I heard a new phrase... Employee Vendor = benefit, and policy changes for work from home status...

[LovesTimone]

BTW, an attorney friend of mine pointed out that WC is not limited to premises liability issues. Moving your workforce offsite does not eliminate the need to carry WC insurance.

I understand the point... and the company is still carrying WC, for office employees, and when the WFH people are in the office, or meetings, conventions...

The problem lies within, How is the employer suppose to do safety inspections in someones home? make sure OSHA regulations are being followed, They can not control how you keep house? Plus how is an employer suppose to know if someone really got hurt doing a job related task? Normal if someone gets hurt on the job, someone is around, a witness, there are OSHA regulations, safety protocol, camera's, .. Yes, even for office people... wet floor signs when mopping or a sink overflows, safety check of office equipment, office chairs, desk, file cabinets, printer stands...

ohh , I slipped in water on my kitchen floor, fell and broke my arm during working hours, I was on my lunch break, its just like if I was in the break room? .... does workman comp cover this... there was no wet floor signs... how is the company suppose to prevent water on someone floor...

Ummm, Hey boss my office chair broke, or trip over the computer cords and I hit my head, hurt my back, and I need to go to the hospital... ? The office did not provide the chair, or put the chair together was it done correctly ? the office has no control over how the cords where laying at someones home, or how the chair was put together...

BTW - These things were are reported by WFH employees, thinking that workman's comp should cover it... when I was working... one guy who said the office chair broke, after a investigation was done, and he did not want someone investigating in his home, intrusion of privacy is what he stated... turns out he was working in the yard, and flip the riding mower over on top of him... One of kids said, "Daddy got hurt when the moooowwer flippededd over".

Unfortunately you can't just take people at their word...
As well this type of thing is what triggers owners, and business into making WFH folks... into private contractors...

Lots of unknowns...

 

[tzolkin]

I understand the point... and the company is still carrying WC, for office employees, and when the WFH people are in the office, or meetings, conventions...

The problem lies within, How is the employer suppose to do safety inspections in someones home? make sure OSHA regulations are being followed, They can not control how you keep house? Plus how is an employer suppose to know if someone really got hurt doing a job related task? Normal if someone gets hurt on the job, someone is around, a witness, there are OSHA regulations, safety protocol, camera's, .. Yes, even for office people... wet floor signs when mopping or a sink overflows, safety check of office equipment, office chairs, desk, file cabinets, printer stands...

ohh , I slipped in water on my kitchen floor, fell and broke my arm during working hours, I was on my lunch break, its just like if I was in the break room? .... does workman comp cover this... there was no wet floor signs... how is the company suppose to prevent water on someone floor...

Ummm, Hey boss my office chair broke, or trip over the computer cords and I hit my head, hurt my back, and I need to go to the hospital... ? The office did not provide the chair, or put the chair together was it done correctly ? the office has no control over how the cords where laying at someones home, or how the chair was put together...

BTW - These things were are reported by WFH employees, thinking that workman's comp should cover it... when I was working... one guy who said the office chair broke, after a investigation was done, and he did not want someone investigating in his home, intrusion of privacy is what he stated... turns out he was working in the yard, and flip the riding mower over on top of him... One of kids said, "Daddy got hurt when the moooowwer flippededd over".

Unfortunately you can't just take people at their word...
As well this type of thing is what triggers owners, and business into making WFH folks... into private contractors...

Lots of unknowns...

I suppose insurance companies need to clearly define this with so many people working from home now. I think if you are at home then an injury should be covered by your health or homeowners insurance. All the things you described (water in kitchen, messy cords, etc) should be the responsibility of the homeowner, not their employer.

My company has workers comp, but we do not have an office (we staff hospitals/surgery centers/offices). My assumption was that workers comp would only cover the employees if they got injured while actually on the job doing work, not if they were doing some paperwork on their computer at home or driving to/from work.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

I don't think this is uncommon since the shift to work from home. Various companies have made decisions regarding not only responsibilities but also pay and benefits. I don't see it as too much of a big deal but the changes do need to be realistic.

While it is true work from home does allow someone who is under the weather work, depending on the individual and their ailment, severely altering what constitutes sick time as it was described is not realistic especially the hospitalization requirement. Someone may not be able to effectively do their job but also not be hospitalized. That's now penalizing someone's body for not being sick enough and would be at odds with the idea of working from home means employees can be healthier. I remember when my husband and I had the flu neither one of us was hospitalized but I was a zombie for lack of a better term with an over 103 degree fever for days. So I wouldn't be able to use sick time because I didn't require hospitalization (and 3 days of it) make no sense. I would suggest filing a complaint with the DOL on that one. I have zero issues with a lumped into one category of PTO but to me it's underhanded and unrealistic to maintain separated out sick time but put a hospitalization clause (and 3 days of it) and worse to only apply that to certain employees.

