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Ok so my entire honors thesis is about keeping employees engaged in remote work. Tech companies announcing that they’re abolishing offices is extremely concerning, for more than a few reasons. Thread incoming that no one asked for 
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Before I even begin, I’d like to make it known that I support remote work– allowing employees to work remotely improves productivity, makes employees feel stronger familial ties leading to higher job satisfaction, & promotes work/life balance among many other positive things
But abolishing offices/allowing WFH “forever” (@ Jack Dorsey) is so irresponsible. I can’t imagine how detrimental this will be if adopted by corp. America. So many people tout this as a win for workers when actually, it’ll create a larger gap between regular folk & the 1%
One of the biggest things I studied in my thesis is loyalty in remote organizations. 100% WFH orgs report lower levels of loyalty from employee to MGT & vice versa. When corp. America goes remote, I guarantee you that workers will become more disposable.
When talent can come from literally anywhere & MGT isn’t forced to create personal connections– empathy goes through the window. 100% remote orgs find that employees are fired more quickly & that employees leave more quickly. This leads to overall instability.
When employees can be hired & fired quickly, wages stay stagnant. I don’t even feel the need to elaborate on why that’s horrible for closing the wealth gap in the U.S.
Wages also generally are lower at remote orgs (currently, at least). When talent can come from anywhere, firms don’t feel the need to factor in the cost of living for some cities. Why pay an NYC salary when you can pay a Midwest salary?
Having the majority of the workforce 100% WFH is a terrible idea for working America but is such a great money grab for execs. Don’t have to compensate for costly city living? Great! Employee has been at company for a while & wants a raise? Screw em, fire & hire someone else!
There are other ways to incorporate WFH with more permanency rather than going 100% remote. Offer a flexible schedule program, where employees pick days they come in. Or even better, shorten the fckin workday. The 40 hr work week is so antiquated.
& aside from 100% WFH allowing corp. America to totally abuse workers... the social impact will be irreparable. I studied how office chit chat actually improves morale & productivity b/c it makes people feel validated and included in their workspace, which creates better work
Office banter doesn’t happen in WFH environments. It’s found that people do initially engage in txting via office messenging platforms but only with people they met in person. New people are completely disregarded & not texted on a personal level.
As time goes on this will only create a remote workforce which consists of entirely professional relationships. Not necessarily bad, but makes the working hours that much worse because all people do is produce. People aren’t machines. They need to socialize. In person
Wrapping up this thread– there are just so many better ways to make WFH more normalized. Humans aren’t meant to work 40 hours a week in the solitude of their homes. We’re meant to connect, have separate work/personal spaces, & collaborate
But dear God I hope that 100% WFH doesn’t become a thing. It will literally just empower execs to cheapen worker’s labor and will leave us isolated, unable to form a coalition together because damnit, we don’t even know each other enough to come together & uprise.
