Vermont Skier Visits Down Significantly Due to COVID-19

[snoseek]

In restaurants you're expected to work sick...nurses as well and yes that should bother you.

I personally make it clear with my employer if its snowing hard I gotta go and it's usually fine. Follow the weather and trying to give them plenty of time to work things out is key.

 

[thebigo]

Interesting conversation. In the engineering world, if you have been around long enough nobody cares. I get 47 days per year and take far more than that if you count all the half days and days I forget to enter in ADP. The tradeoff is that I am never truly off. Cannot begin to estimate the number of emails, phone calls, texts, teams meeting I take while skiing. Sucked this year without a bar; was constantly trying to time emails/texts on the lift while simultaneously avoiding frostbite.

 

[dblskifanatic]

I think companies will definitely look back on this past year and see how effective people were working from home (in some cases, ineffective). I do not think everyone will work from homegoing forward but a larger number than before will be. Why not, it will lower costs on office space, it reduces the spread of anything contagious, reduces the amount of cooler talk, people often find themselves working a little longer then if they were in the office. What it will not do is prevent those from cheating! This is a loose term, there are many that can work and play in harmony - so those are the exceptions. I bet there were many people that technically took time during the day to ski, hike, do errands, or other non working events that they would not have done if they were not working at the office.

 

[jimmywilson69]

my company owns the building that and the control freak nature of the owners will limit us to some sort of hybrid 2 or 3 days in the office vs working completely remotely. which is honestly fine. My boss (one of the owners) and I were discussing and he put it this way. If I told you in January 2020 that you could work from home 2 days a week forever you would've thought it was the greatest thing ever.

 

[2Planker]

yeah, yer a douchebag….. and now we all know it.

Right.... Get a grip ___________. You fill in the blank

Run a small business w/ 12-15 employees and that shit never has, and never will be tolerated.
Med., Dental, 4 weeks paid Vacation, 401K.
Those 2 morons are the only 2 who have ever left our practice and that's going back more than 30 years.
One of 'em works for my buddy now, No paid Vac, No 401K, No Med/Dental

 

[BenedictGomez]

Going forward WFH is going to be a tug-of-war battle between gray-haired boomers in charge & the millennials replacing them. Generally speaking, the former dislike a WFH business environment & the latter embrace it. But the genie is out of the bottle & cannot be recaptured; WFH is here to stay. The commercial real estate market is screwed, and I surmise many tall buildings coast to coast will be remodeled with restaurants, services, and retail on the bottom floor, and floors 2 through X as apartments.

 

[Hawk]

Actually the Grey-haired boomers are being replaced with us for the most part. The gen x-ers born in the 60's and 70's. Experience still trumps young innovative approaches. Work from home is good for a good portion of IT based business and service based organizations but there is still many professions that you need to be in the office. It is my experience that people being home has not been nearly as productive. I can't tell you how many deadlines have been missed on my projects because people working from home just could not get it done it time. With no one watching, there is no sense of urgency. I am not a fan and will continue to go into work because it is the right thing to do and is much more rewarding culturally, gastronomically and socially. You can't get that on your phone or computer. You will find that many still think that working from the office is better for productivity and in the end that should govern more people gong to work.

I know the response from the NYC urbanites will be different but you are in the minority.

 

[skef]

Vermont is fully open as of 11 AM today.

 

[slatham]

From Wall Street ,while most firms are planning for some WFH the vast majority have a stated mandate to return to the office, with 2-3 days in the office the norm. Several have said to the effect "you won't have to be in the office everyday, but you'll have to be in on a regular basis". And "nobody is working from home 100% of the time". Another said WFH will be capped at 2-3 days depending on role". Several have said most front office jobs will return to 5 days in the office. I think this will become more prevalent across other industries as the summer goes on.

A key aspect of this trend is that employees will need to live close to work given the significant number of days in the office. The idea of working from my new home in VT (or fill in the blank) that is 3+ hours from the office will not be practical or the norm.

