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Disney Employees Must Return to Office Four Days a Week, Bob Iger Says
- Thread starter tanc
- Start date
Tha Realest
Well-Known Member
This assumes there is a desire to scale up, and this is not a move to force attrition.
CaptainAmerica
Premium Member
Yeah it's all going to be very geography-specific. Burbank is not like New York is not like Bristol is not like Orlando.
Sir_Cliff
Well-Known Member
I'm a little agnostic on this as I am sure remote work is good for some people and positions, and not so great for others.
Must admit, though, that it also reminds me a little of the arguments about university lectures pre-pandemic. While particularly many students felt they should be recorded and available to be watched online when and how best suited the students, the counter argument was that the structure and human interaction that came from having set times and places where students had to be was ultimately beneficial. Can't help but feel that there has to be some benefit to an organisation like Disney in having people seeing and interacting with each other in person rather than mostly via text and video from their own homes.
Must admit, though, that it also reminds me a little of the arguments about university lectures pre-pandemic. While particularly many students felt they should be recorded and available to be watched online when and how best suited the students, the counter argument was that the structure and human interaction that came from having set times and places where students had to be was ultimately beneficial. Can't help but feel that there has to be some benefit to an organisation like Disney in having people seeing and interacting with each other in person rather than mostly via text and video from their own homes.
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el_super
Well-Known Member
Not saying it's right or wrong, but Disney is a deeply cultural company and it's hard to impart their values and beliefs on Cast Members who don't work on site.
Robbiem
Well-Known Member
My experience (admittedly from the UK) is that over the last decade or so the workplace has had big changes. The last few places I've worked no one has a set desk, just hot desks so teams don't sit together and any in person benefits are minimised or eliminated. This in turn has made offices more impersonal people sitting at identical desk with no personal belongings with cliques of people sitting together or near the boss.
I certainly hate presenteeism. Where I work people are supposed to be in the office three days a week but no one cares what they do on those days. Meetings are often held remotely with people in the same office talking via a screen so what's the point. It is just a tick box exercise driven by the government who want people in offices spending money in coffee shops, on trains etc.
The pandemic also showed me that I find in office work draining. As an introvert the need to be 'on' constantly in an office environment is physically an mentally draining but doing the same work at home is much better for my health. I have no issues with workshops and meetings in person where you interact but to sit at a desk in a soulless office isn't the best for me. Other people who are extroverts will find the opposite and applying the same approach to everyone will always lead to winners and losers, that's why I think a lot of this should be more choice for individuals
I certainly hate presenteeism. Where I work people are supposed to be in the office three days a week but no one cares what they do on those days. Meetings are often held remotely with people in the same office talking via a screen so what's the point. It is just a tick box exercise driven by the government who want people in offices spending money in coffee shops, on trains etc.
The pandemic also showed me that I find in office work draining. As an introvert the need to be 'on' constantly in an office environment is physically an mentally draining but doing the same work at home is much better for my health. I have no issues with workshops and meetings in person where you interact but to sit at a desk in a soulless office isn't the best for me. Other people who are extroverts will find the opposite and applying the same approach to everyone will always lead to winners and losers, that's why I think a lot of this should be more choice for individuals
Tha Realest
Well-Known Member
If I built my entire IT infrastructure on the Go.com backbone I’d want people in person as much as humanly possible
el_super
Well-Known Member
Why?
It's ancient and temperamental.
i was speaking generally, it wasnt directed at anyoneOr I have a PTO day today? But, yes, I typically work 100% remote, and I accomplish a hell of a lot more in a day than I ever did when I wasn't. You really got me with that one?
Edit: Reading your other posts in here it seems you're in favor of remote work, so maybe I misunderstood your post? I think we're on the same side here?
I'm sure it's been updated, but at some point it will need replacement altogether.
Think of it like the Boeing 737 Max. Yes, it works - but it's still an old design that's been updated. Something new will ultimately be better.
