Microsoft's Return Puts Focus On Workers Who Are Skipping the Office (bloomberg.com) 22
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Microsoft Corp. has begun calling employees back to its headquarters in recent weeks, but its return-to-office strategy hinges on hybrid work. From Wall Street to Silicon Valley, companies are navigating the messy transition to the workplace after a two-year hiatus during the pandemic. Microsoft has a unique perspective since it sells remote collaboration tools that compete with Zoom and Cisco. Even as workers trickle back to their desks, the company's leaders are focused on those employees who aren't working in the office. "It's counterintuitive," Jared Spataro, corporate vice president for Modern Work at Microsoft, said in an interview. "You have to design your physical space for the people who aren't there."
At The Hive, its test center a few miles from its Redmond, Washington campus, engineers roll office chairs back and forth and shift camera angles around to capture the optimal teleconference environment. Staffers down the hall pose as remote attendees, providing immediate feedback. A full-size replica of a room Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella and other senior leadership use for top-level meetings fills a warehouse floor. What they've found is that small tweaks can really improve the experience, making those daily calls less of a grind. The typical conference table, for example, was redesigned to a triangle pointed away from the screens, or a truncated semi-circle facing the screen, United Nations-style. Both setups address a big problem with standard conference rooms: Attendees don't fully face the camera, and in-person participants migrate toward each other.
Meantime, at Microsoft's headquarters last week, occupancy jumped 142% from the prior one, according to the company, which declined to provide further details. The mood resembled a college move-in day, with giddy staffers excited to no longer be stuck at home. [...] While Microsoft executives from Nadella on down have been promoting the idea of the so-called metaverse to connect workers in various locations, the company also says it knows it has to take it slow. "We're just trying to meet people where they are," Spataro said. "You kind of have to crawl before you can move to a fully virtual world."
At The Hive, its test center a few miles from its Redmond, Washington campus, engineers roll office chairs back and forth and shift camera angles around to capture the optimal teleconference environment. Staffers down the hall pose as remote attendees, providing immediate feedback. A full-size replica of a room Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella and other senior leadership use for top-level meetings fills a warehouse floor. What they've found is that small tweaks can really improve the experience, making those daily calls less of a grind. The typical conference table, for example, was redesigned to a triangle pointed away from the screens, or a truncated semi-circle facing the screen, United Nations-style. Both setups address a big problem with standard conference rooms: Attendees don't fully face the camera, and in-person participants migrate toward each other.
Meantime, at Microsoft's headquarters last week, occupancy jumped 142% from the prior one, according to the company, which declined to provide further details. The mood resembled a college move-in day, with giddy staffers excited to no longer be stuck at home. [...] While Microsoft executives from Nadella on down have been promoting the idea of the so-called metaverse to connect workers in various locations, the company also says it knows it has to take it slow. "We're just trying to meet people where they are," Spataro said. "You kind of have to crawl before you can move to a fully virtual world."
We still have over 1600 a day dying (Score:2)
And yes, getting more exposure matters.
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Generally speaking, the more abundant a resource is, the lower its value. There are a whole heaping lot of humans in the world, so human resource just isn't at peak price.
Those people who have rare and valuable skills are the ones who can push back. Those who are more easily replaced can do what they are told, or be replaced.
The world is only as kind as we make it, after all.
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The world is only as kind as we make it, after all.
We (as in the overwhelming majority of humans), would like a kind world.
We don't have anything close to that, because of the 1% led by Greed N. Corruption.
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Every since my 2nd vax shot last April, I"ve been living normal life...friends, concerts, hell, even Mardi Gras, mask free.
I've been boosted.
SO, for me life has been normal a long tim
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but gotta keep those property values up, right?
Don't forget demand for that $6/gallon gas. Those oil company profits aren't going to raise themselves!
Haven't you heard? The latest spin from our oligarchs is that it's our patriotic duty to support profiteering oil companies (so long as they’re not Russian) for freedom!
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It's not that hard (Score:2)
It has been done before, learn from the past (Score:1)
Skipping the Office (Score:2)
Microsoft's Return Puts Focus On Workers Who Are Skipping the Office
Maybe they just like being Libre ... :-)
Weird... (Score:2)
Funny how they stick to their nonsense ESG rating but insist on having employees drive in to the office when they don't need to.
Micromanagers make their case. (Score:2)
"Even as workers trickle back to their desks, the company's leaders are focused on those employees who aren't working in the office."
Translation: Three excess layers of micromanagers that barely held onto their (hardly) justified jobs during the pandemic, are now wandering around a semi-empty office looking a bit too underutilized. So they're demanding the plebs return to the office so they can seem valuable again.
Here's a quick question; for the last two damn years, you didn't focus on those employees who were not working in an office. Mind telling me how the hell you managed to cope then, but not now? If remote work was such a faile
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Record profits are often achieved when you make minimal investment in new products and service offerings. I am not saying Microsoft did in fact hit the pause button but certainly a lot of corporations did during the pandemic aware their competitors were doing much the same so there was little forward risk for being leapfrogged and losing market. Record profits over a 1 1/2 year span though are hardly an indication WFH is working - get back to us in another few years. Its just to early see the full impact
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Record profits are often achieved when you make minimal investment in new products and service offerings. I am not saying Microsoft did in fact hit the pause button but certainly a lot of corporations did during the pandemic aware their competitors were doing much the same so there was little forward risk for being leapfrogged and losing market. Record profits over a 1 1/2 year span though are hardly an indication WFH is working - get back to us in another few years. Its just to early see the full impact of WFH in balance sheet statistics.
WFH, was not invented with COVID. Good employees, have proven that WFH can work. For a while now, so we've got "a few years" of evidence to validate that. Bad (or worthless) employees and micromanagers, want to prove their value, which means disproving threats to their existence by any means necessary.
Record profits, regardless of investment "pauses" tend to prove that WFH, does NOT break the business.
And quite frankly, this has far more to do with the massive amount of corruption in corporate real esta
Something interesting I saw on LinkedIn related... (Score:2)
A few months ago, I started seeing trending topics about how WFH is super bad because women are now having a hard time getting into executive ranks because of it.
Nevermind the fact that WFH has enabled millions of women to flexibly manage child care and working and save costs on daycare. We have to feel bad for the 0.5% of the female population that wants to play with the really big boys in the executive ranks.
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Or, go home (Score:1)
It's counterintuitive?! (Score:2)
Exactly. So why don't you stop doing it?!
Gas is 5 bucks... (Score:2)