This Comment of the Day by new participant in the comment wars Dr. Blae cheers my pre-Christmas cockles more than most for two reasons: 1) I always love it when a first time commenter weighs in with a Comment of the Day. This is especially true since I spend so much time reading attempted first-time comments that read: “You suck, asshole!” 2) Genuine expertise on these topics is always a godsend. I am a pan-ethicist, meaning that I work in the ethics field regarding too many areas to count, legal ethics substantially but also business ethics, government ethics, sports ethics, academic ethics, journalism ethics, and more. I am neither a participant nor an expert in many of these fields themselves, so when ethics and one of them intersect, a specialist is especially welcome.
Here is Dr. Blae’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Critics of Federal Workers Telecommuting May Exaggerate But the Truth Is Bad Enough”:
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So let’s break this down…
- Federal agencies have been maintaining uninhabited office space in some of the most expensive real estate markets in the US.
- The majority of federal workers, that can, telework/remote work and avoid coming into the office.
- There is an assumption of a lack of efficiency due to telework/remote work, but the evidence is anecdotal or not directly relevant (e.g., office occupation).
Now for a couple of questions… prior to COVID:
- When were government employees accused of being efficient?
- What is efficiency? This is really important since the implication is a quantitative comparison, so we need some numbers.
- Are all jobs/positions the same? Is there a single solution?
- Where do most federal employees (in the DC area) come from?
- How do you “drain the swamp” by reconcentrating employees in the swamp?
- What is a comparison of costs between an employee doing telework/remote work v. being physically in the office?
- Why do federal agencies continue to rent unoccupied spaces when according to GSA regulations/policies they are supposed to “right size” office space?
Ok let’s take into consideration a few points…
- Telework/remote employees have to pay for their own utilities (e.g., water, power, internet). When you pay your own way you tend to waste less.
- Telework/remote employees are less likely to print out books or anything.
- Telework/remote employees have to supply their own office furniture. In office work requires the government to supply office equipment. Office equipment is periodically upgraded and offices are renovated. Used office equipment is stored by GSA until it is determined that it should be disposed of (some times years), which requires storage facilities.
- The taxpayer often saves money on remote workers, especially those that live in rural areas. For example, a federal employee in the beltway gets approximately $25k extra to work in the beltway.
- The “Deep State” is a culture, not an organization. The “Deep State” culture is DC culture. Moving federal employees back to DC just enhances the culture.
- In the DC area, the number of meetings federal employees have is legendary. Remote workers can attend multiple meeting back-to-back (no travel time is necessary) or even attend more than one meeting at the same time. Also the cost of meeting rooms is zero (it is all done through Teams or Zoom).
- Travel between meetings is extremely inefficient (how about that DC traffic).
- Online work is easier to monitor quantitatively. In person work there is an assumption of physical control, which often does not exist.
Is telework/remote work difficult? It sure can be, but working in an office does not ensure efficiency, especially when people take extended lunches and engage in “water cooler” chat. Its position should have been assessed (this often does not happen) so that performance metrics can be developed. Without solid performance metrics we do not KNOW what is efficient or not.
I’m happy to debate this since part of my trade is workforce efficiency.
Ethics Alarms 
Some very good points. We have a family member who has been teleworking for two+ years due to a vision issue, and yet has met her goals while completing 32 hours of overtime every pay period…..112 hours total each two weeks. She would not be able to do that commuting to the office. At home she can work her hours in any time between 5 a.m. and 11 pm….allowing her to give her vision the rest it needs between tasks. Her progress is monitored and her supervisor’s assessment is always outstanding.
Yes, there are those who play video games or play on social media when they should be working – but technology now allows supervisors to keep track of productivity on a regular basis. Upgrade the quality of supervisors and an upgraded workforce will follow.
A blanket policy would cull some top efficient employees from the workforce.
Great sentiment… “Upgrade the quality of supervisors and an upgraded workforce will follow.”
Many of the points made are valid. I will say that we cannot assume that telework employees are using their own equipment and if they are I would question how their systems are protected given several different choices of platforms and hardware configurations.
Nonetheless the issue about needing metrics cannot be overstated. Anecdotal reports of employees interfacing with the public via telephone indicates some are distracted by small children. Whether or not this impacts efficiency is unknown but I would guess it does not enhance it.
Perhaps this those “legendary” meetings that need to be eliminated so that those “ periods of high call volume” can get calls answered more expeditiously.
