What Young Workers Miss Without the ‘Power of Proximity’
At least 10 times a day, Erika Becker, who works as a sales development manager at a technology company called Verkada, turns to her boss with questions. “Did I handle that correctly?” she asks. “What could I have done better?”
Ms. Becker, 28, comes into her office in San Mateo, Calif., five days a week, along with all her colleagues. The routine is a stark departure from her previous role at Yelp, where she worked from home and often spoke with her boss by phone just once in a day. Ms. Becker has rediscovered an upside of the office: feedback. Lots of it.
“It’s like if there’s something in my teeth, I want you to tell me,” she said. “Because I want to move up in my career.”
Since the start of the pandemic, sweeping workplace changes have arrived far faster than the research examining their effects. More than 50 million Americans, largely in white-collar jobs, began working from home at least part of the time. Many of them, especially working parents, became fiercely attached to the flexibility. In recent months, as large employers — including Amazon, Disney and Starbucks — have tried to call workers back to the office, thousands of employees have objected, pointing to a track record of productivity at home.
Source: The New York Times
