New York City is having air quality problems and I am so glad that I WFH.
If I walked to an office like I did before I would ask to WFH and if that wasn’t allowed then I would have to quit. This air quality would kill me. I have asthma and I struggled to walk to work so I couldn’t have walked to work with poor air quality.
Now people who don’t suffer from breathing problems don’t care about those who do have them. I had to prove that I had asthma. Why would you force your employees to work in an office if they can be equally productive from home?
This is not a debate about the value from WFH. I am over that. If people want to kill their employees, then they will and they will have a hard time attracting people who care. I can’t change the nature of capitalism. I can ask for those decision makers to really ask yourself why you are afraid of WFH. If people can meet their KPI then what is the problem?
I think that if people are honest it comes down to control. Middle management likes to justify their existence, and when most of them don’t add value of course they will fight against this. I think that when you can do something people are afraid of your skill and feel intimated by your knowledge and try to contain you in a narrow field. The smartest people in business I have worked with are SME in topics and they still aren’t trusted a decision maker. That is just nuts.
If you want more people to work hard for your organization, try to allow them to control their workspace so that the commute doesn’t kill them.