but to thrive. Workplaces in turn benefit from disabled workers’ talents, perspectives, and adaptiveness.
Disabled workers are a growing portion of the labor force and a vital asset to our economy. But with a growing employer pushback against remote work and other basic accommodations, these pandemic-era gains could end up being temporary if we’re not careful.
We’re at a crossroads: We can either continue to build on this progress that has opened doors for an entire section of the labor force—and for improved labor policies in general—or we can undo those great strides and shut disabled workers out.
Despite some protections under the Americans with Disabilities Act, which just turned 33, disabled workers still face stigma when it comes to hiring, employment, and navigating workplace environments that require accommodations.
Although a lot of progress has occurred over the past several decades, workers like me can still face an uphill battle when trying to access workplace accommodations to fulfill our job duties. Doctors’ notes, medical records, complicated human resources processes, and other hurdles can be a barrier to getting even the most basic requests accommodated.
The cost for employers tends to be pretty small. A May survey of employers by the Job Accommodation Network found that fulfilling an accommodation request cost half of them nothing at all. Of those that did incur an expense, the median cost was just $300.
Meanwhile, staff-wide workplace measures like flexible scheduling, paid sick leave, intermittent breaks, or ergonomic office furniture tend to benefit everyone, not just disabled employees.
Let’s raise the standard this year. Let’s treat disability accommodations like we treat safety standards or anti-discrimination statutes—as common-sense measures that help employers retain great employees and ensure their full potential, for the benefit of everyone.
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With HQ Walkout, Amazon Workers Say 'Hell No' to Climate Failures and Return-to-Office Mandate
"Today looks like it might be the start of a new chapter in Amazon's history," one organizer of the nationwide protest remarked optimistically.
May 31, 2023
More than 1,000 Amazon corporate workers and allies rallied outside the e-commerce giant's Seattle headquarters on Wednesday to protest the company's return-to-work policy and what they called its failure to fulfill its climate pledge.
Sign and chant slogans during the Seattle lunchtime rally—which was organized by Amazon Employees for Climate Justice and Amazon's Remote Advocacy group—included "Amazon: Strive Harder," "Stop Greenwashing," and "Hell No, RTO,"—a rebuke of a mandate from Amazon CEO Andy Jassy to return to the office at least three days per week.
"Morale is the lowest I've seen since I've been working here," one Seattle-based employee who did not want to be named and has worked for the company since 2020 told Wired.
This year, Amazon terminated 27,000 workers, layoffs that mirrored cost-cutting sackings at other tech companies that overhired during the Covid-19 pandemic.
At least hundreds of other Amazon corporate employees and their supporters took part in similar demonstrations outside company offices around the nation on Wednesday, according to reports.
"Today looks like it might be the start of a new chapter in Amazon's history, when tech workers coming out of the pandemic stood up and said, 'We still want a say in this company and the direction of this company,'" Eliza Pan, a former Amazon corporate employee and a co-founder of Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, told The Associated Press.
Amazon spokesperson Brad Glasser told Wired that "we're always listening and will continue to do so, but we're happy with how the first month of having more people back in the office has been."
"There's more energy, collaboration, and connections happening, and we've heard this from lots of employees and the businesses that surround our offices," he added.
However, Church Hindley, an Amazon quality assurance engineer, told the AP that working from home has improved his health and quality of life.
"I'm not suited for in-office work," Hindley said. "I deal with depression and anxiety, and I was able to get off my anxiety medication and start living my life."
Pamela Hayter, an Amazon project manager, started the "Remote Advocacy" internal Slack channel, which now has 33,000 members.
During the Seattle rally, Hayter slammed the return-to-office mandate, saying, "I cannot believe that a company in this day and age, a company that claims to be an innovative leader in its space, would do that to one of its most precious resources—its employees."
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Steven Rattner's Not Afraid Of Work From Home, He's Afraid Of Worker Power
The real terror for Wall Street titans like Rattner? That workers aren't going to put up with whatever he and his fellow bosses throw at them anymore.
Mar 25, 2023
The United States is in the middle of a long-overdue resurgence in labor organizing, antipathy to corporate power, and class analysis. This is terrifying to business executives and the ultra-rich, especially those affiliated with the Democratic Party. What was once the party of Bill Clinton sounds more and more like the party of Franklin Delano Roosevelt again, as ever-greater numbers of Democratic voters bring back good-old American "us vs. the bosses" economic populism.
