I would be interested to hear your opinion on the issue of perception.
The traditional work from office (WFO) model left very little room for "abnormal hours". WFH seems to have removed this issue, but I presume that a certain number of places will still want some amount of WFO due to the specifics of how their business is run (maybe they are in some institution that has that expectation, or there is a practical need for things to be done face-to-face).
For cases where some amount of WFO is needed, and an abnormal schedule is permitted, how does the company deal with the perception of "not working hard enough"?
Example: Dan comes in at 11 and leaves at 3, but then comes back at 6 and works for another 4 hours after picking his kids up from school. Some of the others in the office choose something closer to a 9-5 schedule, so they see Dan as "never being there".
I listened to an audiobook, "Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture", where one of the bosses (John Carmack) would essentially come in very late in the day, then work through the night. Most of the other employees would come in at 7 or 8AM, and head out at 6PM. John took that to mean that they were "always leaving early" and it gave off this impression that he was the only one taking things seriously (or something like that) because their schedules were so different.
What would be a good means to fight that sort of perception?
The only thing that would really make any sense would be to have some kind of giant whiteboard where you could see everyone's schedules, so you could figure out how many hours they were really working, but I could also see some people resenting that as some kind of "corporate shaming" or whatever. "Why does it matter when I'm here, as long as I get my work done!?"
It also does raise a certain amount of problems that come with needing to be able to communicate with people in an expedient manner. I'm not just talking meetings, but when you need to bounce something off someone for "How does this new widget work?" or "What do you think of this change I have planned?", it makes it a lot harder when you don't really have a clear guarantee of when they will be available to respond within a reasonable time frame. It just kind of slows the whole "flow" down.