Ford gives 30,000 employees the option to work from home forever, another sign of workforce ...

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Source: Washington Post

Business

Ford gives 30,000 employees the option to work from home forever, another sign of workforce transformation

Many workers will have a new ‘hybrid option’ to work both remotely and in-person, starting in July

By Hannah Denham
March 17, 2021 at 3:00 p.m. EDT

Ford Motor Co. says it will begin phasing in a new remote-office work model, one of the first in the auto industry, giving tens of thousands of employees the option to continue doing their jobs from home indefinitely. ... The Dearborn, Mich.-based carmaker announced the new policy during a virtual town hall meeting Wednesday — one year after it sent workers home to wait out the pandemic — and said it would apply to all non-place-dependent workers. The balance between remote and in-person work will depend on the individual employee’s needs and those of their manager, said David Dubensky, chairman and chief executive of Ford Land, the company’s real estate subsidiary.

Starting in July, Ford employees will be able to return to the office for assignments that require face-to-face interaction, such as group projects and meetings, and remain home for more independent work. The goal is to personalize work schedules to best suit employees’ needs, Dubensky said. Some 30,000 employees in North America will have the option to stick with remote work, with flexible hours approved by their managers.

“The nature of work drives whether or not you can adopt this model. There are certain jobs that are place-dependent — you need to be in the physical space to do the job,” Dubensky said. “Having the flexibility to choose how you work is pretty powerful. … It’s up to the employee to have dialogue and discussion with their people leader to determine what works best.”

Dubensky said the company has been monitoring how employees fare with remote work for more than six months. It distributed surveys and formed a think tank to map out the future of work. A June 2020 company survey found that 95 percent of Ford’s global employees would prefer a mix of in-person and remote work after the pandemic, and that many of them felt more productive and were happier working from home.

{snip}

Hannah Denham
Hannah Denham is a national business reporter on The Washington Post's breaking news team. Follow https://twitter.com/hannah_denham1

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/03/17/ford-coronavirus-remote-work/

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Ford gives 30,000 employees the option to work from home forever, another sign of workforce transformation

Link to tweet

[bucolic_frolic]

1. Reduced costs, productivity, and lifestyle were always going to drive remote work

They freed the workers and the workers delivered!

[christx30]

18. I've been working from home, tech support,

since April of last year. I love it, and have no sense of humor for things that would compromise my ability to keep doing it. Have won top 10% of the call center 3 out of the last 4 quarters in a row. I want to keep this going as long as I can. It’s nice that my commute is sliding out of bed, sitting in my computer chair, and pressing the button that switches my home computer to work computer.

[ProfessorGAC]

2. Heard That On The Radio Earlier

There are several folks here at DU that predicted this sort of move months ago.
Guess they were right.

[cstanleytech]

3. The writing has been on the wall for years that we were heading in this direction as our technology

has improved.
It wont of course replace all jobs that require in person interaction but the cost savings companies can enjoy from not having to maintain large buildings for things like tech support centers is enticing.

[ProfessorGAC]

4. No Question About It

Last edited Thu Mar 18, 2021, 07:52 AM - Edit history (1)

I used early videoconferencing with overseas sites.
Wasn't very good then.
I could have five 2 hour meetings with the Brazilian or Chinese, or Polish plants by video.
But, when I went there, we'd get more ironed out in the first half hour than we did in ten hours of talking.
I'm sure it's way better now, especially since line operators could be part of the meeting, and talking to those hands-on folks is critical.
If it were better, I'd have travelled a LOT less, I'm sure.

[PatrickforB]

14. It is much better now, and getting better all the time.

Just yesterday, I participated in videoconference on MS Teams and the facilitator used a new technology called 'mural' to do the traditional brainstorming, then grouping of sticky notes into themes that will then inform actions toward a certain goal - in this case an effective onboarding strategy in a hybrid-virtual workforce.

Worked great. It did.

And I have delivered numerous public presentations (I'm an economist) using Teams, Go To Meeting, Zoom, and Cisco Webex.

I believe we are in the process of a sea-change in what both work and education look like. The only thing that worries me is that now lower skilled workers with the least educational attainment are 'joining' the gig economy. This means irregular hours, very little economic security, and no benefits. That is worse.

Say, I am reading a very good book - the newest by Thom Hartmann. It is called The Hidden History of American Oligarchy: Reclaiming Our Democracy from the Ruling Class, and he does talk about the so-called gig economy, as well as student and medical debt being part of a continued system of peonage. I know not everyone on this site cares for Hartmann, but he does speak truth to power, and this book is right on. Right up there with Zinn, if you ask me.

Anyway, good comment!

[CozyMystery]

5. When I think of Ford, I remember how shocked

I was to find out in law school that they decided not to fix the Pinto gas tank problem that killed people because the dead were worth $400K and it would cost more to fix the gas tanks so they wouldn't catch on fire.

I had no idea, at the time, how greedy and uncaring corporations can be. I knew they took full advantage of workers, but I did not know they would let people die, place a small price on their heads, and do it out of an extreme lack of integrity.

I have hated Ford ever since. Their options must primarily benefit them. I know I am biased.

[PatrickforB]

15. You're not biased. You are being realistic. We live in an age of the

primacy of the shareholder at the expense of workers, consumers, communities and the world itself.