All in all this was a well deserved COTD as it caused us to consider the issue more deeply.
I second.
I am tempted to say, but won’t, that this is a little like the tobacco compalnies insisting taht there was no scientific evidence linking cigarette smoking to cancer. As a manager(and I ran a nationwide non-profit in which every employee outside of the main office in Maryland worked at home), I think my experience and anecdotal evidence makes it extremely unlikely that such arrangements don’t result in distractions, goofing off and inefficiencies. But Bill James once wrote that that what “everybody knows is true” without data and evidence equals “bullshit.”
Some of this breaks down to the type/caliber of employees, as well as other factors. If I were to study a specific workplace to assess the efficacy of remote work vs. in-office work, I would control for factors such as lost time in both workplaces. Professional class employees (e.g., lawyers) are often (although not always) self-starters, etc. On the other hand, unskilled labor includes many individuals who need near-constant supervision. Two key determinants are, the potential for corruption in the system and what the probability of the employee engaging in corruption.
Dr. Blae: “Some of this breaks down to the type/caliber of employees.”
This is my point. My wife got sent to work from home during covid. She thrived.
She works for a nationwide company, so her team is spread out across many states. Her ability to meet and interact with her team was not the least bit affected by staying home.
She saves 1-2 hours on a commute each day.
She is able to start earlier and work later when she is at home during the particularly busy times of the month.
She has an office set-up that is very comfortable for her.
She probably gets various chores done during the day, as well, but she is diligent about work that needs to be done.
And, she is kind of introverted, so the lack of having other people around helps her.
She is a great candidate to work remotely 100% of the time.
But, the company is now forcing people back into the office 3 days per week, with some other very stupid corporate mandates. It will likely hurt her productivity, but the work will still get done.
Me? I would not have thrived (read: did not thrive). She got the perfect set-up for her workspace; I never got a very defined space; it shuffled around a few times. I do much better in the office where I have a focus. (Insert pretty much all of the distraction Jack mentioned except for the baseball stats, and you can get the idea.)
One of my partners was the same way. He HAD to come into the office and needed people to come in, as well because he had trouble working with remote staff. My other partner thought it was a great opportunity to innovate, but we all kind of realized that the effectiveness of remote work really depends on the character of the particular employee.
Another point that is not really mentioned here is that we seem particularly interested in the government’s actions here. There is a dynamic here that should be noticed. We are demanding of the government in this area because we think we are the boss of government (we kind of are). I do not care what my clients think about my work from home policies; my employees work for me and as long as I am getting the work done, the customer has nothing to say. Same with my wife’s workplace. We think the company is making some stupid decisions, but she works for them; the general public has little relevant input there. But, with the Government, we, the general public want accountability . I am not sure what to derive from this, but I think it is worth pointing out that there is a unique dynamic at play here.
A few particular responses:
“Telework/remote employees have to pay for their own utilities (e.g., water, power, internet). When you pay your own way you tend to waste less.”
-Yes, except that those costs are already there. Telework/remote employees had that expense before working from home. Incremental changes may go unnoticed.
“Telework/remote employees have to supply their own office furniture. “
-Yes, but, again, we had furniture before covid. However, we did get some furniture to address this.
“The taxpayer often saves money on remote workers, especially those that live in rural areas.”
-Yes, in theory. But, I would have to see numbers on how many jobs got outsourced from DC to Montana once covid hit. Private companies may do that (like outsourcing call centers to India), but I suspect the feds did not suddenly lay-off DC employees to lower costs of employment that way.
“Remote workers can attend multiple meeting back-to-back (no travel time is necessary) or even attend more than one meeting at the same time.”
-This is a huge factor. If covid had any beneficial outcome for the courts, it was making remote appearances efficient. I have juggled hearings in two different counties simultaneously and appeared in Minnesota and Wisconsin Courts on the same day with no driving. When some court appearances only last 15 minutes (or less), the efficiency of remote work is one of the best things to happen to the court system. And, I honestly believe that it benefits the public, as I believe it has lowered legal expenses to some degree. In Minnesota, some routine criminal calendars are going back to in-person “cattle-calls” and the attorneys are upset that it is really a step backwards for efficiency and customer service.
-Jut
As you rightfully note, telework/remote work is not right for all employees (or positions). There is a balance to be had, hopefully, based on data and not feelings. My youngest son had to be in person in class or he would fail. To this day he avoids online coursework. On the other hand, I completed college degrees online.
