Back in 2022 I wrote that working from home was quietly stealing a massive amount of productive time.

It wasn’t just the obvious loss of informal knowledge sharing — the things you unconsciously absorb when you walk past colleagues and overhear conversations. It was also the noticeably slower response times when calling companies whose staff work from home.

I suspect the reason is simple: they hope someone else will answer the phone, and since they’re safely hidden at home, this laziness is never visible the way it would be in the office.

Now Volvo’s new CEO, Håkan Samuelsson, (on a short two-year contract) has had enough. He is bringing people back to the office.

Critics are already crying foul: “After the pandemic, employees have become accustomed to a flexibility that made their private life better.”

As the user Aktiepappa on X perfectly summed it up: “With that kind of argument, I would have done exactly what Volvo is doing too.”

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This is a new post on the new WordPress blog.
You can find the old blog here: https://mrsdewlar.blogspot.com

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