\n<\/p>\n
How long does it take you to go to the bathroom? And does your boss have any right to ask?<\/p>\n
According to a recent story in the New York Post, one manager warned workers of the company\u2019s \u201cfive-minute rule\u201d which required work-from-home employees to \u201cnotify the team\u201d if they stepped away from their desk for any reason, including to use the bathroom.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis helps us stay aligned and ensures nothing is missed. Thank you for your co-operation,\u201d the manager said in an email shared online by an irate worker. Not surprisingly, this policy did not go over very well with some.<\/p>\n
\u201c5 min?\u201d one commenter wrote. \u201cAre you saving lives through that keyboard?\u201d<\/p>\n
Other comments on the post ranged from \u201cThis is crazy\u201d to \u201cOh I\u2019d be so gone.\u201d<\/p>\n
Of course, this manager\u2019s demand is outrageous. No one can do anything \u2013 let alone relieve themselves \u2013 in under five minutes. Asking work-from-home employees to \u201cnotify the team\u201d whenever they need to step away from their desks is completely unreasonable. However, the incident highlights what I\u2019m observing among many of my clients who are trying to determine the best way to implement work-from-home policies.<\/p>\n
For employers \u2013 particularly small business owners, most of whom are over the age of 50 \u2013 working from home is often a tough concept to swallow. I\u2019ve seen a number of these owners resist these policies because they don\u2019t believe that their employees are as productive at home as they are in the office. And it\u2019s not just a small business thing. Many corporate CEOs \u2013 from JPMorgan Chase\u2019s Jamie Dimon to Amazon\u2019s Andy Jassy \u2013 have been outspoken in their position that workers get more work done when they\u2019re in the office.<\/p>\n
They may be wrong, they may be right. Over the past few years we\u2019ve seen some studies that say workers do get more done when working remotely. Just as many reports conclude the opposite. Clearly, we\u2019re still too close to the pandemic and to this kind of working arrangement to truly know what\u2019s best for businesses. More time and data are needed. In the meantime, employers \u2013 like the manager above \u2013 oftentimes go overboard when supervising employees that they can\u2019t see in the office. We still haven\u2019t figured this out.<\/p>\n
Most, however, are trying. That\u2019s because they understand that working from home can be liberating for many of those employees. It gives them balance, more freedom and more flexibility, especially if they\u2019re caring for others. But for this type of arrangement to be successful, both employers and employees need to meet somewhere in the middle.<\/p>\n
For employees, it must be understood that being allowed to work from home is a benefit not unlike health insurance and retirement. It needs to be earned and rules need to be followed. Five-minute bathroom breaks are, of course, ridiculous. But it\u2019s not unreasonable for a manager to expect that their remote team member is as accessible as they are when they\u2019re in the office and that they\u2019re getting their jobs done, whatever and whenever that requires.<\/p>\n
Employees need to understand that their employers are rightly suspicious if their remote working days fall on a Monday or Friday. They need to understand that their company\u2019s IT team will need access to their devices in order to ensure security. They need to dress professionally, make sure the dog is fed and that their kids are being watched.<\/p>\n
Employers also have to meet their workers halfway. Stop the micromanagement and don\u2019t get monitoring software. Understand that even if they were in the office, you can\u2019t keep tabs on someone all the time. After all, they may be taking a bathroom break!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
How long does it take you to go to the bathroom? And does your boss have any right to ask? According to a recent story in the New York Post, one manager warned workers of the company\u2019s \u201cfive-minute rule\u201d which required work-from-home employees to \u201cnotify the team\u201d if they stepped away from their desk for<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30695,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[17977,1120,2579,1406,456,1407,286,514],"class_list":{"0":"post-30694","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-bathroom","9":"tag-boss","10":"tag-breaks","11":"tag-gene","12":"tag-home","13":"tag-marks","14":"tag-time","15":"tag-work"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30694\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/30695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}