Pay adjustment while it sucks does make a bit of sense because if you're not commuting your wear and tear on your vehicle is less and you're using less gasoline, depending on that commute the stress levels related to the commute would be reduced, etc

Employees already should have only been using their work laptops for work. Maybe they were lax before but that's just professionalism unless the work explicitly said they don't care.



The biggest thing to me, and what would also IMO constitute perhaps a complaint to the DOL, is that there was no warning that a decision to adjust to work from home would mean all these changes when the choice was given to employees. It was done in a shady manner IMO.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

Situations like this are why I am only considering jobs that are 100% in person during my job hunt. I did not enjoy WFH, as I need the full separation of work/personal life. But that’s just me.

When my husband was job hunting he wouldn't have wanted to work for a company either that was strictly work from home. He's fine with working from home but prefers the office.

His company he works for right now it's common (and was advised to him multiple times during the whole process) for employees to work from home several days a week. No changes one way or another just that the culture was "if you want to work from home go for it" but I do believe there's an expectation to be in the office one or two times a week normally.

My husband has been working in the office choosing not to work from home with exception to several inclement weather days and then last week when he was in OSHA training for 6 hours each day for 2 days in a row and decided it was easier to use our home office to do that (he's already done OSHA training for his prior job though).

But that flexibility and workplace culture is something he appreciated. His prior company had that flexibility too but the workplace culture of multiple days a week work from home as a normal thing was not there at that prior company, it was more that once work from home stopped (which was largely fall 2020) for the majority of employees if you need to work from home here and there we're totally fine with that.

 

[kdonnel]

Pay adjustment while it sucks does make a bit of sense because if you're not commuting your wear and tear on your vehicle is less and you're using less gasoline, depending on that commute the stress levels related to the commute would be reduced, etc

Do pay adjustments make sense?

I am not being paid based on the cost of my commute.

I am being paid on the idea that I will perform a certain amount of work in an agreed upon amount of time.

If my co worker commutes 2 hours a day and I only commute 15 minutes does my co worker deserve more pay?

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

I agree that the executives can make decisions autonomously, but in this case they asked everyone to choose if they wanted to be in the office or remote beforehand, then applied different policies based that. If they were going to let people choose, they should have provided exactly what the choice would entail. Granted, they didn't have to let them choose at all, but I'd be pretty upset if I had made a choice only to have some unknown consequences tossed on that afterward.

Agreed, plus given the changes I think we can assume they knew darn well if they had told employees all the rules ahead of time at least some of those work from home people would have either not chosen that or raised complaints.

Good business practice is to give your employees information. I don't care if the timing here was like "you have a week to make a decision" but to decide to change the benefits package of the employees which hinges on the physical presence of that employee with no indication you would be doing so is underhanded and should be called out and that's with me normally giving businesses a lot of latitude.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

Do pay adjustments make sense?

I am not being paid based on the cost of my commute.

I am being paid on the idea that I will perform a certain amount of work in an agreed upon amount of time.

If my co worker commutes 2 hours a day and I only commute 15 minutes does my co worker deserve more pay?

They do make sense to me. The way you're looking at it I feel is not something I was even saying. It's not the length of time your commute is it's the fact that you are commuting at all, the stress part was something like thinking about traffic conditions and such.

Commuting from the upstairs bedroom to the downstairs home office did not add wear and tear on my husband's vehicle lol. He could start at the same time as he did before but have additional time in the morning to either sleep or do whatever.

The entire auto industry gave us refunds due to lack of driving for pete's sake lol.

I'm not sure where you got the idea that you're being paid on the idea that you'll be performing a certain amount of work in an agreed upon time period but that's not what salaries are comprised of. Your level of experience, your credentials not just your education status but also verifications you have, the title and role of what you've be, and so much more go into that. Haven't you ever heard of location-based pay? That's extremely common.

So yeah it doesn't strike me as being out of line.

 

[soccerdad72]

Do pay adjustments make sense?

I am not being paid based on the cost of my commute.

I am being paid on the idea that I will perform a certain amount of work in an agreed upon amount of time.

If my co worker commutes 2 hours a day and I only commute 15 minutes does my co worker deserve more pay?