Question is, how many people bought places in VT (or fill in the blank) assuming they'd be fully WFH or close to fully WFH and now have to change plans?

 

[skiur]

From Wall Street ,while most firms are planning for some WFH the vast majority have a stated mandate to return to the office, with 2-3 days in the office the norm. Several have said to the effect "you won't have to be in the office everyday, but you'll have to be in on a regular basis". And "nobody is working from home 100% of the time". Another said WFH will be capped at 2-3 days depending on role". Several have said most front office jobs will return to 5 days in the office. I think this will become more prevalent across other industries as the summer goes on.

A key aspect of this trend is that employees will need to live close to work given the significant number of days in the office. The idea of working from my new home in VT (or fill in the blank) that is 3+ hours from the office will not be practical or the norm.

Question is, how many people bought places in VT (or fill in the blank) assuming they'd be fully WFH or close to fully WFH and now have to change plans?

Well honestly, if people did that they are idiots thinking they could wfh for the rest of their lives. We all know what happens when one assumes things

 

[kbroderick]

Well honestly, if people did that they are idiots thinking they could wfh for the rest of their lives. We all know what happens when one assumes things

Depending on the industry, it may also be that they can WFH for the rest of their careers, if they are willing to accept a different position (possibly with a different pay rate, since they're competing with places like Missouri). My bet is that some white collar workers will have enough demand for their services that they can be picky about location requirements. Others may not, or may prefer to be close to the office for a variety of reasons.

The big questions when it comes to the larger impacts of those trends, IMO, is (a) how many fall into each category, and (b) how many in the "office regularly" category don't feel a need to sell the remote places they bought.

I do think another factor will be schools--more remote school districts usually have better staff to student ratios, but that makes it harder to provide the same range of offerings. Some families will probably prefer the smaller schools, others may miss the offerings in bigger towns.

 

[2Planker]

We're soon to be "fully open", No more WFH for staff, admin, IT. The Party is over.

Vaccines required for all.
Weekly Surveillance testing still on for "Patient Facing" personnel - Not sure how long that's gonna last....

 

[cdskier]

I think there are going to be a lot of "disagreements" about this topic for a bit while the dust settles between people that want WFH to continue permanently vs those that want everyone back in the office. A lot depends on your specific role and type of company, but there are many areas that should be able to do just fine with a more flexible WFH/Hybrid arrangement. Companies would be wise to embrace this if at all possible as it will be a significant part of the future of work in many cases. Companies that fail to embrace this and push back too much are going to have more issues with turnover and attracting talent in the long run (there was an article on this topic in Bloomberg a few weeks ago).

Personally in my area (IT for a global company), there's not really a ton of value in going back to the office. Even pre-COVID I was only going into the office 3 days a week. And even then 95% of my meetings were already Zoom meetings. It was rare that any meetings in my area took place in actual conference rooms. In the US most of our IT people are based in our NJ, PA, or MA offices. It was pretty rare for any entire IT team to be in any single one of those locations (with the exception of teams that are focused very narrowly on specific sites like some lab or manufacturing IT teams). Then add in the fact that we also work and have meetings with a lot of global colleagues in Europe, Asia, and South America (or vendors that are located in their own company sites). So what's the point of me going to the office just to join a Zoom call?

Officially our offices will reopen in the fall to everyone. We had already started working on plans to shrink our office footprint in NJ prior to COVID anyway due to how many people were not coming into the office on a regular basis before this all started. So our official "you need to be in the office 2-3 days a week" policy seems to conflict a bit with the message being sent by our facilities/real estate teams when they keep wanting to consolidate and reduce our office footprint. It'll be interesting to see what actually happens in the fall once they're open.

Oh...and vaccines are "encouraged" but not required to go back to the office once they reopen.

 

[cdskier]

and there lies the difference. You CAN work very effectively from home, while most in healthcare can't.

Although I do wish our IT was on site for simple stuff that used to take 10 mins.