A cool book to read, if you're interested in getting deeper into this sort of thing is the late Lynn Stout, who was the Distinguished Professor of Corporate and Business Law at Cornell Law School. Her book is called The Myth of Shareholder Value, and to my mind is a must read for anyone who understands the real enemy to the American people is these billionaire-oligarchs.

[CozyMystery]

23. Thank you for the recommendation. I will read it. nt

[Takket]

6. "95 percent of Ford's global employees would prefer a mix of in-person and remote work"

yeah... I'm one of those 95% lol ironically i found out about the "town hall" from your thread. I took today off from work to take my cat to the vet, so i missed it lol

i'm one of those people that has to be on-site to do SOME of my job. I project manage which is a lot of on-line meetings but I also oversee facility issues and contractors working on site. I asked for maybe a "one day a week" thing where myself and other facility engineers could maybe rotate so several of us are always on site but one person catches up on meetings and e-mails for a day at home.

Last march our building shut down but i was still very busy with meetings for engineering design and we got a lot done. It was also like getting a raise that i was no longer paying for gas or (as much) for lunch. I was spending $30 a week on gas and probably $50-60 on lunches. the gas went to zero and the lunches went down to $15-$20 from the grocery store. It was nice lol

I think now that online collaboration is getting so easy a LOT of companies are going to start wondering why the heck they are paying $100,000 a year to rent some sterile floor in an office building. My daughter moved from AZ to PA and kept the same job, 100% on-line, and is doing so well she just got a promotion.

Office buildings are going to start dying off like shopping malls. Bad if you own an office building but good for the environment when the building doesn't need to be heated/cooled and the cars aren't burning gas going back and forth.

[LiberalFighter]

7. Don't have to worry about traffic jams or construction or potholes.

[raccoon]

21. Yeah, I was thinking that too. The traffic will be a lot less

Yeah, I was thinking that too. The traffic will be a lot less In many cities if this trend continues.

[GregariousGroundhog]

10. My employer is probably going to end up doing the same thing

I'm a software developer, and our IT group took a survey where most people preferred a hybrid model. Management has been clear that nothing is final yet, but that they are looking at potentially moving toward a model where most of us only come in two or three days a week. People would also be allowed to continue being 100% remote, but only if they do not move out of state. HR and Legal have basically stated they don't want to deal with 50 different sets of income tax laws.

[twodogsbarking]

8. You don't have to work forever

regardless of what Ford says.

[iluvtennis]

9. Like this upcoming change in policy - good stuff. nt

[Gore1FL]

11. It'll make the assembly lines a little tricky!

[Lord Ludd]

12. My immediate thought too! /nt

[Jonah Ide]

13. Sounds Good to Me!

[IzzaNuDay]

16. One loaded question for Ford and other companies allowing WFH...

How are they compensating employees for home internet access, utilities, etc. they are using instead of being in the office?
Are they passing the savings?

Any DUers in a WFH setting? How are you being compensated?

[MissB]

17. Nope. It was a topic of my meeting today though

I work in a job represented by a union, so I’m guessing that it’ll be a part of the bargaining next round.

Our employer is allowing us to work remotely permanently if our position allows it (mine does). I can also go take my monitors and my standing desk and chair if I wanted (I don’t).

Dh and I both wfh forever now. Our electric bill is pretty consistent with what we had before. Dh was wfh 4 days a week before the pandemic and I was wfh the 5th day. Ditto with natural gas. My employer just issued me an iPhone which is great because I’m no longer using my personal phone, or data.

I gave up my parking space which saved me more than $100/month. My commute wasn’t bad ~15 mins each way, but I barely put miles on my car or use gas. I haven’t bought new clothes or shoes in a year. I don’t pack my lunch or eat out. I’m seeing savings over working in the office.

[murielm99]

19. I think this could contribute to demographic change.

It may not happen right away.

People who work from home and go in to an office only periodically may want to live outside of city or suburban areas. Rural areas may turn more blue as people find out that the cost of homes and the cost of livingl is lower.

My niece and her husband bought a home west of the Chicago suburbs. They were better able to afford a home there. Their children are going to schools that are less crowded. The commute to their jobs in the suburbs is only forty minutes.

Other changes will come in time.

[CaptainTruth]

20. Back in my corporate engineering days, on the days when I worked from home...

...I would be on my home PC by 5:00 am, in my PJs, coffee in hand. By noon I would have 7 hours of work done. I would then have lunch & do about 5 more hours of work, for a total of at least 12 hrs/day.

Since I was at home, I could also log in for a while later at night.

The whole thing was advantageous because I was based in San Francisco & I worked on projects that I had to coordinate with our offices in NY, London, & Tokyo.

NY is no problem, but do the math on the time differences to London & Tokyo. I reported to a Senior Vice President & all I had to do was ask "What do you have for L & T?" He gave me all the corporate issues for those offices & I addressed them from home with either coffee or a beer in my hand.

Of course, I was professional as hell, I always was, I never compromised on that. And it didn't take long before the company saw the value in having folks like me spend more time working from home.

Edit to add: A LOT of people can work from home, if not full-time, at least most-time. I really wasn't all that special. It just requires re-thinking what's really needed to perform a job.

[sheilahi]

22. well, I thought it was funny

Not so sure I'd want to drive a car built in someone's living room. kidding