No, but I have heard of Silicon Valley companies now doing pay adjustments (down) to employees who are now WFH in lower cost areas of the country. The logic being that when those same employees were hired, their salary was reflective of the high cost area they were being asked to work in. Now that the same job can be done from, say, Iowa, the elevated salary is unnecessary.

 

[Starport Seven-Five]

They do make sense to me. The way you're looking at it I feel is not something I was even saying. It's not the length of time your commute is it's the fact that you are commuting at all, the stress part was something like thinking about traffic conditions and such.

Commuting from the upstairs bedroom to the downstairs home office did not add wear and tear on my husband's vehicle lol. He could start at the same time as he did before but have additional time in the morning to either sleep or do whatever.

The entire auto industry gave us refunds due to lack of driving for pete's sake lol.

I'm not sure where you got the idea that you're being paid on the idea that you'll be performing a certain amount of work in an agreed upon time period but that's not what salaries are comprised of. Your level of experience, your credentials not just your education status but also verifications you have, the title and role of what you've be, and so much more go into that. Haven't you ever heard of location-based pay? That's extremely common.

So yeah it doesn't strike me as being out of line.

This is an very narrow view only taking into account a small portion of expenses.

From the employee side, you have additional expenses. Heat, air conditioning, home supplies, office supplies, and many other items that go up in cost. Is it more than the wear and tear on a car? Probably not, but it's more than $0.

From the employer side, you have less office space which results in savings from climate control, maintenance, capital, and property taxes. Employers also generally end up getting more working hours from employees because they no longer have a hard stop at 5pm to drive home and eat dinner with the family.

WFH is a rare win/win and arguing only the benefits for the employee is ignoring a lot.

No, but I have heard of Silicon Valley companies now doing pay adjustments (down) to employees who are now WFH in lower cost areas of the country. The logic being that when those same employees were hired, their salary was reflective of the high cost area they were being asked to work in. Now that the same job can be done from, say, Iowa, the elevated salary is unnecessary.

I hope those Silicon Valley companies are looking for turnover. There have been a bunch of studies that it's better to let an employee go than degrade their title/salary as it will result in an employee who performs poorly and leaves soon after.

Caveat: If this is done up front when an employee puts in the paperwork to move it is part of the consideration. I'm talking about people who moved and are now being told their incomes will be reduced.

 

[Princesca]

I don't see a problem with designating work from home employee differently than office based employee. I worked from home for most of the pandemic and can say that there was much abuse of this "perk" by others who were also working from home. I am a healthcare provider and was on the employee covid call team as well as providing virtual care. I had colleagues who were mothering their toddlers while also taking calls! Many instances of dogs barking. Also other people walking around in the background while a provider was on a video consult call. Basically many things that take the person's focus off of the job at hand and is also extremely unprofessional.

Imagine bringing your dogs or your kids into the office with you and thinking you can get any work done! that's basically what happens if those variables are not addressed and controlled for.

Studies have shown that productivity is better in the office than it is at home. I'm sure there are exceptions and work from home is a blessing for many people, but unfortunately too many have spoiled it and so companies have to put policies in place.

This would obviously be a HIPAA violation, in the healthcare sector, I would imagine.

Just speaking from the two companies I worked at during COVID, they've both given high praise to our department for remaining productive in the new WFH environment, and employee happiness and retention has improved as well. When good employees stay on, that creates a more positive environment and less churn and 'fill in' work for other employees. How much productivity is lost when an employee has to be replaced?

 

[soccerdad72]

I hope those Silicon Valley companies are looking for turnover. There have been a bunch of studies that it's better to let an employee go than degrade their title/salary as it will result in an employee who performs poorly and leaves soon after.

Caveat: If this is done up front when an employee puts in the paperwork to move it is part of the consideration. I'm talking about people who moved and are now being told their incomes will be reduced.

I believe in many cases, it's being done as part of the conditions of the move.

https://www.businessinsider.com/tec...tside-bay-area-twitter-facebook-vmware-2020-9

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

This is an very narrow view only taking into account a small portion of expenses.

From the employee side, you have additional expenses. Heat, air conditioning, home supplies, office supplies, and many other items that go up in cost. Is it more than the wear and tear on a car? Probably not, but it's more than $0.

From the employer side, you have less office space which results in savings from climate control, maintenance, capital, and property taxes. Employers also generally end up getting more working hours from employees because they no longer have a hard stop at 5pm to drive home and eat dinner with the family.

WFH is a rare win/win and arguing only the benefits for the employee is ignoring a lot.

