WFH is a Mixed Bag

By Paul Natinsky

As Michigan prepares to enter the ninth month of the coronavirus pandemic, a resurgence of COVID-19 has extended work from home for professionals who have been housebound and Zoom-dependent since March.

A mid-November communication from Governor Gretchen Whitmer and the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) requires those who can work at home to continue to do so through the first week in December. As the virus spreads at its highest rate since the onset of the pandemic, there is no guarantee that stay-at-home requirements will end there.

“I can basically do everything I need to do at the office at home,” said Justin Hanna, an attorney with the Southfield law firm Jaffe, Raitt, Heuer and Weiss. Hanna has a printer, scanner, three-screen set-up, air pods and cell phone in his home office. The firm forwards his calls to his home office and has access to assistants and paralegals who work a limited in-office schedule. As a result, Hanna has visited the office once during the past few months, and then only to pick up some files.

Francesca Lousia stocked her office at the outset of the March COVID-19 lockdown. Lousia, who is an attorney with the Taubman Group, performed all of her duties from the company’s offices before the pandemic. She has an office in her house, but didn’t substantially outfit it until she began to work from home.

EFFICIENCY

Lousia commuted an hour one-way to Taubman’s offices prior to working at home. She would arrive at 8:30 or 9:00 a.m. and leave at 5:00 p.m. Now, she finds herself working straight through the day, skipping lunch and undistracted by water cooler conversations and other office distractions.

“In the office, you go in, you’re laser focused, doing your work, getting it done. And once you’re done, you’re on your way home,” says Hanna. “Working at home I try to be as efficient as possible with my work, but at the same time I find myself taking more, smaller breaks.”

Hanna also skips lunch, and with Zoom meetings replacing out-of-office work with clients and no colleagues close at hand, he too sees an increase in productivity.

CHANGES AT WORK

The Taubman Group owns, manages and/or leases 26 regional, super-regional and outlet shopping malls in the United States and Asia. It’s a very busy place as of late.

Lousia mostly works on compliance with the company’s tenants. “My position really changed to renegotiating our leases portfolio-wide,” she said.

Once the initial shutdown took place in March retailers began suffering losses. Even after they reopened, losses continued.

“Now, it’s really just come down to, ‘We need help with our rent for the closure period and possibly longer to deal with the losses we have sustained from these government shutdowns,’” explained Lousia. “The volume has become far more tremendous.”

For Hanna, the pace and volume of work depend on the nature of a client’s business. He said aircraft parts suppliers are not getting the volume of business they normally get from manufacturers like Boeing, resulting in fewer deals, fewer transactions and less legal work. However, construction companies are finding themselves busier than they were pre-pandemic. Hanna said they are “full steam ahead” pursuing new deals.

Hanna takes one or two Zoom calls a week and another few Zoom calls with the Chaldean Chamber of Commerce, Association for Corporate Growth and other professional groups in which he participates.

He said a more recent uptick in his side of the business is attributable to companies’ desire to close deals in 2020, ahead of anticipated corporate tax hikes in 2021 and beyond.

Overall, Jaffe has been able to keep its 250 employees busy during the pandemic. Hanna says any dip in revenue for this year is more than covered by the savings the firm gains in a remote work environment.

HOME, SWEET HOME

Hanna’s infant son, born in July, is the first baby for him and his wife. He enjoys being home and seeing the baby much more often than he would if were at the office all day.

“I’m grateful to have the opportunity to be home and be around. Any time I want to I come and play with him. It’s certainly a distraction. If he’s crying or if he’s irritable, sometimes it takes me away from what I’m focused on at work.”

Lousia says switching to a home office environment and eliminating the two hours a day she spent in the car has opened up time and provided flexibility in her busy schedule. Lousia, who has three children ages 8, 10 and 12, is more easily able to manage the crazy quilt of schoolwork, travel sports, showers and baths her children require.

Lousia says the return of family dinners is another bright spot in the pall of the pandemic. When she commuted two hours a day and helped manage her children’s activities, family dinners were hard to pull off. Now they are a regular occurrence.

“If there is on positive take away in all of this, it is just being able to spend quality time with my family and not having all of the obligations,” she said.

Still, the change from a separate office culture and home life is a challenge. “The lines are a lot more blurred now,” she says.

CAMARADERIE

Informal social and professional contact with colleagues is one of the features of work life that is easy to take for granted. Even when working at home opens up conveniences and efficiencies, those little moments at work in which professionals bond or seek casual advice and opinions from one another are more important than they might seem. In other cases, certain types of work functions are just better in person.

“Sometimes it’s nice to just pop into an office and ask them a few questions or advice on how they might handle something,” says Hanna. “Now, I’m picking up the phone, maybe they are available, maybe they are not available. I don’t know who’s doing what.”

He says one of the few things Zoom meetings and phone calls can’t replace is a few lawyers gathered in a room in front of a white board, mapping out a new corporate structure for a client—it just doesn’t work as well remotely.

Lousia said the social aspect of office life is very important. She said she has formed close relationships everywhere she has worked.

“The people I work with at Taubman are so awesome, they are such a fabulous team. Probably the hardest part about this is not being able to communicate face-to-face with them for months,” she said.

EMPLOYERS CAUTIOUS AND FLEXIBLE

“Taubman has been really, really great, because they have been so flexible from the beginning,” says Lousia. Their position is really, as long as schools aren’t completely open and you have all of these orders that are restricting activity, they have allowed employees to work from home.”

Taubman plans to retain a work-at-home policy for the near future, with periodic reassessments.

Jaffe runs a lean ship, says Hanna, so the firm has had few personnel cutbacks. He says Jaffe has been following state government guidelines and will continue to, but assesses pandemic policies on its own to help determine policy. The law firm will employ a work-at-home strategy until at least the end of March 2021, says Hanna. He likes the company’s approach because it allows him plan ahead for a few months rather than guessing from week to week, as was the case at the outset of the pandemic.

While the pandemic persists and it looks like it’s going to be a long winter—especially with outdoor activities unavailable—professionals are finding ways to be efficient at their jobs and enjoying reconnecting with their families.