Lindsay Tondee, Senior Manager in Quality Assurance at a global pharmaceutical company, joins us to talk about whether it’s a good or a bad thing that companies are thinking about having their workforce continue to work from home indefinitely. I originally thought this would be a great thing because we’ll have fewer cars on the road, less traffic and pollution, office buildings won’t be needed and people gain hours of their life back because they’re not spending it commuting in their cars.
Lindsay explains what is missed when you work from home and the benefits of a blended model where people work only partly from home. She talks about the issues surrounding building relationships at work that help people get things done, and how the fun activities of her office have been transformed into safe-distance fun. She also talks about how much more challenging it becomes if two people are working from home in the same small house.
We don’t come up with all the answers but I found it to be fascinating to throw these ideas around with someone who is currently in the middle of figuring this out for herself and her employees.
And one more thing, Lindsay Tondee is a frequent attendee of the live NosillaCast – known as “Lindsay (the daughter)”. If you want to chat with her, the best way is through the live chat on Sunday nights at 5pm Pacific time podfeet.com/live and you can follow her on Twitter at @idahomonkees.
This was great and so very interesting to hear the similarities and differences between Lindsay’s and my experience. I have been working from home almost full time for about 3 years prior to the Pandemic. I was only going in one or maybe two days a week. A concern for my health because of my weakened immune system had my managers ask me to work from home about 10 days before they closed the office and sent everyone home. Now almost a year later we are just now starting to formulate a plan to return and what that will look like. I would love to compare notes with Lindsay and see what we can learn from each other. I manage a team that is international which has it’s own unique challenges. Great episode and thanks Lindsay and Allison.