Illustration by Michael Burmesch
Working desk with covid virus
When COVID-19 first hit Wisconsin in March 2020, Oyvind Wistrom and his colleagues at the Linder & Marsack law firm were optimistic enough to think they could have employees back in the office by Labor Day.
That projected return date quickly turned into Memorial Day 2021, then Labor Day 2021, then the first day of the following year. Now two months into 2022, many Linder & Marsack lawyers are still working from home even as staff employees keep a schedule that has them coming in three days a week.
“We still don’t have a firm date for when everybody will have to start coming in again,” Wistrom said. “We’re hoping it’s going to be sometime in 2022. But we don’t think it will be any time before Memorial Day.”
Like so many companies, Linder & Marsack has seen its plans for an early return knocked off kilter by the arrival of the Omicron variant. The resulting surge in COVID-19 cases has prompted companies throughout Milwaukee and other parts of Wisconsin to once again put off requirements for in-office work. Even with the case count now in decline, large numbers of employers remain reluctant to call for a full-scale return to working in person. (By Thursday, Feb. 3, Wisconsin's seven-day case average stood at 4,679 as of Thursday, down from 18,857 on Jan. 19.)
Hybrid Schedule
We Energies, which provides power throughout much of southeast Wisconsin, had initially planned for office employees to start returning earlier this year. Now the goal is to have the transition start sometime around March 1, said Brendan Conway, a spokesman for the utility. After that date, employees will probably work some sort of hybrid schedule that has them in the office only on certain days. And these plans remain subject to change should infection numbers start to rise again.
Wistrom said the situation is not ideal for Linder & Marsack, a specialist in labor and employment law. From the beginning of the pandemic, it was apparent that a few staff employees would still have to be venturing into the office to collect mail and complete paperwork. Lawyers at the firm meanwhile moved to meeting with clients on Zoom and similar video-chat services. Some have continued to do so even as the relaxation of social-distancing restrictions have allowed others to return to the office.
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Wistrom said he does worry there is something lost when lawyers aren’t meeting face-to-face—at least on occasion—with clients. And then there are those casual chats with colleagues that can lead to new insights into, and possibly solutions of, vexing legal problems.
“It used to be if I was on a deadline with some new legal issue, I’d wander down the hall and talk to people and bounce ideas off them,” Wistrom said. “For whatever reason, it’s tougher to do that when you have to pick up the phone first.”
Drawbacks to Working Remote
Linder & Marsack is not the only business that has encountered serious drawbacks to working from home. At Duffek Construction in Waukesha, company officials recognized immediately that undertaking large building projects would be impossible through remote work. Fortunately for them, an executive order issued by Gov. Tony Evers early in the pandemic ensured construction could keep operating more or less as usual while many other industries were under lockdown.
Even with that exception, Mike Duffek, president of Duffek Construction, said working from home really wasn’t going to get the job done. The company had its offices reopened by July 4, 2020, and was requiring workers to return by the beginning of the following year.
Duffek said there was no doubt that something was missing when staff employees were trying to work remotely.
“For our size of company, I don’t see how we could do a good job and not be in person,” Duffek said. “You have to be able to get out and touch and feel and see what you are building and be in communication each and every day.”
As for vaccinations, Duffek encourages his staff to get their shots but of course has no right to require that they do. On the few occasions employees have tested positive, they’ve been required to work from home for the mandatory quarantine period.
Duffek said the system seems to be working well and he sees little reason to change it.
“At this point, I’m of the mindset that this is something that’s going to be here to stay,” he said. “And we are going to have to manage and work around it at the jobsite and do at the same office.”
Wistrom likewise doesn’t foresee a complete return to remote working, barring some catastrophic rise in COVID cases. He looks forward to the day when he and most if not all of his colleagues will be back at their desks, within a short stroll of each other whenever they need to confer or collaborate.
Of course, he realizes many people have probably gotten used to some of the conveniences of working from home. The next difficulty he’s likely to be faced with is finding a way to make the transition back to the office not too disagreeable.
“One argument against returning will most likely be that the work is getting done,” Wistrom said. “We haven’t seen a dip in productivity. So there might be a little bit of resistance.”
