So, when all is said and done and we beat this COVID-19, what are your thoughts on shared work space going forward?
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I was "surplussed" after 20+ years (and most of that remotely) because I wasn't willing to move to Dallas. Several people I know were given the same choice and and uprooted their families. Tragic irony.
CZ was another fantasy for increase in productivity, like the mythical man month. Don't get me wrong, the office I worked in was in bad shape previously and needed a massive upgrade. Meeting room with 10 different type of chairs and half broken. Cubicles as old as the building itself. It was an embarrassment bring any potential client or vendor in for a meeting.
Open space just doesn't fit with T's culture or lack there of. Just tried to have chat at the seat and you will get 1 or more glares from your neighbors while all of them are talking on top of each other on conference calls. Most people don't sit with their teams or people they work with. They should hire one of them Harvard guru to do a critical study. Nope, management only spend big money on training employees to idolize "leadership". Remember Ken Fenoglio, number 1 cheerleader and disciple for RS, charming idolization enough to make a grown man blush or vomit. Someday, Harvard will put together a case study on these times, mark my word.
It’s going to take a LONG time for this stuff to go away altogether. Even afterward, no one will think about cold/flu season quite the same. They should never let anyone sit in those open collaboration zones again - where you can reach out and touch the person across from and beside you. Definitely much closer than the 6’ social distancing needed. No way! I think this virus will change things we do for a long time to come.
Just Google “open floor office coronavirus” or “open plan office coronavirus” - many articles on this topic!
“ An uncovered cough or sneeze creates a spray of up to 40,000 disease-ridden droplets that travel at up to 200 mph to a distance of up to 26 feet and stay suspended in the air for up to 10 minutes. These droplets can make you ill if you breathe them in or, if you avoid that, can stick to your clothes and skin to infect you later. Office walls, and to a lesser extent, cubicle walls, create barriers to these projectiles, greatly lessening the chance that one sick worker will make other workers sick. The toxicity of the open plan office is bad enough when dealing with the common cold or the yearly flu season. If anything resembling an epidemic or pandemic hits the city where you've set up shop in an open plan office, all would take is one sneeze from one infected employee to expose everyone in the office.“
Who wants to go back to that?
Either they are going to have to rethink these open plans/floors and/or just simply let us work from home.
These next few weeks will be the biggest work from home experiment ever - show them we can do this!!
Quote source: https://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/coronavirus-plus-open-plan-office-equals-disaster.html
When the hot zones cool a bit there should be a lot of things the company rethinks. High density office space, supply chain, and foreign offshoring should be at the top of the list.
It's downright humorous how the company spent tons of dough in a Johnny come lately effort to create these hip, "open" or "drop in" workspaces, where it is insured that snot will hit you directly in the face at a ridiculous velocity when the person working 18 inches from you sneezes. Hard to see how they will ever be able to force people back into that kind of environment.
The company showing it is reactive rather than proactive proves they are not up to the task of protecting employee health and welfare.
Personal Safety being completely the responsibility of the employee. “No service is so urgent....”
There is no way the company can enforce workplace collaboration without having liability when employees say they don’t feel safe.
The field groups could sit at home today due to the fact the company is unable to provide appropriate PPE. But they keep working.
FYI...the company has no recourse if the employees don’t come to work due to the fact the company can’t guarantee the employee will have the appropriate PPE to work safely.
Perfect example the company can’t force you to climb a ladder if they don’t provide you a climbing belt.
Stay safe and know if you don’t have gloves, masks, antibacterial..... you are working at your own risk.
I see large lawsuits coming
Won't step foot back in one, they were dirty & germ filled to begin with. If you're forced back, just let out a few coughs or sneezes & everyone around you will send you packing. Think of all the things you must touch that will be touched by others. I'm sure Dallas will be fully sanitized but nowhere else.
I have always said these zones were a total waste of money and actually do the opposite ( reduces work geting completed, distracting for the worker sitting in that environment by others nearby on conference calls , and to the others on all the other conference calls that can hear the Colab zone workers neighbor talking while they are talking on the con call... not to mention the transmission of germs/illness etc.... What a waste of investment by these "Leaders" making the decision to rip out offices, and replacing with these environments... "IF" they even keep office buildings (now that they are realizing work from home actually works really great ( Randall even making that statement during a recent interview) they will rip out colab zones and reinstall offices for social distancing ... BUT as I have been saying for years, there are workers that need to be in a location because they need to touch a server or whatever... most everything else can be done remotely and be done very well... Looking forward to the new future (whether it is here if they dont lay us all off) or at another company that is progressive and responds to "Lessons learned" after this crisis
I hate collab spaces id be fine if it was only 2 times a week though. I am going to push to work from home more
Randall will isolate himself to protect his health
you can always quit if you are not happy?
nothing's "we say" matters. we're not in the republic Franklin gave us mothwrbear...
time to draw conclusions
There won't be many shared spaces because now many companies can make the argument to sent jobs overseas and they can wfh or from anywhere. USA will see many layoffs.
collabrankrupt is the next initiative, lol