These are exactly the types of workers who are bested suited to working from home. If all you do is sit in front of a computer and/or make phone calls, you can do that just as well at home as in...
Exemplary
The online furniture retailer Houzz Inc. told operations and administrative staff to come in while the rest of their colleagues went remote.
LivWell’s back-office personnel who can do their jobs from home have been asked to come into the office
These are exactly the types of workers who are bested suited to working from home. If all you do is sit in front of a computer and/or make phone calls, you can do that just as well at home as in an office.
At American Airlines Inc., for instance, one employee said they were asked to work from the office “as an act of solidarity with frontline members.”
The true "act of solidarity" would be to work from home when you can, so that those who can't work from home can do their work at lower risk.
Service workers can't work from home, emergency workers can't work from home, health workers can't work from home. So many workers can't work from home that it becomes more important to encourage those who can to do so.
I (here in Australia) was talking (on the phone) to a professional acquaintance of mine. She mentioned that she asked if she could work from home, but her employer said no. The work she does is almost all about communications: talking to people, interviewing people, contacting companies, connecting people and companies. Her tools of trade are a telephone and a computer. She is a prime candidate to work from home. (She's also 4 months pregnant.) But her employer said no.
As I said in the daily, we only now just got the call to grab our workstations and start working from home on Monday, which is kinda bullshit, because we a remote service desk, and could have been...
As I said in the daily, we only now just got the call to grab our workstations and start working from home on Monday, which is kinda bullshit, because we a remote service desk, and could have been out a week ago if we just grabbed our towers and ran. Maybe it would have been reasonable to stagger the migration across a couple days and take the productivity hit, but to wing it for a week and to have three-four versions of the definitive plan until we come up with a new one is unacceptable IMO, probably got us all infected and I hope they have plenty of time to come up with something better at home.
The category of essential services in some places has been extended to include medicinal marijuana retailers. But for an executive at LivWell Enlightened Health, one of Colorado’s largest recreational cannabis retailers, the decision to stay open and ask employees to stay in the workplace was grounded in financial considerations. “We can’t close. It will kill us,” the executive said during a Monday morning meeting, according to staff who contacted Bloomberg News.
Sales shot up last week at the company’s 18 stores as customers stocked up in preparation for a possible self-quarantine, according to a person familiar with the mater. LivWell’s back-office personnel who can do their jobs from home have been asked to come into the office, with an instruction to spread out from one another. Employees at crowded cultivation facilities were initially allowed to work from home several days a week, but the company changed its policy to require attendance by everyone who doesn’t work from a computer.
“This is a decision completely based on revenue,” said one employee. “They do not care about us. That is clear.”
In a statement, LivWell said its retail locations remain open. “The company’s well being is dependent on sales and it would not be possible to shut down our retail locations without the need to lay off employees to offset the loss of revenue,” said Dean Heizer, the company’s legal strategist. He said the company is trying to expand work-from-home capabilities for as many employees as possible.
These are exactly the types of workers who are bested suited to working from home. If all you do is sit in front of a computer and/or make phone calls, you can do that just as well at home as in an office.
The true "act of solidarity" would be to work from home when you can, so that those who can't work from home can do their work at lower risk.
Service workers can't work from home, emergency workers can't work from home, health workers can't work from home. So many workers can't work from home that it becomes more important to encourage those who can to do so.
I (here in Australia) was talking (on the phone) to a professional acquaintance of mine. She mentioned that she asked if she could work from home, but her employer said no. The work she does is almost all about communications: talking to people, interviewing people, contacting companies, connecting people and companies. Her tools of trade are a telephone and a computer. She is a prime candidate to work from home. (She's also 4 months pregnant.) But her employer said no.
That's absolutely ridiculous.
As I said in the daily, we only now just got the call to grab our workstations and start working from home on Monday, which is kinda bullshit, because we a remote service desk, and could have been out a week ago if we just grabbed our towers and ran. Maybe it would have been reasonable to stagger the migration across a couple days and take the productivity hit, but to wing it for a week and to have three-four versions of the definitive plan until we come up with a new one is unacceptable IMO, probably got us all infected and I hope they have plenty of time to come up with something better at home.
From the article: