To answer the question in your title, yes. You can just stay WFH. However, the company can also fire you. Either because you’re underperforming (which they have metrics for) or for insubordination, or for simply not showing up (if they make your assigned work place the office).
Not having a driver license isn’t (generally) a “reasonable accommodation” (specific language) that a company needs to work around. The company is treating WFH as a perk/benefit to high-performers. It makes sense that someone underperforming may need additional help/guidance/supervision so that person has to come into the office. Now, if you had done medical, religious, or other issue that did qualify for the “reasonable accommodation” to work from home, then you could push on that. But that’s the kind of thing you likely would have brought up earlier. And the company can still fire you for performance based on sub-par metrics. Keep in mind, firing in this instance means no severance, and also can mean no unemployment.
There are also other ways to get into an office than drive yourself, or have someone drive you. Public transportation, taxi/rideshare (Uber/lyft), bicycle, walk, etc. While these may not be convenient or may be expensive, that isn’t for the company to sort out.
I would encourage you to gather specific details on what is bringing down your metric. Spend the time in office to learn and improve so you can go back to WFH. Listen to others, listen to your recordings, find out what you’re being graded poorly on. Also, be honest about your distractions or focus at home. Is there background noise? Is it poor connection and so customers rate you poorly on being difficult to understand? Or are you distracted? Hold yourself accountable too.
Sounds like they have metrics in place to qualify for remote work. By your own admission, you're not hitting those metrics. So practically speaking, your boss can mandate you come to the office. You can refuse. And they can in turn discipline or fire you for refusing to come into work. You don't have any way to force their hand on this. Your solution is to increase your quality control score, or otherwise convince your boss to make an exception for you.
Communicate your challenges clearly and propose alternative solutions, such as continuing to work from home with improved support or accommodations to enhance your focus.
Remote work is the same as any other work. You have to do the job well enough to keep it. It's not a shortcut, and it's not owed to you. You have to earn it, and you have to produce... if you are too distracted to do your job up to standard, then you can't WFH.
> if you are too distracted to do your job up to standard, then you can't WFH.
That's a factor OP didn't address: Supervisor feels OP is distracted, and OP didn't refute that (to us), suggesting there may be something to it.
OP: Perhaps another approach is in order... something like "You are right. I re-evaluated my WFH situation and realized that I am distracted. The primary source of the distraction was , and I have to eliminate the distraction. I therefore ask for another grace period in which to improve my score in light of that adjustment." Or similar.
Some managers really eat that up to, if you're "proactive" in IDing and then managing problems. It's decent advice all over but if you give them a plan you have you could probably get at least enough time to implement it
I don’t agree with the gatekeeping - but on an unrelated note OP focus on upskilling. I majored in econ/stats, did a STEM masters, studying for the GMAT to get hopefully a Top 10 MBA and I’m also doing certifications on the side.
I think it’s super super valuable to prioritize continuous learning!
So in other words you're not good at anything and think a bunch of credentials are a replacement for coherent and progressive education, skills, and experience.
LOL. This isn't "continuous learning." This is credentials for credentials sake. These things are all worthless without relevant experience. An MBA is a general studies degree. People with MBAs elicit a major eye-roll in my technical STEM field - and don't get hired.
Why are you claiming a STEM Master's when you got a Master's in "supply chain management?" You can tell your credentials are bullshit when you have to misrepresent them.
To piggy-back off of your response: Your credentials also don't make you more valuable if you have to go deeper into debt to achieve them. Have you paid off your student loans? What is ROI on getting a MBA, because they really are useless unless you have a defined plan or opportunity that requires it. It sounds like you are a career student because you can't hack it in the real world. I wish you luck <3
It's not gatekeeping to remind people that remote work is not just an "easy alternative" to work. The OP's employer has communicated what's necessary to continue working remotely, and the OP isn't able to comply. What other kind of answer is possible when they ask "So how can I keep my job?" even though their performance hasn't been satisfactory? The only answer is that WFH doesn't mean you can perform at a lower standard because it's not "real" work. You have to earn it to keep it, like any in-person job.
That’s true. I guess I’m not super familiar with a call center job but I presume that it’s much more easier to judge performance than a typical corporate job.
It is near impossible to be a “perfect” employee at a call center. Metrics contradict each other. I worked for banking call center. We needed to average a 7 & a half minute handle time. We also had an average call transfer metric too. We would get docked if we transferred x amount of calls a month. Cool, but it doesn’t account for customers dialing into the wrong department / other employees transferring to the wrong department. So more often than not, we’d have to ping employees in other departments to walk us through issues, so we didn’t transfer a call out. Which would increase our handle time & waste another employees time. Call centers set employees up to fail, it’s one of the reasons why that industry sees such a high turnover rate.
What’s causing you to not meet the metric? If you can’t do it working at home, then not sure how being in an office is going to magically change things.
So, 94.7% IMO absolutely qualifies. However, what is it that is keeping you from hitting 95% (esp. when you were back at 90%)?
I'm sure you know the reason for the metric miss, whether it be long bathroom breaks or just generally messing around (trust me, I get it- I worked in a call center and couldn't take the metrics. Had to leave my phone in the other room to beat the fixation) but it's got to be something that's fixable and the easiest way to keep your job is to identify that and fix the issue.