In regards to savings from office furniture, etc. Yes, the government has office furniture, but it is replaced periodically whether it needs it or not. If you have fewer in-office positions the government doesn’t need to replace them, just shrink their physical footprint. This is similar to utilities, the government could shrink its footprint, which according to GSA policies it is already required to do, but doesn’t (this is a choice of government leadership [aka the Deep State]).
Regarding outsourcing… the government cannot require someone to work from a particular location (e.g., Montana) if it is a remote position. However, the government can advertise remote jobs at a paygrade (e.g., GS9 [in Montana would start at ~$57k per yr]) that is good pay in rural America, but not in urban America. Often positions in DC are overgraded, for example, an employee is doing GS9 (in DC is ~$65k) level work (IAW 5 CFR), but is a GS15 (in DC is ~$155k). Is that supposed to happen? No, but if you want to hire in the DC area that is the labor market, which is a vicious cycle driven by government agencies (DC is in the business of government).
The president has it within his power to make the changes without Congressional approval, with similar results as moving whole agencies (without the added costs).
Government bureaucrats also have the resources necessary to make such assessments (e.g., industrial-organizational psychologists), but the resources are often underutilized or just ignored because in a senior executive’s opinion or experience X works the best.
When it comes to IT (aka computer) equipment FISMA rules require the use of government-supplied computers, phones, etc. There are some limited (temporary) workarounds, but it requires that you provide the government with unfettered access to your computer. The equipment that I wrote about are things like chairs, desks, stationary, etc. On a side note (office chairs for someone with back issues can run upwards of $10k). Internet connections are not supplied or paid for by the government, we use VPNs and our own routers, etc.
In regards to meetings I know many “senior” personnel that have 60+ hours of meetings a week scheduled (they pick and choose or double-tap via Zoom/Teams). I have had times when I had 4 meetings scheduled at the same time. Most of these meetings are a pure waste of time, but every time I have offered to help correct it I have gotten shot down.
I understand that home offices are furnished by the employee. The employee can also deduct all the pro rata costs of the “home office” from their taxes even if they don’t itemize using employee business expense forms. The costs of furnishing a home office can be as much as someone wants to spend but spending 10 grand on an office chair is a choice and can only be a necessity if it is prescribed by a doctor. Such a cost falls well outside reasonable accommodations for a medical issue.
As for other costs such as Internet access is typically joint use and it is likely that there is no bandwidth limit so the consumer/ employee family members could be streaming games or TV at the same time the employee is using the VPN. Whether the employee is using those services or another family member is inconsequential when the employee would have or had the service before engaging in telework. My employer benefitted from my Internet connection as it allowed me to work overtime without pay at home but the marginal cost for me was 0.
A couple of points… as an employee, I am not able to deduct the cost of my office furniture (I did check on this it does not apply to employees).
Regarding the cost of the internet and other utilities it isn’t the cost to the employee, but rather the reduced cost to the government. Fewer on-premise employees translates into less consumption of utilities such as electric power. Additionally, the cost of repairs and upgrades is borne by the employee and not the government. While individually some of these costs are low, it is in aggregate that the savings occur. Regardless of whether or not I or any other employee would pay for internet, etc. is not the point or small business owners that operate out of their home would not be able to deduct the cost… after all it is something that you use anyway, right?
Regarding the office chair example that would be for someone that has a prescription. The government will pay for the chair in office as a reasonable accommodation, but remote workers must cover that cost themselves. Of course the individual would likely have covered the cost for such a chair anyway, but the government did not need to because the individual is working remotely.
Thank you for the back and forth.
Yes, if you are an employee the ‘Employee business expense’ category (which was part of itemized deductions) went away in 2018 as part of the Trump tax reforms. I am not sure if this is one of the things that is due to expire after 2025, but I suspect so.
Self-employed individuals can deduct office in home expenses if they maintain an office that is exclusively used for business. Some other things, like a pro rata share of internet, telephone expenses can be taken aside from the office expense, but again this is only for self-employed people.
DG
Thanks for the correction. I used to take the EBE before I retired. I did not know that it had been eliminated. The last time I filed using that form was 2015.
“Regarding the cost of the internet and other utilities it isn’t the cost to the employee, but rather the reduced cost to the government. Fewer on-premise employees translates into less consumption of utilities such as electric power.”