I'm no psychoanalyst. But I do know that when people have an anxiety which they can't say out loud, they tend to sublimate it into public anger about something else. Many wealthy Democrats don't want to say out loud that they're mad about growing worker power, or they'll be correctly labeled union-busters and oligarchs by their co-partisans. So instead, they've begun to scream about things that are only somewhat related, and much, much sillier: work-from-home policies and "quiet quitting" (a term I don't think I've ever heard an actual worker use unironically.)
Over the last two years, we've seen op-ed after op-ed after study after op-ed claiming white-collar workers absolutely must stop working from home and get back into the office, under their manager's watchful and loving eye, as soon as possible. The New York Times published a representative entry in the genre on Wednesday, an op-ed entitled "Is Working From Home Really Working?" (The metaphysics implied by the question is not explored in the op-ed.)
Many wealthy Democrats don't want to say out loud that they're mad about growing worker power, or they'll be correctly labeled union-busters and oligarchs by their co-partisans.
The piece is written by Steven Rattner, a billionaire who is Michael Bloomberg's personal money manager. Rattner once settled a combined $16.2 million worth of lawsuits over running a pay-to-play scheme with the New York state pension fund, and was banned from the financial services industry for two years. All of this was omitted from his bio, because why let defrauding the elderly keep a man from the most-prized real estate in New York journalism?
Rattner is worried that the pandemic has changed American job habits for the worse, most especially by allowing desk workers to work from home. "The question lurking in the minds of many with whom I've spoken (as well as my own)," Rattner writes, "is 'Has America gone soft?''"
No, America has not gone soft. (And as long as we're talking psychoanalysis, what a choice of words!) American workers have just started getting the barest minimum of a few lucky breaks. But that is terrifying to Rattner and his fellow moguls, so they need some sort of rational argument for why these bare scraps of power are actually bad for everyone.
If Rattner and pals could just rationalize their anxiety about their employees working from home, then they wouldn't have to think about what that anxiety indicates about who they really are. If working from home truly is bad, then maybe Rattner and pals actually aren't the beneficiaries of decades, if not centuries, of class dominance!
Unfortunately for Rattner, his argument in the Times is hilariously unpersuasive. He can't manage to articulate a good case for forbidding work from home. And he can't rationalize away his agita about losing power over workers, because the current rebalancing is just and overdue.
If working from home truly is bad, then maybe Rattner and pals actually aren't the beneficiaries of decades, if not centuries, of class dominance!
Rattner's best evidence against flexible work policies is (tellingly) a string of anecdotes about his fellow business elites' feelings. According to Rattner, JPMorganChase CEO Jamie Dimon, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg all feel like their employees are less productive when they work from home.
Okay. So what? These aren't rigorous, peer-reviewed studies, they're the subjective feelings of CEOs who have obvious, vested interests in directly monitoring their employees — if the boss can come around to your desk at any time, it's a lot harder to complain about him. (Also, I thought Zuckerberg's whole pitch for the Metaverse was working wherever you want?) On the flip side, many workers would say they are actually more productive working from home, which is borne out by data collected by Stanford Professor Nicholas Bloom.
More to the point, even if JPMorganChase, Salesforce, and Meta employees are less productive when they're at home, what's it matter? These are multibillion-dollar companies with monopolistic or oligopolistic positions. Their product quality hasn't suffered. And there's been no connection between productivity and wages for decades now. Sure, the CEOs themselves want their workers to be more productive, but that's only a relevant social goal to those CEOs, not the average Times reader.
Rattner does try to make the reader care…through some of the funniest slippery slope arguments I've seen in ages. He warns that the now-shuttered Silicon Valley Bank wrote in its annual report last month that it "may experience negative effects of a prolonged work-from-home arrangement." Yeah, Steve, I'm sure that's what did in SVB. The interest rate hikes, undiversified depositor base, and tech winter had nothing to do with it. I'm sure the lack of a chief risk officer barely mattered. And pay no attention to those payouts to insiders either. We all know that employees watching YouTube on the clock is what causes bank runs.
