It's about results, not where people sit. If you're an effective leader, you can lead a global team and don't need to ruin people's work life balance by having them relocate so you can physically see them work. Other than those on the factory floor, most of us at GE are knowledge workers. Treat us with respect and let us work remote or office...long as we deliver, who care where we sit? If GE wants to attract and retain talent, we need to stop this old school thinking!
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My entire team is remote. Because of the tools we use for productivity , the virtual teams are held accountable for results. I have never seen so much collaboration and empowerment . Give the employees flexibility and more personal time and they want to give back more. How is wasting time in traffic and ending up frazzled at work lead to more productivity.? If the job doesn’t require you to be physically present in an office, there is no need to enforce this. A good team leader builds a great team. Cities should encourage business to offer tele commuting. Reduce carbon footprint and save the environment
http://dilbert.com/strip/1996-05-05
This classic strip sums up the mindset perfectly.
Sure, until they find higher paying jobs, which won't take long. The days of telling workers to be grateful justvto have a job no matter how awful they are being treated are over. That attitude will drive out the top talent and will be GE's undoing.
All global ops employees are happy to get massive pay cut to keep jobs.
I've seen many employees who work in an office be unproductive. GE is moving away from remote work in many cases and it's yet one more way they are encouraging people to leave. All Global Ops employees have to work in an "approved" location. How old school can you get? And what do they get as thanks for doing that? Job cuts!
Hearing the doorbell ring or the dog bark on a conference call is very inspiring.
It really depends on the project and the individual. As someone who has worked with multiple remote workers and managed many, the remote workers are typically not as productive. Of course this depends on what you do but for engineering that requires a lot of teamwork I think it really isn't ideal. That being said, I think it's great that GE allows folks to do it despite the loss in productivity. I think part of the problem is folks that work remote don't change their behaviors....they act the same way as if they were in the office. Either way, I support remote workers but don't agree with the comments here when it comes to engineers.
PEnuDjW-dhx. Yes you posted anonymously.
Wow!! I wonder if these replies would be the same if you had to tag your name to them as opposed to being anonymous!!
A lot of it comes from the managers being so disconnected that they don't know who is doing what. If they don't see you on site, they assume you're doing nothing because it's "out of sight, out of mind" for their tiny brains. Our group's manager has no idea about which of us do what, and back in March he laid off the guy who worked from home the most (a few days each month) even though that guy did more (and better) work than the rest of us. I think the elimination of rack and stack had done this for lazy managers across the business (no ratings? Just check the attendance system and use that!) At least the guy managed to land on his feet at a local German company after several months.
Only people with low intellect find remote working intolerable. If you can't trust your employees to work without supervision then you need to hire better. Too many dumb--ses in this business.