[hnlmorg]

Indeed. I've seen some companies say they want people back in 100% of the time but I've seen others close their office and have all their employees work remotely 100% of the time. I feel both are toxic policies to place on your entire workforce and the best approach is flexibility because different employees will have different preferences and needs.

Thankfully there are a good number of companies (in the UK at least) who are allowing their employees to make this decision themselves.

[PeterisP]

I've been thinking about this and perhaps the most appropriate solution is to not have onsite companies vs remote companies, and also not companies with a random mix of the both; but having a company consist of onsite teams and remote work teams - so both preferences can work well, but you can optimize the day-to-day work process (which usually happens within a team) to the very different needs of in-office vs work-from-home environment.

[hnlmorg]

I disagree. I think the best solution is giving your employees flexibility. People who want to travel into the office can do so. People who want to work remotely can also do so. And people are able to come in as often or infrequently as they want.

There will always be instances where fully remote people might still want to come in (eg someone leaving social). And there will be reasons why people who normally like to come in every day might chose not to (eg a doctors appointment at lunch time).

[PeterisP]

I agree that this is what employees would prefer; however, I'm not certain that full flexibility is the most effective way of achieving results for the business. My (totally unverified) assumption is that giving employees a choice between a remote team and an on-site team captures most of the value that the employees care about in that choice, while still allowing teams to choose a reasonably effective remote or on-site work process.

[hnlmorg]

I manage a few teams and have been trialling allowing employees to chose their working terms. It's been working fine for us thus far. I'm sure other companies could manage too.