For a simple 8am Monday Printer Not Printing issue. Now it's
- "Create a Ticket".
- Wait around for IT to email back.
- Try IT Remote Access Fix.
- Order New Printer, hopefully w/ Next Day Delivery.
- Create Ticket #2 to have IT set up new Printer.

10-15 minutes before, or 1-2 days at best w/ WFH.
Sure will be nice to have them back

We've always had our "onsite" IT people physically onsite to some degree even at the height of the pandemic (especially at our R&D and manufacturing sites where we simply can't stop activities no matter what). Some of that stuff just can't be done remotely and I totally agree with you and get that. This is where companies shouldn't try to take a "one size fits all" approach though.

 

[Smellytele]

I think there are going to be a lot of "disagreements" about this topic for a bit while the dust settles between people that want WFH to continue permanently vs those that want everyone back in the office. A lot depends on your specific role and type of company, but there are many areas that should be able to do just fine with a more flexible WFH/Hybrid arrangement. Companies would be wise to embrace this if at all possible as it will be a significant part of the future of work in many cases. Companies that fail to embrace this and push back too much are going to have more issues with turnover and attracting talent in the long run (there was an article on this topic in Bloomberg a few weeks ago).

Personally in my area (IT for a global company), there's not really a ton of value in going back to the office. Even pre-COVID I was only going into the office 3 days a week. And even then 95% of my meetings were already Zoom meetings. It was rare that any meetings in my area took place in actual conference rooms. In the US most of our IT people are based in our NJ, PA, or MA offices. It was pretty rare for any entire IT team to be in any single one of those locations (with the exception of teams that are focused very narrowly on specific sites like some lab or manufacturing IT teams). Then add in the fact that we also work and have meetings with a lot of global colleagues in Europe, Asia, and South America (or vendors that are located in their own company sites). So what's the point of me going to the office just to join a Zoom call?

Officially our offices will reopen in the fall to everyone. We had already started working on plans to shrink our office footprint in NJ prior to COVID anyway due to how many people were not coming into the office on a regular basis before this all started. So our official "you need to be in the office 2-3 days a week" policy seems to conflict a bit with the message being sent by our facilities/real estate teams when they keep wanting to consolidate and reduce our office footprint. It'll be interesting to see what actually happens in the fall once they're open.

Oh...and vaccines are "encouraged" but not required to go back to the office once they reopen.

Well they could do open seating. No assigned seating so only 1/2 the seats would be needed.

 

[cdskier]

Well they could do open seating. No assigned seating so only 1/2 the seats would be needed.

Actually we did that already about a year (or was it 2 years?) before the pandemic started. We went from 4 buildings at our NJ site to 3 buildings when we implemented open space seating.

 

[Bosco DaSkia]

Right.... Get a grip ___________. You fill in the blank

Run a small business w/ 12-15 employees and that shit never has, and never will be tolerated.
Med., Dental, 4 weeks paid Vacation, 401K.
Those 2 morons are the only 2 who have ever left our practice and that's going back more than 30 years.
One of 'em works for my buddy now, No paid Vac, No 401K, No Med/Dental

typical douchbag response…

 

[2Planker]

typical douchbag response…

Right working for $17-20/hr w/ No beni's is way better

What they LOST annually
- $7,500 into their 401K
- $6,000 for Medical Ins.
- $750 Dental Ins
- $6,000 4 weeks paid Vacation

 

[kingslug]

Its certainly affected my line of work to a degree. But an office building is still just a big machine..and you can't maintain a machine from your house..so at least I have that going for me..Kind of nice having all those complaints coming in..but that will change..when they come back.

 

[dblskifanatic]

S the company my wife works for sold 4 of the 5 buildings they own in the Denver area since they will be going to a hotel concept where some employees will return 2-3 days per week and some others will be completely WFH such as my wife. The buildings they sold are being renovated into apartments.

The company I work for plans on making their final plans complete by August and September will be when they implement the new plan. Prior to Covid they were doing 1 day per week from home and now are considering 2-3 days WFH. We will see how long that lasts.