Steve Schwarzman of the Blackstone group said staff want to work from home so they can save money
The boss of the world’s biggest commercial landlord has accused remote workers of staying away from the office because it means they “don’t work as hard” and can save money.
Steve Schwarzman, the chief executive of investment firm the Blackstone group, made the claims about hybrid staff while speaking on a panel at the Future Investment Initiative summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
In remarks first reported by Bloomberg, he said employees had kept working from home because “they didn’t work as hard, regardless of what they tell you” and also due to the savings they make on their daily commute, lunches and work attire.
The evidence says otherwise. He can go fuck himself. I personally prefer going in but I understand people wanting to work from home or at the very least do hybrid work. Childcare is fucking expensive and if you can work while watching kids, that can really help combat the massive rise in housing costs.
Remote work is not free babysitting time. A competent remote work policy will specify that child care is not a part of remote work.
If you can do it without impacting productivity and not get caught then it’s probably fine though.
I would not recommend it based on my experience. Remote full time since 2020 and a parent
Remote work offers significantly more flexibility especially if both parents work remote. Many are able to work it just fine. It may not work for you but there are a ton of people that are just as productive when given that flexibility.
I have not seen any remote work policy mention childcare at all.
Many people don’t read the policies they agree to, but I did and it is in that remote work policy. Specified that remote work is not a substitute for child care.
I have read several remote work policies in the past few jobs I have had. Zero of them mentioned childcare.
Well get ready for it because people in C-level positions that write policy tend to participate in industry collaboration, and it will likely be standard before long. It’s a sensible requirement to make sure your employees are not wasting paid work time on personal tasks. You don’t have to like it but that is the truth.
It’s an idiotic requirement which is unenforceable. They can’t exactly monitor that. Any company pushing for that sounds like they don’t have a clue in how to measure their employees’ performances.
Again, what I said is the truth even if you don’t like it. It’s entirely possible to detect when some employees are watching their kids while at work, and if that was against company policy the employee could be sanctioned. Here’s an example, an employee is on a conference call with their child in the background, and information available indicates that they are the only person home with the child, therefore they are either providing childcare or neglecting their child.
A parent with a small child under school age should not be watching their kid while working, because it takes a lot of attention to supervise those small children, when work should be the focus of their attention. Older kids who are self-sufficient would be a different situation.
Except that is not the truth as indicated in my experience of it not being mentioned in the several jobs I have had where I worked remote. I’m sorry that that bursts your bubble but that’s the truth. In fact I have been on conference calls where there has been a child present and nobody gave a shit since the person was also extremely productive. Again, if it is not affecting productivity, it is a non issue and it sounds like your managers need to learn that basic fact and figure out how to measure very basic KPIs.
There are some cases where it is absolutely not going to affect performance at all for most people. If both parents work from home, they have much more flexibility in handing off interacting with their child. Some parents might have difficulty finding full time daycare or affording it. They still have core hours when they can focus but may also need some flexibility. Those two scenarios are not going to result in decreased productivity for most employees because they can shift some of their work to other hours.