I would disagree that someone working at home reduces Internet costs as the Internet is not sold by the seat. The only way this would occur is if the building actually closes. Moreover, unless the employee is designated as 100% remote then there must be an expectation that the employee may be in the office during the month and therefore needs a workstation. Lighting is the heaviest consumer of power in office buildings so what happens is that lights are on in both locales which means the employee is paying for lights at home while working and the employer is paying for lights when only a few people are in the office. I am assuming open floor plans with cubicles and not private offices. In addition unlike your home commercial buildings have a different rate scheduled based on maximum Kilowatt demand (KWd) during a particular period. This rate schedule gives the building operator a low kwh charge but a substantially higher KWd charge. This is similar to water and sewer charges based on the amount of infrastructure needed to support the expected needs of the building. These buildings are built with three phase lighting and mechanical systems that draw significant power irrespective of the number of personnel in the building.
From a resource use perspective, telework has the potential of creating a situation of waste such that both the employer and the employee are buying services that are not divisible which means the per head cost of lighting, and Internet are higher per person. Without knowing the savings, from an economists POV, it is hard to assess whether the benefits outweigh the added total costs to both employee and employer. It seems like the real tradeoff is for the employee who trades the convenience of working at home without commuting costs against the increased costs of maintaining that home office. The employer still has to buy all the things needed for the employee if the employee is to work in the office during to month.
I do agree that this a good back and forth.
Granted the internet is not a “by seat” cost, but less in office employees means less office space needed equaling cost reduction. Similarly, it is the same with other utilities; when office space is decreased the associated costs also decrease. Additionally, government agencies can move out of rented properties into government-owned properties (a large percentage of government office space is rented). So the ultimate savings is from a reduction of the physical government office footprint.
Office layouts can vary tremendously in the government considering some of the buildings are well over 100 years old. Some office spaces are “open offices” with “hotel” spaces. Basically, there are a bunch of tables that people just randomly work at. Lighting is often controlled by proximity switches, so less power is used if fewer people are in the office.
Regarding the purchase of office equipment (e.g., desks, chairs), it is a cost to both the government and the teleworker/remote worker if the position can be either. But if the position is designated as a telework/remote work position the government does not incur the cost, which translates into savings. Similarly, federal employees in DC typically receive a transportation benefit of $100 – 200 per month to be used on public transportation or parking. If I am not commuting then the taxpayer does not have to pay for the transportation benefit.
Another savings comes from a reduced need for conference/meeting spaces. When most everyone is online those spaces are not needed, at least the number of them. The government spends millions on underutilized conference/meeting spaces. The reduced costs come from a reduced government footprint and costs associated with maintaining in-person environments when there is not a quantifiable need for in-person work (BTW according to GPRA and GPRMA we should have the metrics to show quantifiable need).
Something to chew on is the main business of the DC metro area is government… the problem has not been the military-industrial complex (remember Eisenhower made that statement before the welfare state was ushered in), but the government-industrial complex.
On a side note, there is also an associated cost savings with contractors that do not need physical office space supplied to them by the government.
I believe we can conclude that teleworking is not a means to avoid work for the many but some will. We are both coming to the same conclusion that it is unnecessary to have two places for people to bounce between. Those who thrive in a telework environment should be allowed to do so. Those who need more supervision or like going to the office should do so as well. The key is that management must determine the most efficient deployment of resources to give the taxpayers the best bang for the buck.
As you said it is not the military industrial complex but the government industrial complex. This is why Murial Bowser wants employees to come back to the office because those employees support the many businesses in DC. Right sizing government offices will also require right sizing the private businesses in DC. That means the economic costs of right sizing government will eliminate hundreds of private sector jobs which can have significant negative externalities.
Murial Bowser and other DC denizens pressure Congress for a return to work because it fills their coffers. In my estimation it would be cheaper to grant DC $1 billion than force a return to work.
Yes we are in agreement… we simply do not need everything all at once, especially when telework/remote work is justifiable.
As someone who began teleworking in March 2020 for a federal agency, it’s been my most productive time. The worst was the brief period I had to be in office three days a week. The chattering/water cooler talk only interfered with my work.
90% of my meetings are with people located around the US, Europe, and the Pacific. All those meetings are online. Granted this is anacdata, but last week I had to be onsite for a meeting. The Internet was down, making my day mostly unproductive. If my home Internet goes down it’s a 5 minute drive to the public library.
How do we ensure security? Through VPN. My government laptop will not open my mail, Teams, or documents without going through the secure system. My monitors and hub are the same brands as provided in office. My telework agreement is multiple pages and I have to agree to many different ways to secure data or have a safe work environment.
