Lack of direct contact sometimes makes work difficult

There is little talk about this on this forum regarding working remotely, but I'm almost sure that everyone has come across situations where the lack of direct contact with other employees made some tasks more difficult.

Even those whose roles are fine working entirely remotely, have at least once been in a situation where they wished they were in the office in order to complete a task much more easily. True?

I had a misunderstanding that turned into a whole drama. It wouldn't have come to that at all or that misunderstanding would have been nipped in the bud if we were in the office.

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You still have to go in and handle things like builds, bench testing, vehicle review/test, etc. Same stuff you always did. That's why they want you to live within driving distance of the office. No different, except you don't waste gas when you don't need to be there. Also, a bunch of other benefits: Get sick less from germy co-workers/restaurant lunches, and on and on....

Not really. Not at all actually.

Feel free to go into an office. They're sitting there waiting for you. Invite your team to collaborate.

Limited social contact is definitely a problem as is all of the lost casual knowledge transfer that would occur during in office personal interactions. I feel bad for all of the 20-30 somethings that won’t be building real working relationships from home nor have the ability to just walk over to their neighbors desk for help.

Moreover, work definitely gets done at work, but can’t say the same for working at home from what I have personally seen in my area. People have lost their motivation to work in lieu of the many distractions around the house during the day. If management is interested in turning this company around, they need to get the back into the office and start rebuilding the team on-site. Even those people that do have a lot of meetings outside of the country would still benefit of working side by side with their co-workers - some people learn their job in this “osmosis type” manner.

Regardless of the what is posted here, most everyone knows this at Ford. Leaders need to lead people back into work and even show them how to work in some cases. Elon Musk wants Tesla to be successful and has implemented return to work policies as a key part of his people plan - he has personally returned to work at work as well.

You must be in a very limited role to sit among everyone you deal with. Most roles are global and cross-functional so you would be separated by countries, time zones, MI cities in some cases and building assignments. That is what led to most people spending their entire day at their desk hooked up to WebEx. Working remotely is literally no different than what most were doing before. Except that you are in the comfort of your home and don't have to deal with toxic office games.

Please go to the office and show JF that you are the man!
(until you are secretly chopped off then it doesn't matter remote or not.)

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Lack of direct contact sometimes makes work difficult

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