What Happens at the end of Work from Home?

If you’ve noticed the paucity of communication coming from me, it’s because I am cruising through the northern part of the Pacific Ocean with no satellite service. Providers train their satellites towards near-shore areas, where the bulk of their clientele work and play on drill rigs and yachts. Outside the primary deep-sea trade routes, the satellite providers cut their losses. If you’re wondering, the Search and Rescue satellite system (GMDSS) does ping six times per day as they pass through their respective orbits. This summer brought a number of large-scale return-to-office experiences, from Wall Street, to Main Street Richmond, Virginia. In this case, telework-capable state government employees were given two-months’ notice to return to the office four days per week, or to request additional WFH days from their agency leadership. Records show that 58% of employees accepted four or five days per week; and 93% of employees accepted at least three days per week. The State Highway Department did lose 10 or so engineers over this ask (and a few more who took retirement over this decision), but in the whole, attrition over the issue was less than 1%. Most requests were to preserve the enhanced telework arrangements certain white-collar employees had prior to the Pandemic. As a right-to-work state, government employment in Virginia is more similar to private employment than in other state governments. Thus, private employers can allay fears of workplace exodus, when they chose to return to an in-office schedule. The one caveat is that Richmond, Virginia is home to more traditional industries like medicine, tobacco, and public utilities, where in-person work is a given expectation.