Trust me I get that, I even spoke about that during the height of the pandemic. I mean my mom was moaning and moaning about having to use her own toilet paper (and this was after the hoarding had subsided) for her it was just the idea of having to use her own

That said some of those things are going to be not in control of the employer. You selecting a temperature is not on the employer. When my husband worked from home from March-August the temperature didn't change from what it would be during the day. That's an individual preference that which an employer realistically can't control.

A company who doesn't provide any employee anything for working from home is a cheap company. That's not a function of work from home.

As far as the office space a lot of that depends on the area someone is in and what conditions the buildings are. You'd be taking a very narrow view yourself given your comments. Having a smaller office space in no way means you have less expenditures on utilities or maintenance. Lower property taxes? No, that depends on the city, county, state, zoning, etc. The size is only a portion of the equation and doesn't in fact mean a larger building costs more.

For hours again that depends. My husband stopped working 1-1 1/2 hours earlier than he normally did when he worked from home because he got what he needed to get done. He gets home later commuting to work even at his new job. Sometimes this may depend on the core hours a company has set up. If you are working longer as a work from home employee that may denote an issue with the structure of your work. Does your employer give you more work? Then you have people who are work from home but have a structured shift. A structured shift you're always going to win out with work from home so long as the number of hours is the same as before.

As far as work from home rarely being a win/win...that might have been the case pre-pandemic with at least some of the corporate world's mentality but these days? Nah. These days many people are wanting the work from home life permanently.

 

[kdonnel]

They do make sense to me. The way you're looking at it I feel is not something I was even saying. It's not the length of time your commute is it's the fact that you are commuting at all, the stress part was something like thinking about traffic conditions and such.

Commuting from the upstairs bedroom to the downstairs home office did not add wear and tear on my husband's vehicle lol. He could start at the same time as he did before but have additional time in the morning to either sleep or do whatever.

The entire auto industry gave us refunds due to lack of driving for pete's sake lol.

I'm not sure where you got the idea that you're being paid on the idea that you'll be performing a certain amount of work in an agreed upon time period but that's not what salaries are comprised of. Your level of experience, your credentials not just your education status but also verifications you have, the title and role of what you've be, and so much more go into that. Haven't you ever heard of location-based pay? That's extremely common.

So yeah it doesn't strike me as being out of line.

But I don't see the employer needing to pay me at all for the stress of commuting.

It does not matter to me if i am commuting 2 hours, 15 minutes, or walking from the bedroom to my home office.

I should be paid based on the quantity and quality of my work.

I also don't think that location based pay is correct.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

But I don't see the employer needing to pay me at all for the stress of commuting.

It does not matter to me if i am commuting 2 hours, 15 minutes, or walking from the bedroom to my home office.

I should be paid based on the quantity and quality of my work.

I also don't think that location based pay is correct.

I didn't say an employer needed to. I just said I understood why it would make sense to me to adjust pay for employees who strictly work from home.

You may not think location pay is correct but it's a base function of just about every job. A job in the LA, CA area is probably going to more salary than your city in GA. It's at least part of the consideration in pay in many jobs. Would you think someone in LA is fine being paid the same as someone in GA? I doubt you'd find that person saying location based pay isn't correct. When my husband would go out to site there would be times a pay bump was added to compensate for the different costs associated with the area and per diem was also based on the exact location. Here in our area if someone were to come here they wouldn't get nearly the same amount as when my husband went to LA to work because the locations are inherently different. When I was at the insurance company the pay was lower than it was for employees in Portland, OR because their area had different costs than here. This is fairly standard. Remote work has always had the opportunity to be different rate and sometimes it was. But we're now seeing it on a large scale and more normalized I can understand why that may cause some people to balk at the concept.

There are companies that likely do pay based solely on your quantity of work that's often commission-based although quality may or may not be high on the list as some employers don't care so long as you're getting them business. But as a whole in the employment world that's not how your salary is created. They don't even know what your productivity is like with them when they hire you.

 

[kdonnel]

I didn't say an employer needed to. I just said I understood why it would make sense to me to adjust pay for employees who strictly work from home.

