General Discussion

I manage a team of research chemists and microbiologists. The equipment and laboratory environment cannot be taken home or made portable, to do this job, people simply must be on-site. The compromise that we have reached is to allow personnel 1 day of WFH (work from home) per two week cycle, provided that their on-site assignments are either completed or covered by on-site team members / co-workers.

This system requires that 1) I am in contact with my direct reports and their projects daily and 2) that we establish an environment or trust and comradery that allows people to know they have support when needed. My group loves the arrangement and the flexibility it offers them and productivity has not been harmed at all. My biggest obstacle is the one that is beyond my control at all - salaries and benefits in an inflationary time feels WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY worse than just small COLA raises and an annual bonus should.

I cannot change the corporate compensation model and I cannot do anything more to increase compensation, I just remain honest with each individual and do the best I can to champion them based on the achievements hit during every review period.

Oh, and for those who have bad managers I am sorry, but for those who have good managers they already know the primary role of the manager (and it is largely thankless the closer to manufacturing you drift) - it is you manager's primary duty to run interference and take blame for everything that goes wrong and pass on credit (up AND down the chain) for anything that goes well. Bad managers invert these responsibilities and do not understand the assignment. Do I "work" as hard as my reports? Of course not, but that's the point - my primary responsibility is to maintain their ability to hit targets and make deadlines, to keep things moving smoothly and to provide a single point of contact to explain when things are not smooth. The better you are at this role, the less it appears you have to do to those outside the actual team or project, and the worse you are, the more your team feels the heat.

WE also implemented access to the 9-8-80 working model (4 x [9] hour days weekly [72 hrs]; plus 1 x [8] very other Friday [8 /80 total hrs.]) to marry up to the `1 day a week WFH access. In effect, this makes every weekend a 3-day weekend and allows my team to stretch out their vacation usage and schedule things like doctor's visits and car repairs in a better manner. The one restriction is the WFH day cannot be the Monday after a scheduled Friday off... those absences require use of a day of ETO still.

The bottom line is always, if a business WANTS to treat employees well, its always POSSIBLE... but weak people make weak leaders and they make weak decisions all the time. Sad but true.