We recently went through a telework audit. Let me just say there are some people who are dealing with time card fraud. But, that was a small percentage of people. My guess is those are the same people who were never at their desks pre-telework.
As someone who began teleworking in March 2020 for a federal agency, it’s been my most productive time. The worst was the brief period I had to be in office three days a week. The chattering/water cooler talk only interfered with my work.
90% of my meetings are with people located around the US, Europe, and the Pacific. All those meetings are online. Yes, today I had more than one meeting at once. There are meetings I can drop in and out of. Much harder to do in person .
Granted this is anecdata, but last week I had to be onsite for a meeting. The Internet was down, making my day mostly unproductive. If my home Internet goes down it’s a 5 minute drive to the public library.
How do we ensure security? Through VPN. My government laptop will not open my mail, Teams, or documents without going through the secure system. My monitors and hub are the same brands as provided in office. My telework agreement is multiple pages and I have to agree to many different ways to secure data or have a safe work environment.
We recently went through a telework audit. Let me just say there are some people who are dealing with time card fraud. But, that was a small percentage of people. My guess is those are the same people who were never at their desks pre-telework.
Dr. Blae,
I will echo that this is a well-deserved COTD, and I’ve liked what you have commented on so far, even on some of the points where we disagree.
Would you be willing to expound on some workplace efficiency suggestions/observations that are not necessarily remote-work related? All the particulars you have noted for the cost savings of remote work have been edifying, and certainly helped me see far more nuance in that picture than I’ve seen before. But I’m curious if the part of your work dealing with workforce efficiency looks at optimal number of monitors, desk ergonomics, frequency of rest breaks, and other issues like that under ergonomics, and also if your focus addresses proper employee management, such as how to keep employees utilized, how to keep track of their progress, especially without overburdening them with excessive reporting.
Thank you. So for the ergonomics side I am (really should be) tangentially associated with the work. When organizations engage with engineers to optimize the working environment they often assume that the humans are similar, that is where engineering psychologists (should) come in as well as I/O psychologists. We look at factors such a cognitive task loading, etc. It is easy enough to measure physical space for reach, etc., but noise and light factor into workplace efficiency.
Most people assume that conducting such a study is expensive and time consuming. Well it can be expensive and time consuming, but like other things in life if you know what to ask for it is often neither. I could conduct a workplace study involving cognitive load, etc. in less than a month by myself. I will admit that others drag their feet to increase costs, etc. but not all of us do.
Insofar as assessing break time, etc. I do that too (when I can convince someone of the value). I have yet to convince any government leader about the waste associated with meetings. In part, because I believe, that many are afraid that I will say their pet meetings have little or no value.
Take into consideration a one-hour meeting of 10 GS15s and 14 GS14s in a DC office. GS15s pay starts at ~$164k per year in DC and GS14s start at ~$139k per year. The average federal employee works 2,087 hrs a year (supposedly 😉 ). The cost of that meeting is $1,451 in just pay. Let’s say that it isn’t a meeting but those 20 employees spend 4 hours a day in meetings, then the cost is $5,807 per day or $29k a week. If your workday includes 4+ hrs of meetings then you are a professional meeting attender and not doing what you were hired for, which is described by position descriptions. So much waste.
I suspect that was meant as a rhetorical question to get people thinking it wouldn’t help with that, but that’s actually an easy one. Just google the fable of the fox who gets rid of fleas with a piece of wool and a swim. Or google the Spanish of the term to see how “reconcentrado” was used in Cuba etc., quite effectively until outside intervention stopped it. (See also Douglas Adams’s’ space ship full of telephone cleaners and marketers et al.)
Here is an article that my longtime Usenet ally, William A. Levinson, wrote back in 2013.
https://www.qualitydigest.com/inside/quality-insider-column/yahoo-vs-henry-ford-042213.html
An article in the April 2013 edition of Quality Progress titled “Back to Work” reports that Yahoo! now requires employees who previously telecommuted to report to a Yahoo! office, or even relocate so they will be able to do so.
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“To become the absolute best place to work, communication and collaboration will be important, so we need to be working side by side,” contends Yahoo!’s human resources chief Jackie Reses. “That is why it is critical that we are all present in our offices.”
This might have been true as recently as 15 or 20 years ago, but the Internet now permits far more efficient communication and collaboration than is achievable by in-person contact. Asynchronous communication is easily achievable with people in different time zones, and even on the other side of the world. There is no need to coordinate people’s schedules, let alone arrange for their simultaneous presence.