His other slippery slope invokes the corporate class's go-to justification for terrible ideas these days: you don't want us to lose to China, do you? "The Chinese expression '996' means working 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week. While the Chinese government has been trying to curb this practice as part of a series of labor market reforms, in my many interactions with businessmen and investors there, I still find the prevailing work ethic extraordinary," Rattner writes.
So by Rattner's own admission, China is also trying to improve its work-life balance, and Chinese business leaders also find this irritating. Sounds like our nations are striving toward the same policy! However one feels about China, I really don't think that the decisive factor of 21st-century Great Power competition will be whether American desk workers get to work from home sometimes. There are a few dozen potential military conflicts, weapons technologies, and international trade agreements that seem a bit more relevant, no?
And as long as we're doing international comparisons, let's look at the U.S.'s fellow liberal democracies. Americans famously work more hours with fewer vacations and worse benefits than our peers in Europe. Rattner points out that Europeans have returned to the office at higher rates than Americans — before noting that Europeans tend to live in smaller homes than Americans, making work-from-home less comfortable in the first place. I'd add that European countries also generally have more wealth equality, stronger unions, better regulation, more leisure time, and far larger welfare states. If working from home feels like clawing a tiny bit of your life back from your boss, then Europeans are simply a lot farther along in clawing their lives back than Americans.
Yet Rattner apparently has never considered that spending less of one's life at work improves one's life a whole lot. "Less output — whether a consequence of fewer hours or lower efficiency — eventually means a lower standard of living (or a less quickly rising one)," he warns.
If working from home feels like clawing a tiny bit of your life back from your boss, then Europeans are simply a lot farther along in clawing their lives back than Americans.
This is a classic case of an economist using a technical proposition to imply a more philosophical argument that he can't support on its own merits. Sure, less total economic output might eventually mean that American companies will, say, develop products more slowly. But is that really what matters the most to most people? Doesn't a high standard of living also mean more leisure time? Which would improve the average American's life more: a slightly better iPhone camera, or more time with their families?
Rattner also conveniently forgets about how wages have been untethered from rising productivity for decades now. Similarly, the best wage gains in 30 years have coincided with the rise of work-from-home policies. And companies don't seem to be suffering, given record corporate profits.
The most telling lines of Rattner's piece are the ones that have nothing to do with working from home at all. He informs us that a Wall Street Journal study found 38 percent of workers and managers say the importance of work diminished to them during the pandemic, and notes that Americans now have about $900 billion more in savings than they did before the Covid-19 stimulus bills. Neither of these facts has anything to do with work-from-home policies, which are the focus of Rattner's argument.
The fact that they're in the piece implies that Rattner's real issue isn't flexible work; it's general worker power. If people care less about work post-pandemic, they'll be less likely to accept exploitation from their employers. If workers have more savings, especially amid a hot job market, then they're better able to use their best countermeasure against their bosses: threatening to quit. (That is, threatening to actually quit, not threatening to…just do the job they were hired for.)
The average American absolutely does not want to be working as much as they are, but they simply have no choice with the way our society has been deliberately constructed.
This is the real terror for Rattner; that workers aren't going to put up with whatever he and his fellow bosses throw at them anymore. Castigating work-from-home policies is more socially acceptable in Democratic circles than saying "I should be able to force my employees to do whatever I want." But if Rattner won his oh-so-minor victory against flexible work policies, it wouldn't satisfy the real source of his frustration.
He has a telling turn of phrase right after his obligatory reference to John Maynard Keynes' prediction of the 15-hour workweek. The United States could have taken the path Keynes predicted, Rattner writes, but "Instead, we chose to keep working in order to enjoy greater material rewards."
No, Steven, "we" didn't "choose" that. Your pals in the C-Suites and Congress chose it for the rest of us. And when we protested, you crushed unions, deregulated industry, and shriveled employment opportunities through corporate trade deals. The average American absolutely does not want to be working as much as they are, but they simply have no choice with the way our society has been deliberately constructed.
At long last, though, they're starting to change the rules of society and rebalance the scales in the workplace. Whether that happens in office buildings or home desks, it isn't going to stop. For their own mental health, Rattner and his friends better grow up and get used to it.
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