Companies who mandate return to the office should pay employees for the additional commute time at their hourly rate. If this becomes too expensive then productivity gains from being in the office are apparently not worth it.
There was this IC who was working on cross departmental stuff. Things like pipelines, UI component libraries, build tools, etc. He would frequently go on walks to think, either during the work day and return to the office or to go back home and work some more. At this amazing place, we had extensive timesheets to fill in (with 15 min granularity, was great). That guy used to count his walks as work time on specific projects (15–30 min walks.) The joke is that management came down hard in him because you can’t get paid to walk as you’re paid to be writing code. Thinking about code for the company isn’t a paid activity unless it happens in the office. What a sucker this guy was, asking to be paid for taking a walk harharhar!
My colleagues then added (after the manager left the room) that as a result the guy in question took much longer “walks” to think things through in an empty conference room every day instead. Nobody saw the stupidity in that and he left shortly after this new policy was enforced.
This was the single most toxic worst company I’ve ever worked at.
My point is that employers still think that butt not in seat = not working, and since I’m paying you I can make you suffer and I own you for that duration. My job sucks and I can’t work remote so why should I allow you, puny peasant, to have it better than me when you didn’t “work” or “deserve” it?
This is a huge red flag for companies. Currently I can just go for a 15-30 minute walk with my dog if I get stuck and still count it as work time.
If I'm at the office I can go grab some snacks and go sit on the break area sofas and watch some crap on my phone - still working.
It's actually been scientifically proven that a change of environment brings more creativity and makes problem-solving easier.
---
At a company I worked years ago we had "work reatreats" where we booked a conference room from a random hotel or office for a day. Breakfast and afternoon tea was catered.
Everyone had to pick a few tasks they thought they could finish during the day, we turned off all communication devices and started working roughly on a Pomodoro system monitored by one person. No talking allowed unless we were on a break, where we all got up and left the room for a while.
Pretty much everyone was finished with all their tasks before our lunch break. We did this multiple times.
It's amazing how much work you can get done when you're in a novel environment with the knowledge that you will have zero distractions for the next 8 hours. Nobody can just pop in for a "quick question" or ping you on any communication tool.
If you need a citation for this, "Learning How to Learn" and its sequel "Mindshift", MOOCs created by an engineering professor and a neuroscientist. The former is the most popular MOOC in the world.
They also had 15 minute timesheets. I used to fill them in accurately. I was pulled up on that for not doing my full 8 hours a day on assigned projects. I pointed out that filling in the timesheet alone took half an hour a day, and I also talked to colleagues, made drinks and did other things that were not attributable to project work... Just like all my colleagues did who were claiming 8 hours. I was told to make the timesheet add up to 8.
I don't like coffee breaks because I just drink water and I find small-talk very tiresome. I also don't smoke. So I never take breaks except for when I'm stuck on something and I need a walk to think it through.
Multiple times, managers or people even higher have complained of both : not taking coffee breaks and taking walking breaks.
To me it's not exactly "butt not in seat = not working", it's more "not behaving like everyone else = not working".
But when you come with a solution/idea that none of the regular coffee break takers had, now they're glad that you're not like everyone else. Weird.
Not saying it wouldn’t be ideal to have that segment of the day paid for, but I’m just trying to get my head around how the tightwad money folk deal with such a nebulous target.
we're really talking about 1h of an 8h workday, so about 11-13% depending on your denominator. not trivial but something I'd happily do.
0 https://www.zippia.com/advice/average-commute-time-statistic...