My boss moved us back into the office at the beginning of the year.
It was no longer financially viable to keep all employees at home working remotely, as well as the concerns over privacy breaches for client personal information when it’s being handled on unsecure internet connections.
That’s sort of a tradeoff when you move employees out of a central location and into their individual living quarters, wherever they may be within a 100 mile radius of the office. Some people even moved back to their hometowns out of state, hoping that the switch to remote working would remain permanent. Unfortunately, those people were given the option to move back close to the original company headquarters, or they would have to look for work elsewhere. I know that most of the employees stayed, but we had to train a few new ones as well. It has been a tiny bit of an adjustment for me getting used to working at the office again. I loved having access to my fridge throughout my workdays, especially since I keep forgetting things at home after already leaving the house in my car. No matter what, I’ll either leave my coffee in the kitchen or forget to turn the air conditioner back up after having it low while I sleep at night. But now that I have a smart thermostat installed in my house, I can monitor my HVAC system throughout the day while I’m away at work. It doesn’t matter if I don’t get the heat wave warning until after I leave the house, I can still change the temperature whenever I have my phone with me.