As a group of Apple employees launch a petition against returning to actual work in the office for three whole days a week, studies show that remote “work” is great for deteriorating a company’s work culture, lowering productivity, and wasting time.
Last week, CEO Tim Cook set a September 5th deadline for workers to be in the office at least three days a week, the latest of multiple, uh, fruitless attempts by the tech company to get employees back to real work in person.
Employees against the return to office order claim they are able to work just as efficiently and productively at home, but that might not be strictly true.
Remote workers are wasting up to 67 minutes a day doing menial and unnecessary tasks just to prove to their supervisors that they are actually virtually engaged with their work, according to a July report from Qatalog and GitLab.
In what the authors coined “digital presenteeism,” more and more remote workers are feeling pressured into proving to their superiors that they are visibly online, and in doing so are adding an average of 5.5 redundant work hours a week to their regular schedules.
Remote work may also have contributed to deteriorating work culture and consequently lower productivity for certain employees, according to another recent study published in MIT Sloan Management Review.
The study’s authors found that remote work is leading to a higher number of less-important meetings that have a bearing on worker happiness and potentially productivity.
MacDailyNews Take: Because Tim Cook, Deidre O’Brien, and Apple’s other assorted “management” doormats don’t seem to grasp how to deal with petulant children, here’s how it’s done, via Elon Musk:
Subject: To be super clear
Everybody:
Everyone at Tesla is required to spend a minimum of 40 hours in the office per week. Moreover, the office must be where our actual colleagues are located, not some remote pseudo office. If you don’t show up, we will assume you have resigned.
The more senior you are, the more visible must be your presence. That is why I lived in the factory so much – so that those on the line could see me working alongside them. If I had not done that, Tesla would long ago have gone bankrupt.
There are of course companies that don’t require this, but when was the last time they shipped a great new product? It’s been a while.
Tesla has and will create and actually manufacture the most exciting and meaningful products of any company on Earth. This will not happen by phoning it in.
Thanks,
Elon
See also:
• Group of Apple workers launch petition against return-to-office mandate – August 22, 2022
• Apple orders staff to back to work in office three days per week in bid to boost productivity – August 16, 2022
• Elon Musk mocks Apple over yet another return-to-work delay – May 19, 2022
• Apple delays plan to have workers return to office three days a week – May 17, 2022
• Some Apple employees bristle as three-day office return looms – April 29, 2022
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