It is no secret that the coronavirus pandemic has brought significant changes to the life of mankind, and we have not yet fully realized just how big they are. For example, if before 2020, working on-site was considered the absolute standard for the vast majority of occupations, now, after only two years, many employees are not ready to give up remote work.
For example, Apple recently stated that they expect workers to come to the office at least two days per week, as Bloomberg tells. Thus, remote work is gradually becoming the new world standard. Of course, the work-from-home system has many advantages, primarily for employees, but on the other hand, there are always people who abuse it. This is especially evident when an employee working remotely is required to be regularly in touch to resolve important work issues.
A similar story was told by the author of a post in the AITA Reddit community, who works as a team lead in a law firm. The original post got about 15.8K upvotes and over 3.3K comments from people interested in this narrative.
More info: Reddit
The Original Poster works as a team lead at a law firm, supervising nearly 20 employees
Image credits: Nenad Stojkovic (not the actual image)
So the OP's team has been working on a schedule of 4 days at the office and 1 day at home lately. According to the author of the post, one of the team members, called Sarah, asked them to change their schedule to 3 days at the office and 2 at home. Sarah's request was motivated by the fact that she has two children who need to be looked after.
Image credits: u/Born-Replacement-366
One of the employees asked to have two days of work at home, but the OP rejected her request
However, the OP, after deliberation, decided to reject this request. The fact is that Sarah is not the only employee of the company who has children, and everyone works according to the established schedule, never complaining. In addition, before the pandemic, Sarah had absolutely no problem coming to the office not four, but all five days a week.
Image credits: u/Born-Replacement-366
The OP noticed that Sarah's Skype status was often "offline" or "away" while working from home
Sarah, apparently, was offended by this decision, and therefore discussed it with her colleagues for a long time, trying to find out what they thought about it. And so strange things began. The OP noticed that on days when Sarah worked from home, her Skype status was often "away" or "offline" during business hours.
Image credits: Rocco (not the actual image)
The problem was that Sarah was an important member of the team, she was a senior and one of her responsibilities was to be available for questions from clients and stakeholders. And just one of the stakeholders, as the OP admits, in a conversation once noticed that he could not contact Sarah for a long time to resolve their issue, and even suggested that she was on vacation.
Image credits: u/Born-Replacement-366
Sarah's behavior significantly affected the whole team as she was a senior
In addition, Sarah was salaried, not hourly, and her behavior significantly affected the work of the whole team. For example, when you need to solve some urgent problem, you may need her consultation, and the woman may well be unavailable for an online talk at that time.
Image credits: u/Born-Replacement-366
Finally, the OP talked to Sarah and asked her to be online during work hours
All this led the OP to the idea of talking to Sarah about her behavior and the inadmissibility of being offline during work hours. As the OP themselves admits, during the conversation, the woman was defensive and sarcastically apologized for "not responding to messages immediately." She also said that if the work is done, it does not matter whether she's online or offline.
Image credits: Ogyioshisan (not the actual image)
The OP countered that part of Sarah's job is to answer questions on time, so they ask her to be online while working from home from at least 10am to 5pm (with a lunch break, of course) so people can get in touch with her. In addition, since Sarah is a senior, other employees may follow her example, which will generally have a poor impact on the teamwork.
People's opinions in the comments were divided, though the majority supported the OP in their decision
We must also say that the opinions of people in the comments to the original post were divided. Most, of course, noted that employees are evaluated not only on the work done, but also on teamwork, reliability, engagement, etc. And in this regard, the fact that Sarah is often unavailable for answers during working hours just upsets colleagues and clients, worsening the atmosphere in the team.
On the other hand, there was also a point of view that "presence monitoring" is not productive. According to some commenters, many people, in order to complete their immediate work task, must concentrate as much as possible, and not be distracted by constant messages. From this point of view, of course, the OP is not entirely right in criticizing Sarah. Although, for sure, everything should be perceived in the context of a particular team and particular work process.
We, on our part, would like to know your opinion on this issue. It is possible that many of you also work remotely, so if you share your experience of working from home, it will not only be interesting, but also useful for others.