Originally Posted by SSlow

I get the benefits of in-person contact for business transactions, no argument here. However it is completely asinine to think that business travel will return to 2019 levels at any point within the next decade.

Originally Posted by SSlow

Companies and employees are evolving and figuring out how to survive in the current climate. I have posted about this before and usually someone (almost always employed by the big 3) interjects and states their case about how business travel will recover "because it's just not the same as meeting in-person." While it is true to an extent for some facets, there are clearly others that have fully adjusted to working remotely and won't be making a return to the office environment...ever.

Originally Posted by Anson Harris

Your perspective is valid, but one thing to keep in mind is how things change over time. When no one has any choice but to work at home, that's different than the future when people will once again have the option to work in person.

Right now in the middle of a pandemic, people are concerned for their jobs and doing their very best to remain productive remotely. No one wants to be perceived as the unproductive, expendable employee. Fast forward to when regular office work is again normal, and there will be complications with some remote workers. Not everyone is a model employee, and there will be a noticeable difference between those employees who get there at 8am, are visibly working throughout the day, and those who you never know where they are and what they are doing. Right now, when pretty much every one is working remotely, it all seems the same.

A huge part of business is won by the "sales call," even if you're not literally trying to get someone to fork over money and buy something. In a head to head competition, the in-person visit will win almost every time over the team that tries to close the deal via MS Teams. But when we all can't travel and are playing on the same field, remote work seems like it's good enough (and it is, when we're all doing it).

Edit: I had a guy come thorough my neighborhood door-to-door today (wearing a mask), pitching a Memorial Day weekend sale for his company's home service. Apparently a pandemic wasn't enough to make them switch to a phone/email campaign instead.

Originally Posted by rickair7777

Over-exaggeration IMO.

Biz travel will be down because the economy will be down. It will recover with the economy. There might be a tiny fraction which is gone for good but business TRAVEL is not the same issue as working remotely...




Remote workers will likely see a boost after all of this, it was trending there anyway, and there were some jobs which were suitable for telework which were still in the office just because of inertia. Some jobs are conducive to that, using modern IT, but many are not and require inter-personal interaction, at least part-time. Hybrid model would work for some jobs, a couple days at home to focus on nug-work, the rest in the office to synch up with the team.

But that doesn't affect business TRAVEL much..."business travel" in our context does not include people's daily commutes. It includes these functions:
- Sales
- Deal-making
- Troubleshooting
- Supervision/Site visits
- Conferences
- Retreats/team-building

None of those are conducive to Zoom. The first three are absolutely vital. Routine supervisory visits can be cut as a cost-saving measure, but ultimately they have to resume... there was a reason for that in the first place, balls that are ignored won't stay in the air forever. The last two are discretionary, but again there's a reason they do that kind of stuff and it has to be done in person (the human aspect really is important).

Originally Posted by geosync

I've worked in aerospace manufacturing on the floor as a technician which isn't possible working from home obviously. Now I work in aviation insurance and we're all working from home and haven't skipped a beat. There will be a huge HR problem coming down the pike here. The crap employees who f&+k off working from home will be the first ones to resist going back to the office. The good employees will rightfully say "I can do the same job at home and in fact i'm more productive. Plus, I'm not going to risk getting COVID on the train if I don't have to". HRs won't be able to let the good employees work from home and make the screw offs come to the office every day. Screw offs know how to play the victim card all too well. I'm not sure how they're going to handle that.

Not saying this affects business travel since those are usually the driven employees, mostly speaking to the WFH scene playing out here.

Originally Posted by OpMidClimax

my one employer has already taken care of this. We signed an IT policy at the start of this. All computer actions are logged by a fancy new software. Efficiency reports are supplied to management. Policy already developed and several employees already disciplined.

Whether the at the office or away, problem children will always be problem children.

Originally Posted by rickair7777

In some jobs, almost all low-end, keyboard strokes can be correlated to efficiency. But that's far from true for most higher-end jobs, where professional knowledge, judgement, and relationships are key. Real jobs are actually more complex than people seem to think. And in many cases the best measure of productivity is whether the boss likes you...

Originally Posted by bradthepilot

This. When I managed a few teams of software engineers, the ones that achieved the highest productivity (as in either new feature implementation or addressing defects) tended to do with with fewer lines of code than the rest of the team. The people with the lowest productivity tended to have more "thrashing about" while achieving less. IT seems to easily confuse effort with productivity, since they generally only have tools that measure the former and not the latter.