- I work in cybersec, all those alternative channels can be monitored or blocked just fine, and still better than “closed office door + handsy VP” which has plagued the workforce for years and years.
- you mention conflict resolution as the remote challenge examples. I mentioned sexual harassment and ageism. Very different.
I think you didn't read my comment. The problem was parents cancelling daycare because they thought they could take care of kids and work simultaneously without impacting their work.
They literally had daycare, cancelled it, and brought the problem on themselves after WFH was instituted.
> I work in cybersec, all those alternative channels can be monitored or blocked just fine,
You are deluding yourself if you think none of your employees are using their personal phones to talk to each other, or that groups of employees don't gather in personal Discords and chat app groups.
As a parent, taking care of a child is itself a full time job. Your friend is either an idiot or was banking on his work being stupid enough to let it slide.
Parents leaving work early and not staying late because of kids is an office problem you didn't mention.
Employees using a personal discord sounds positive. Work relationships are building remotely. When employees in person become close they call personal cells and go to bars to discuss how clueless leadership is. Leadership isn't capturing those conversation why is it suddenly a problem if a discord is used?
Why is that the company's concern? I genuinely don't understand what responsibility the company has for employees actions outside of work.
If we are now both working from home, does that qualitatively change the situation? When working from home, what even is "outside of work"?
This is very common, even when working in an office. Has nothing to do with working from home
*reported
It could be that people felt more empowered to report incidents, but the reality is probably just that the nature of harassment has changed and is just different from how it was like in-person.
Or it could be that the number of incidents actually just went way up? I don't understand why everyone tries to inject alternate explanations to wave away inconvenient situations.
For all we know, it could be worse. Given the fact that a lot us have trouble separating work and home when we work remotely, maybe there is more pressure to let coworkers in that space more.
The parent commenter was absolutely trying to dismiss the core of the story by injecting an alternate reality into it.
> If they're not equally likely, I'm sure you'll have no problem demonstrating that?
The situation I'm referring to was not a simple reporting change. It involved employees quitting over bullying, and in one case there were issues severe enough that law enforcement became involved.
So, not, it was not a simple case of people reporting things differently. These problems did not exist pre-WFH at this company.
But if you're dead set on finding ways to reject this and substitute your own reality, I suspect even this won't convince you.
I really don't know why you're so aggressive. You did not include the context in your original comment that you did with this one, and so someone put forward a very reasonable explanation as to why reports may have went up.
I don't think you can generalize that to other companies or even other departments at your company.
Will HR do anything about a handsy VP in a he-said-she-said situation? Maybe. Will they do anything when you send them screenshots of a VP’s icky chats? You bet.
Actually, they will likely transfer the woman or otherwise screw over her career to protect the handy VP.
As a parent of a toddler, I’m shocked they thought this would work. Kids that young need constant social interaction with their caregiver.
The Covid 19 situations were different since many people were forced into them by daycares and schools closing or “going remote”.
Your friend, however, is an idiot. I know lots of people who have worked remotely for 10+ years, and none of them tried to work their job while taking care of a 3 year old - except maybe during COVID (because it was either that or quit).
I can definitely see the former going way up but the latter going way down.
Note that your HR friends is not a good measure of harassment. Maybe more people filed HR complaints because asshole and abusive behavior was easily documented over chat, etc. Whereas before, you had abusive behavior, for example, inappropriate touches but no witness that a person might not feel comfortable bringing up to HR especially if the abuser is somebody important.
Everyone knows that HR basically exists to protect the company. Unless you have ironclad proof, you may not want to involve them. Remote work would leave more of an undeniable paper trail.
Flexibility for parents is great. I've worked remote for a long time and having additional flexibility to take care of sick kids and still get some work in while they're asleep and later in the evening is great. Much better for everyone than forcing another PTO day just to stay home.
However, I've also been seeing remote work and parenting being pushed way too far since COVID. One of my friends cancelled daycare for their 3 year old, thinking they'd just watch him at home while they worked. Didn't take long to realize that they weren't getting much work done while tending to the demands of a 3 year old, and it became impossible to hide when the child would interrupt every meeting multiple times over.
One local company I'm familiar with went remote during COVID and had significant problems with quality of work and communications. The kind of quality problems that impacted customers (not a traditional tech company, their product required employees to do specific work for each customer). When they started narrowing down on the problem employees, one of the top causes they uncovered was parents of young children trying to do the job while watching their kids. It can work with a 13 year old home for summer break, but it just doesn't work for very young kids who need a lot of attention.
> - preventing sexism, ageism, and other forms harassment at work: can’t sexually harass someone quite as easily in a fully auditable zoom/slack environment vs in office.
I'm going to have to disagree with this one. My friends in HR said the number of inter-employee problems went way, way up during COVID remote work. Employees communicate outside of official channels, in voice meetings that aren't recorded, and in chat rooms you don't control. Some people get extremely difficult to work with when they're arguing with a screen name instead of talking to a person face to face.