At Home Forever: Automakers Consider New Ways of Working

If the last few months have taught us anything, it’s that you can keep people isolated in their homes without any negative consequences whatsoever.Sure, we’ve seen articles from scientific journals like The Lancet warning that similar experiments run on a much smaller scale resulted in psychological stress and disorder, including low mood, insomnia, stress, anxiety, anger, general irritability, emotional exhaustion, paranoia, drug abuse, depression and post-traumatic stress symptoms, but where’s the evidence of that happening this time?Don’t answer that.Employers the world over are already seeing the benefits of remote work and have begun to consider how to make it a long-term proposition. In addition to protecting companies against any new COVID-19 outbreaks, stay-at-home orders mean paying for less office space and utilities. Automakers are starting to think this is a pretty sweet deal — especially with productivity not having taken much of a hit — and are now considering whether to extend at-home employment indefinitely. Mercedes-Benz USA has already informed employees in Atlanta to work remotely for the remainder of the year. That’s almost 900 people working from home until at least 2021. “Working remotely was the exception — for the foreseeable future, it will become the norm,” MB-USA CEO Nicholas Speeks told Automotive News in May.But Benz is far from the only manufacturer exploring the possibilities of what can be done from beyond the cubicle. This is a broad trend that’s hardly limited to the automotive sector. Ford says it wants to take its employees’ temperature (not literally, it’s already doing that) on the concept. Last week, the Blue Oval announced it was cooking up a survey for U.S. staff about where they’d like to work after September. Their options will be home, office, or a combination platter of both — the latter of which we’re inclined to believe will be the most popular.Curious about the concept, AN compiled interviews from the last few months in which manufacturers addressed updated business models that include working from home. It also asked Katee Van Horn, CEO of VH Included Consulting and Coaching and former HR manager, if these changes would endure.“I think we will not be returning to the way things were,” she said, adding that the technologies necessary for remote work have now reached a point where it appears sustainable.Obviously, that doesn’t pertain to line workers who have to drag themselves to the factory floor everyday (seems unfair). But office jobs can be done almost anywhere without any major upset — at least that’s the theory. Unfortunately, it still doesn’t sound like a basket of roses for the community at large… and seems perfectly designed to upend the economy. Van Horn suggested there would be major implications in terms of compensation, real estate values, and quality of life if the trend takes hold.“I’m sure there will be good and bad things about it, but it’s similar to the electronic revolution, where you have this mini computer that you now carry around in your pocket that you can access anything that you want anytime,” she said. “I think there are going to be some major shifts from a financial perspective, and that’s going to be interesting.”From Automotive News:Such a dramatic shift in the hidebound world of office work could bring with it myriad effects to the way large companies, including automakers, manage day-to-day operations: their hiring practices, staffing levels, company culture and even their needs for commercial real estate.“Work-from-home is something that we had tested and tried on a very small basis” pre-COVID-19, said Bob Carter, head of sales for Toyota Motor North America and a member of the automaker’s top management team on the continent. “I’ll admit that maybe my management was a little bit old school, where I was a little reluctant,” he said. Carter was concerned that “in a work-from-home environment in operations, we’re going to lose a lot of this efficiency that we’re famous for. But I can tell you proudly that our people have really stepped up.”Toyota said that productivity actually increased in some corners of the company. That in itself should be enough to revise the system so some people can just keep working from home. It’s also telling that a traditionalist organization like Toyota is even considering making these kinds of changes, as we’d have figured it’d be the last to embrace something so outside-the-box.On a person-to-person basis, this may be just the ticket for helping businesses save money while keeping folks from bringing their bad cough into the workplace. In fact, studies show people working from home tend to be cheaper to employ and spend more time at their desk. But there seem to be widespread issues with doing it on an international level — especially with stressors being exacerbated by the pandemic. Having large groups of people working from home would be fine if the rest of the world was left broadly the same, and that isn’t the case for large portions of the planet. Many economists and mental health experts fear societal pressures combined with at-home work will lead to accelerated burnout in the months ahead.At least you won’t have to endure that morning commute.[Image: ErsinTekkol/Shutterstock]