Dear Madeleine, I am a junior partner in a law firm and the expectation is that I work. A lot. Many of the partners work virtually in the summer, but I usually go into the office because it is easier for me to get things done there. My in-laws bought a house at the shore…
Dear Madeleine, I work for a global company that had a very flexible work-from-home policy before Covid happened. I have been managing hybrid teams for more than 20 years and have never had trouble with performance. We got a new CEO last fall, and he has a very strong belief (despite all the research that…
Dear Madeleine, I manage a regional business unit for a global supply chain company. During the Covid lockdown everyone went remote, and the organization got rid of the office we had. I like working remotely. And it works well for my team for all the reasons people state: no one misses the commute, there’s much…
Dear Madeleine, I love my job and I am good at it. When the COVID lockdown was settling in for a then-unknown period of time and everyone in my company was working from home, my partner and I took advantage of the crisis, rented out our condo in the city, and moved to our dream…
Dear Madeleine, I manage the US Eastern region for a global manufacturing company. Our new CEO, who is in Europe, is very frustrated at our US employees’ resistance to return to the office. He has decreed that everyone who wants to keep their job should be in the office five days a week, and that…
Dear Madeleine, In the middle of the pandemic, I took a job that I love and am good at. At the time, my boss made it very clear that the job was classified as “remote” and the deal was that I would never need to work in the office. This wasn’t just because everyone was…
Dear Madeleine, My team is losing it. I have eleven employees, all of whom are used to coming into the office daily with the occasional WFH day for doctor appointments, big deliveries, that kind of thing. When we all were told to WFH a few weeks ago, I thought getting everyone set up with the…
Dear Madeleine, The COVID-19 pandemic has been such a disruption over the past couple of weeks. At work, all travel has been put on an indefinite hold, all training classes and in-person meetings have been cancelled, and the entire workforce has been asked to work from home. Working from home sounds like a dream to…