> "not about people like you, but some others have taken a 2 year vacation so management is fed up"
Then it's time to let people go. Early on in COVID leeway definitely needed to be given with daycares closed, people transitioning to WFH, etc... But at this point, if someone can't get their work done remotely, then they should find a non-remote job.
We went fully remote prior to the pandemic, and I remember someone in senior management asking me, 'how will we know people are working at home?' My response was 'how do we know they are working in the office?' If people aren't getting any work done it doesn't matter where they are. Management just feels better about seeing them in the office.
Alternatively, if these people have taken a 2 year vacation and the company appears to be operating fine, maybe there's no problem?
I don't understand why this issue is being raised now - surely they already have existing processes in place to deal with people who underperform, in which case those same processes can be applied regardless of WFH status. The fact that they haven't suggests that in the end work is being done satisfactorily and someone is just jealous or on a power trip.
If they can take a 2 year vacation and the company is operating fine then their roles should be eliminated because they do not serve any function to the company
A Company is not a charity, people are not kept on payroll just because
Sure, but systems aren’t designed for individual termination throughput.
It’s easy for people to game the system and turn around and claim that it’s a discriminatory practice. It’s also easy for management to cut off an employee in bad faith to drum up a case for termination.
The easiest way to weed out the assholes is to change the rules for everyone, and purge those who are insubordinate. You’ll lose a few producers, but not as many as HN would leave you to believe.
Alternatively, the world was in a state were these people really did not need really to be working because economy was so slow, and government grants were paying for those salaries anyway, so people were kept on the payroll.
Now that the economy is "back on track", we need them to be working - like they did before the pandemic, not like they did during the pandemic - so the work organisation gets back to a pre-pandemic state.
layoff freeze laws have been a thing in many countries during COVID
basically not only people took a 2 years paid vacation, they also could not be fired which incentivized the more parasitic workers to work even less
I know personally of a mailwoman working in Northern Italy for Italian Postal service (a public service) that went back to her home in Sicily and never showed up at work for 9 months because she could not be laid off.
So my mother in law who's also almost blind didn't get her mail for many weeks.
Nothing we could do about it.
There were no consequences whatsoever.
Many companies have difficulty assessing performance, so whenever they get the opportunity to safely fire people who have transgressed in some fashion they do so. My company had famously never performed layoffs. We've been in business since the 19th Century. But eventually all good things must end, and during the 2008 crisis, some newer mgmt found an opportunity to fire people who didn't play their game. We only laid off 30 people, but it was a huge shock to the company culture, and made people re-evaluate what they thought the social contract was about.
This was exactly what I told my boss when I said I need to work remotely from now on. You have no idea what I'm doing whether you can see me across the office, or if I'm home. In my defense, I was able to display that working from home for me boosted my productivity. I can also get my son to school without having to deal with bus schedules.
In my company managers were just given a free pass on difficulty with WFH managment. It was never treated as a "performance issue" by the corporate system. People are still measured the the world that existed 10 years ago. What is particularly galling is that they are now promoting agile hot desk offices as being exciting and new.
Then it's time to let people go. Early on in COVID leeway definitely needed to be given with daycares closed, people transitioning to WFH, etc... But at this point, if someone can't get their work done remotely, then they should find a non-remote job.
We went fully remote prior to the pandemic, and I remember someone in senior management asking me, 'how will we know people are working at home?' My response was 'how do we know they are working in the office?' If people aren't getting any work done it doesn't matter where they are. Management just feels better about seeing them in the office.