But given how cheap Disney is... not happening.
flynnibus
Premium Member
It's quite the inverse.. there are roles that really should be in person, but en-large most can be performed by individuals working from anywhere as long as they provide the right coverage (timezone, access, etc). The 'unknown' element that is harder to manage is that 1) not all workers can hack it and 2) It's something that works best for established people/roles.. it's more difficult for many 'new' people or roles. So it's hard to do this 'uniformly' without looking at individuals.. which can be difficult HR wise.
The recurring theme is.. things tend to go south when people try to define in absolutes instead of applying it where it makes sense.
I've worked in all ranges... from small teams, cube farms, big companies, small companies, remote worker, hybrid, etc. The power of remote working far outweighs trying to lock into a single site mentality. But there are limits.. for instance, projects that span 6+ timezones are hard. Addressing access to hands-on gear can be limiting. Ignoring customer-presence is a mistake. Companies with bad management will be even WORSE in a remote worker situation. Managing how to switch to an adhoc access is often difficult for orgs to find the right balance of access vs focus.
The pandemic was 'useful' in that it forced many people to simply 'do it' vs overthinking it and resisting. But the correct course of action is to return to the correct form for each type of job/worker.
For a company like Disney that is so diverse.. obviously this answer should depend on the kind of role.
flynnibus
Premium Member
Your call-center is never going to be a big cube farm anymore. Nor are you going to have a bullpen of accountants, data entry, 'analysts', etc. Just like your company 'centralized' resources from onsite to remote hubs in the past for everything from HR, IT, legal, whatever... those roles are never coming back 'onsite'. Those roles that can be done effectively w/o paying for office space will continue to be done by people working from home/remote.
flynnibus
Premium Member
This is true - but is also about creating dynamics for people... people who may have very different needs depending on the kind of work or people involved. This is why IMO such decisions really need to be based on the role, location, and team dynamics and not corp wide universal laws.
I can say with honesty I know how difficult it must be for a professor to feel connected when talking to a camera... but I also can say that when I sat in those 400 person lecture halls at 8am .. I probably read the newspaper more than I ever interacted with the professor or my classmates
I designed distance education systems for about a decade... it's a tough dynamic. But when I need to ask a coworker how a certain task is managed, it's far more powerful for me to be able to adhoc call anywhere in the globe from my fingertips than it is for me to try to find where someone is on campus.
Anyone who has worked on a large campus knows that even being 'onsite' does not mean uniformly accessible... those who were any reasonable distance away might as well have been remote workers because neither of you wanted to cross property
danlb_2000
Premium Member
I think software development really lends itself to hybrid because there are two aspects to the job. The "heads down" writing code part may be best done at home (assuming lack of distractions like kids and pets), whereas the collaborative problem solving part is better done in person.
Several years ago Iger advised he wakes up wherever he is in the world at 430am , works out in his private gym with his personal trainer like in his CA mansion then gets into work before 7am. One former Disney exec who was a fitness freak was Tom Staggs.
flynnibus
Premium Member
For instance.. even as a tech company that builds collaboration.. we put all our devs into clusters (essentially a conference room) based on what they were working on. Essentially 'physical' scrum teams. The access and 'common purpose' I think were the best elements of it. You'd typically have 4-8 people in one physical room.
The irony is in these spaces, you found virtually everyone wore headphones the majority of the time. The benefit (IMO) was the quick access to each other, along with all the social elements. Going to lunch as a group, seeing what someone was playing with, etc. Things like demos and standups work wayyy better in person.
And we were an organization that was working lean and agile way before it was the norm (early 2000s).. when speakers would come around advocating for the principals of Agile, we found most were already in play here culture wise.. and all the agile work being done helped make it easier to communicate the concepts others and help tighten some of our ideals.
Since the pandemic, many have struggled to find the right balance for the teams. Our main R&D sites were usually all co-located, with only a portion of people being fully remote. When we went full remote, there are elements people fail to replicate... the largest being the social/communal feel. 'hybrid' is the buzz now and we continue to work to figure out what forms of 'structured' time in the office helps build the elements we need. For instance, we do our demos on regularly scheduled days along with company-provided lunch... and that becomes a hub of activity for people to build around. We also encourage our individual teams to mimmic this in terms of having regular cadence in-person stuff (like sprint planning) to do the same at the smaller team level.