You may not think location pay is correct but it's a base function of just about every job. A job in the LA, CA area is probably going to more salary than your city in GA. It's at least part of the consideration in pay in many jobs. Would you think someone in LA is fine being paid the same as someone in GA? I doubt you'd find that person saying location based pay isn't correct. When my husband would go out to site there would be times a pay bump was added to compensate for the different costs associated with the area and per diem was also based on the exact location. Here in our area if someone were to come here they wouldn't get nearly the same amount as when my husband went to LA to work because the locations are inherently different. When I was at the insurance company the pay was lower than it was for employees in Portland, OR because their area had different costs than here. This is fairly standard. Remote work has always had the opportunity to be different rate and sometimes it was. But we're now seeing it on a large scale and more normalized I can understand why that may cause some people to balk at the concept.

There are companies that likely do pay based solely on your quantity of work that's often commission-based although quality may or may not be high on the list as some employers don't care so long as you're getting them business. But as a whole in the employment world that's not how your salary is created. They don't even know what your productivity is like with them when they hire you.

Now is the time to fight what I see as incorrect rather than just say well it has been done that way before so it is ok.

Now more than ever with WFH becoming the norm, people should not be paid more or less because of where they live.

When a company hires someone they definitely know what level of productivity they expect. If you exceed that you should get rewarded. If you don't meet it your reviews, pay opportunities, and advancement opportunities should reflect that as well.

If I get a job in Silicon Valley making $300k as a full time remote employee and then move myself to Montgomery Alabama while still performing at the same level, I don't believe the company should lower my salary to reflect the lower cost of living in Alabama. I fully understand it happens, but it is flawed and wrong.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

Now is the time to fight what I see as incorrect rather than just say well it has been done that way before so it is ok.

Now more than ever with WFH becoming the norm, people should not be paid more or less because of where they live.

When a company hires someone they definitely know what level of productivity they expect. If you exceed that you should get rewarded. If you don't meet it your reviews, pay opportunities, and advancement opportunities should reflect that as well.

If I get a job in Silicon Valley making $300k as a full time remote employee and then move myself to Montgomery Alabama while still performing at the same level, I don't believe the company should lower my salary to reflect the lower cost of living in Alabama. I fully understand it happens, but it is flawed and wrong.

But would you say the same if you lived in Alabama and moved to silicon valley?

It would have cost my husband money to work in CA or to work in MD without the bump in pay, he would have lost money. Do you think that makes the system flawed and wrong?

As far as productivity I said they didn't know your productivity when they hire you. Your argument was that you should be paid based on the quantity and quality of your work. That is not known when you get hired. Bonuses and raises often do have performances included in the structure.

 

[crjack]

I can't imagine being paid less for being remote unless the scope of responsibilities changed....just like I wouldn't expect to be paid more if I had a long commute.

I have worked for a large national company for many years. I was remote prior to Covid because my employer decided the expense of an office was not justified in my high COLA area.

I have co-workers In my same role in many other cities where we have an office. If my salary was to be lowered for being remote I wouldn't stay. Our performance is the criteria for our annual review not location.

Our office employees use company wifi, have coffee provided and all necessary supplies.

I typically just get my own supplies because its less hassle than submitting the request and doing expense reports.

I also do a lot of my own admin work because no office manager on site. Companies can absolutely save $ with remote workers.

 

[kdonnel]

But would you say the same if you lived in Alabama and moved to silicon valley?

It would have cost my husband money to work in CA or to work in MD without the bump in pay, he would have lost money. Do you think that makes the system flawed and wrong?

As far as productivity I said they didn't know your productivity when they hire you. Your argument was that you should be paid based on the quantity and quality of your work. That is not known when you get hired. Bonuses and raises often do have performances included in the structure.

Yes. I believe companies should pay for the value provided by the employee irrespective of location of the company or location of the employee.

Edited to add: as I said earlier the company definitely knows what is expected of the person hired for the position before they hire anyone.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

Yes. I believe companies should pay for the value provided by the employee irrespective of location of the company or location of the employee.

They do but you apparently have a way different definition of it and say it's just only on an unknown quantity and quality of your work when you're first hired. Value in your experience, value in your education, your credentials like your certifications, etc. Location is part of it. You're going to be hard pressed to find people who would move to a more expensive area without being monetarily compensated for it. That's something the employees want. We're going in circles. Enjoy your day

 

[soccerdad72]

If I get a job in Silicon Valley making $300k as a full time remote employee and then move myself to Montgomery Alabama while still performing at the same level, I don't believe the company should lower my salary to reflect the lower cost of living in Alabama. I fully understand it happens, but it is flawed and wrong.

If you were making $150K in Montgomery prior to moving to Silicon Valley and the company agreed to pay you $300K because of the cost of living increase involved with such a move, I think it's within their rights to adjust your salary accordingly if you choose to move back to Alabama because the job has become possible to be done remotely.