The benefits of Yahoo!’s new policy are indeed as described above, but the downside also should be obvious. The requirement for employees to report to a specific place adds time to their work day along with fuel or other transportation costs, which constitutes a de facto pay cut. A cornerstone of Henry Ford’s highly successful business system was the principle that anything that does not add value is waste (muda). Ford would not tolerate a job that required a worker to take more steps in one direction to get parts. It is doubtful that he would have approved of a job that required a worker to walk or drive anywhere if the job could be performed remotely. This was clearly not an option during the 1910s and 1920s, although it is telling that Ford used that era’s relatively crude telephony to turn his logistics system into what Edwin Norwood called a “continent-spanning conveyor” in his book, Ford: Men and Methods (Doubleday, Doran, 1931). Yahoo!’s new policy is therefore worse than nonvalue-adding. at least on the worker side; it is employer-mandated muda.
Does the new policy even add value on the employer side? Face-to-face meetings and even videoconferencing are a highly inefficient form of communication to which there was no viable alternative until about 20 years ago. People must take turns talking, and human speech operates at roughly 150 words per minute. The minds of listeners can wander because the human brain can process communication at a far higher rate. People can read, on the other hand (depending on the complexity of the material) 250 to 500 words per minute. It is well known that there is an upper limit, of fewer than 20 people, on the size of an effective cross-functional team—at least when face-to-face communications are involved.
Internet discussion forums facilitate both simultaneous communication (everybody “talking” at the same time) and asynchronous communication (not everybody needs to be there at the same time), and can be easily organized according to topic. Documents and figures can be easily uploaded to facilitate the exchange of ideas.
Daily commuting and travel are, in contrast, totally nonvalue-adding (muda) unless absolutely necessary. Manufacturing coaching, ISO 9001 audits, and similar activities require an on-site presence because there is currently no substitute for “go and see.” A flowchart of a process cannot, unlike a visit to gemba (the value-adding workplace), reveal waste motion, or expose quality system nonconformances. Then again, during the next 10 or 20 years we may see robotic avatars, which through the avatar’s eyes will enable somebody to visit a gemba from the other side of the world, thus eliminating travel and lodging costs.
Other jobs are, however, more than amenable to telecommuting. For thousands of years, education has required a teacher to personally present lectures to students. If you wanted to hear a lecture from a particularly famous professor, scientist, or doctor, you might have had to travel halfway around the world to do so. Only during the last century did audio recordings become an alternative, and the rapid advance of computer technology now allows people to take online courses from the other side of the world. Webinars, whether live or recorded, are taken for granted today.
Another invention along similar lines, the phonograph record and its successors, allows a single band or orchestra to share its creations with an unlimited number of people at a very low cost; there was a time when sharing required a gathering of the musicians and the audience, and there was a relatively high admission cost. There was also a time, barely beyond living memory, when to see a play you had to attend a live performance, and also pay a relatively high admission charge. Motion picture technology then allowed actors to share a performance with an unlimited number of people, and at a similarly reduced cost. People still attend live plays and musical performances, but these events are now luxuries as opposed to everyday entertainment products.
As another example, Rosetta Stone offers a comprehensive interactive software Spanish course for $499, and competitive products such as Fluenz are available. This is probably far less than it would cost to learn the corresponding material at even a community college. The reason is obvious; modern computer technology allows one or more instructors to automate their material for an unlimited number of students. This reduces the cost of education while it increases the income of the instructors, which is entirely consistent with Ford’s proven approach. When you make a job more productive, you can charge lower prices, even though you pay higher wages and salaries.
Now consider a job that common sense says requires an on-site presence: surgery. There was a time when, if a patient needed an operation from a renowned specialist, it was necessary to bring the patient to the doctor, or vice versa. It is easy to imagine the cost of transporting a seriously ill patient to another continent, or the cost to bring the doctor (whose time could easily exceed $1,000 per hour) to the patient. This changed with “Operation Lindbergh” in 2001, when a team of surgeons in New York operated via robot on a patient in France.
The productive trend of eliminating the need for personal presence probably began when humans discovered they could send smoke signals and heliograph signals instead of runners and messengers. This trend advanced substantially with the telegraph and then the telephone, and it is advancing at an even faster rate today. The goal is, in all cases, to eliminate nonvalue-adding activities from communication and collaboration. Yahoo!’s new mandate, then, despite its stated benefits, appears to be a step backward.