[charanreddy]

In our company as well, employees prefer either permanent WFH or a healthy mix, but definitely not just fully office.

Personally, I believe that it needs to be a mix. We need to figure out days of the week, where people meet one another and share thoughts & ideas. From a WFH setting, it is very difficult to do this. Online meetings are not as effective as in person ones.

[bharanidharang]

Voted for a mix of WFH and WFO.

I would need to work with colleagues atleast once a week. Communication face to face has a lot of benefits which cannot be done online. Body language talks a lot during these meetings and you never get the same visualisation online.

[poloman]

A personal reflection even though I am not a fan of WFH. Introvert people like me are really happy if WFH is working well. We were told that businesses were all about meeting people and team building. People with less social skills were always looked down upon at work places. Every other month they were forced in to some kind of team building or social activities which caused tremendous pressure to change their natural demeanor.

[DigitalOne]

My company for sure, can afford and will allow WFH at least 2 days a week, if not more.

I would also be comfortable with that. That gives sufficient opportunities for Andhra meals and beer evenings with colleagues

[rijo_tj]

The only silver lining with this pandemic is that most of the workplace have found options to switch to a WFH option / WFO hybrid model where previously WFO was the pre requisite norms.

Going forward , employees can mix in some WFH options with more regular office going which in turn will reduce the unnecessary leaves that was availed previously if say you had to stay at home for some personal reasons.

For me personally, I would prefer regular work from office situation for the following reasons,

- Going to office will act as a clear demarcation between office life and personal life. Also I am not that disciplined wherein I won't get distracted by things happening at home while I try to concentrate on my work.

- Networking opportunities. This is something I have not seen many mention. But if you work in a large scale office location wherein you get to meet others from your domain or related domain you get the chance to network more resulting in better opportunities career wise or better business opportunities. This is something that would be terribly missed if everybody opts for WFH option. Remember your career growth is not just depended on your colleagues , it is also dependent on professionals in other companies/domains.

[NotanF1driver]

Originally Posted by Chetan_Rao

While working from home definitely poses challenges in separating professional and personal aspects of one's life (esp. those who don't have dedicated working spaces at home and irregular schedules), the 'WFH is leading to my manager/employer not respecting boundaries' perspective makes me wonder whether those boudaries were clearly defined and respected before, or is it just a case of the 'venue' of unreasonable overtime having shifted to our personal living space?

A case of 'I'd much rather slog away doing overtime in a designated cubicle away from home instead of my family walking by asking why I haven't logged off for the day yet?'

Agree. I cant vote, but here is my thought.
I am responsible for my team and I’ve a bit of freedom to give WFH or WFO as the case may be. With the current situation, everyone is working from home on a flexible schedule. Being a professional services firm, we go by client’s schedules, which varies drastically. This means that what was considered odd hours earlier, is now perfectly okay. If my boss asks for a meeting at 9.30 pm, I cant refuse - at max I might turn off video. Also if client asks team to reach out to them at 8pm, they are forced to accept. No one is at fault. But the current situation means longer working hours and pressure for all of us - Juniors, seniors/ leads, managers and bosses alike. What contributes to this is that, what we used to close in a 1 hour meeting, at least takes 2 hours on teams calls to close. WFH has a lot of advantages, but I’m personally of the opinion that it should end, and boundaries be respected like mentioned by Chetan, for it to be good.

[m8002?]

Originally Posted by poloman

A personal reflection even though I am not a fan of WFH. Introvert people like me are really happy if WFH is working well. We were told that businesses were all about meeting people and team building. People with less social skills were always looked down upon at work places. Every other month they were forced in to some kind of team building or social activities which caused tremendous pressure to change their natural demeanor.

Agree with you on forced team building events. Belonging to a team should come naturally from within for the team members. The teams where people hang out together outside the office are the best ones. This need not be an introvert/extrovert thing.

If one cannot stand his/her colleagues in office( I am exaggerating here ), no amount of team building activities, team lunch, etc by HR/Manager will make it work. It just shows there is a cultural gap.

[VrsFreak!]

A mix of having the team working from home on certain days and them coming over to the office for good strategy meetings and follow up's on certain tasks are something many companies should adopt.

Extremely grateful to be in the digital space our which allows us to work remotely.

[Pacific]

Voted for a mix of WFH and WFO.

Last week we had a virtual town-hall and our CEO informed us that our place of work will open on 6th of September. However, post that date, we are welcome to WFH on the days of our liking. Seems to be a nice arrangement IMHO.

[recshenoy]

Now that companies have tasted cost savings through remote work, healthy mix of WFH and WFO is going to be future. There is no need to have every one in office on everyday basis especially for the jobs which can be done remotely.

However my choice is 100% WFH. This will take lot of pressure out of unplanned so called cities now crippling under poor infrastructure, traffic jams, ever decreasing water table etc. Also, this will balance out employment, people, income distribution across the country than crowding a particular place.

[jbpanda]

Voted for "Mix of Home and Office".

While I always enjoyed working from office until we were compelled to embrace work from home. In the pre-COVID era, work from home was being viewed as a luxury available at the disposal of some of the service sectors/ industries but with the lockdowns it became the norm and a necessity across sectors and industries to ensure continuity in businesses.

On the negative side of work from home, I believe the virtual meetings can never substitute the humane element of a personal and physical interaction over a face to face meeting. It is also true that there is no longer a demarcation of work hours and the schedule seems to have gone haywire. With the household chores which are inevitable in the lockdowns, one has to shuffle between work and household activities.

On the positive side, I like the flexibility to work as per one's convenience (most of the time) and work from any location (home town or a vacation). Did try out the workcation option end of last year (when things were not as bad as what it is today) and was pleasantly surprised with the productivity.

Most importantly, there is a lot of difference between choosing an option during normal times when one has the flexibility to choose at one's disposal. It is completely a different story when we are compelled to choose one over the other due to imposed restrictions and constraints. However, given an option after normalcy resumes, I would love to have the flexibility to choose between work from home or work from office depending on convenience and requirement.

[poloman]

Apple employees revolt against the company for asking them to work from office for 3 days a week from September. Now I am not getting in to who is right or wrong here. But this kind of behavior from employees will definitely make corporations to rethink on employee friendly policies like hybrid WFH.

https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/4/22...etter-tim-cook

[Altocumulus]

I was always work from home even before COVID with my present organization. That was because I donot have a team here and so there is no workstation allocated for me.

Post the pandemic our organization has let go of 3 offices and built a state of the art Office mainly for Client Visits and maybe 1-2 times a month team face time.

However as and when I shift to another organization I would prefer a 70 WFH and 30 WFO arrangement.

[funkykar]

Interactions with people in person on a regular basis are what I prefer. On a personal note, I need to keep my several 2-wheelers running once in a while. It helps me in that as pect as well.

I can't think of returning to working from the office (of course when they open up) until my 4-year-old kid's physical school resumes.