Company adds 'focus hours' to remote work day, railroading schedule and forcing employees to work after hours

What happens when a policy that was supposed to help actually hurts?

This happens more often than you would think. Sometimes we get ahead of ourselves and implement something before we realize the full ramifications of it. The real-world effects of something are usually pretty different from its theoretical causes. This is especially true in the workplace. Sometimes, higher-ups make decisions without regard for how they will trickle down the line. They're too removed from the consequences of their decisions, so lots gets lost in translation. That's what happened here, where a policy that was supposed to help workers ended up hurting them. In remote work situations, it's best to embrace the sense of flexibility. Putting too many restrictions on it just ends up hurting them in the long run.

Remote workers thrive on flexibility. It's best to accept that it's different from an office job and should therefore be treated differently. Employers can't control their workers the way they can when they report to an office every day. If you're a boss and you want that level of control, then you should probably offer up an in-person workspace. There should also be a level of trust that doesn't get broken when you're in these situations. Hopefully, your employees are trustworthy. If they're not, then you have a bigger issue at play. That's what happened here, when a group of employees was trying to navigate a new policy while also honoring their previous work.

via Corinne Kutz

_{Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.}
My company added a "focus hours" policy and somehow made remote work worse.

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Commenters gave their opinions and takes.

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Having time and space for “deep work” is a necessary thing at most jobs. It's hard to focus on anything when you're constantly interrupted by meetings and messages. Being pinged throughout the day means that you're always on alert, making it more difficult to sink your teeth into the necessary tasks of the day. So the idea of a “focus break” sounded like a positive one. The problem was that not everyone was respecting it. And it actually ended up making the schedule more difficult to manage. Keep reading to see what happened in this story and see what workers wanted to do about it.
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