More joys of management

I received an email this morning with the dreaded subject line "COVID-19 positive." 

My role as a consultant manager means that it is my responsibility to manage the team and the people. Even though the office is in California, I haven't been on site since March of 2020. There are no current plans to have consultants travel to the office due to the latest flavor of coronavirus circulating around.

I provided the information from the county, which requires isolation for five days (testing positive or experiencing symptoms, whichever is earlier, is Day 0). If the employee feels well enough, he/she can work remotely. Otherwise, he/she must use sick leave to cover the missed time. If there is a negative test on day 6, the employee can return to work in the office. 

The employees had been working 100% remotely until the fall of 2021 when they slowly started bringing them back to the office. The county doesn't allow 100% remote work, so this hybrid structure is based on arbitrary rules and not business need. After all, they were doing just fine since March of 2020. It makes it much more difficult to apply all the rules when you have Schedule A and Schedule B for who is in the office and at home on which days. 
organizations which forbid remote work with inexplicable reason are revolting
2022-01-15 03:16:28
Wow. I get why some orgs are resistant to it, some jobs can't be remote and they feel some sensitivity around that. But I think there have to be ways to be able to balance it out for folks and managers don't think outside the box. 
2022-01-15 20:17:03