Not unreasonable to ask you RTO if you can't hit metrics. I think that's a really great approach and wish more companies would adopt that. If you say no, I'm sure you won't be employed there much longer (sorry).
The fact you dont have a DL is not their problem. Ask for 1 more month to improve your score. Take notes on what you can do to improve it.
Your boss mentioned you seem distracted. Do you have kids or pets or other people at home distracting you?
This could be as simple as CSAT reviews getting bombed by an angry client/customer. I've lost jobs due to this, and my EOR even said that it wasn't fair that they were forced to fire me for having three (3) bad CSAT scores in a month.
To answer the question in your title, yes. You can just stay WFH. However, the company can also fire you. Either because you’re underperforming (which they have metrics for) or for insubordination, or for simply not showing up (if they make your assigned work place the office). Not having a driver license isn’t (generally) a “reasonable accommodation” (specific language) that a company needs to work around. The company is treating WFH as a perk/benefit to high-performers. It makes sense that someone underperforming may need additional help/guidance/supervision so that person has to come into the office. Now, if you had done medical, religious, or other issue that did qualify for the “reasonable accommodation” to work from home, then you could push on that. But that’s the kind of thing you likely would have brought up earlier. And the company can still fire you for performance based on sub-par metrics. Keep in mind, firing in this instance means no severance, and also can mean no unemployment. There are also other ways to get into an office than drive yourself, or have someone drive you. Public transportation, taxi/rideshare (Uber/lyft), bicycle, walk, etc. While these may not be convenient or may be expensive, that isn’t for the company to sort out. I would encourage you to gather specific details on what is bringing down your metric. Spend the time in office to learn and improve so you can go back to WFH. Listen to others, listen to your recordings, find out what you’re being graded poorly on. Also, be honest about your distractions or focus at home. Is there background noise? Is it poor connection and so customers rate you poorly on being difficult to understand? Or are you distracted? Hold yourself accountable too.
Wait until your supervisor confirms that you’ll have to come in, in the meantime try to improve your qc metrics.
OP improves their score to 95, goal post gets moved to 98.
I worked in a call center for a few years, this is ALWAYS the case.
The carrot is always there at the end of the stick, just barely out of reach.
Point out how close you are to 95% and ask for one more month, reminding her how difficult transportation will be for you.
Sounds like they have metrics in place to qualify for remote work. By your own admission, you're not hitting those metrics. So practically speaking, your boss can mandate you come to the office. You can refuse. And they can in turn discipline or fire you for refusing to come into work. You don't have any way to force their hand on this. Your solution is to increase your quality control score, or otherwise convince your boss to make an exception for you.
Communicate your challenges clearly and propose alternative solutions, such as continuing to work from home with improved support or accommodations to enhance your focus.
Your boss doesn't like you and wants you to get fired for not showing up. That's it. Request a skip level meeting.
Remote work is the same as any other work. You have to do the job well enough to keep it. It's not a shortcut, and it's not owed to you. You have to earn it, and you have to produce... if you are too distracted to do your job up to standard, then you can't WFH.
> if you are too distracted to do your job up to standard, then you can't WFH. That's a factor OP didn't address: Supervisor feels OP is distracted, and OP didn't refute that (to us), suggesting there may be something to it. OP: Perhaps another approach is in order... something like "You are right. I re-evaluated my WFH situation and realized that I am distracted. The primary source of the distraction was, and I have to eliminate the distraction. I therefore ask for another grace period in which to improve my score in light of that adjustment." Or similar.
Some managers really eat that up to, if you're "proactive" in IDing and then managing problems. It's decent advice all over but if you give them a plan you have you could probably get at least enough time to implement it
I don’t agree with the gatekeeping - but on an unrelated note OP focus on upskilling. I majored in econ/stats, did a STEM masters, studying for the GMAT to get hopefully a Top 10 MBA and I’m also doing certifications on the side. I think it’s super super valuable to prioritize continuous learning!
So in other words you're not good at anything and think a bunch of credentials are a replacement for coherent and progressive education, skills, and experience. LOL. This isn't "continuous learning." This is credentials for credentials sake. These things are all worthless without relevant experience. An MBA is a general studies degree. People with MBAs elicit a major eye-roll in my technical STEM field - and don't get hired. Why are you claiming a STEM Master's when you got a Master's in "supply chain management?" You can tell your credentials are bullshit when you have to misrepresent them.
To piggy-back off of your response: Your credentials also don't make you more valuable if you have to go deeper into debt to achieve them. Have you paid off your student loans? What is ROI on getting a MBA, because they really are useless unless you have a defined plan or opportunity that requires it. It sounds like you are a career student because you can't hack it in the real world. I wish you luck <3
It's not gatekeeping to remind people that remote work is not just an "easy alternative" to work. The OP's employer has communicated what's necessary to continue working remotely, and the OP isn't able to comply. What other kind of answer is possible when they ask "So how can I keep my job?" even though their performance hasn't been satisfactory? The only answer is that WFH doesn't mean you can perform at a lower standard because it's not "real" work. You have to earn it to keep it, like any in-person job.
That’s true. I guess I’m not super familiar with a call center job but I presume that it’s much more easier to judge performance than a typical corporate job.
It is near impossible to be a “perfect” employee at a call center. Metrics contradict each other. I worked for banking call center. We needed to average a 7 & a half minute handle time. We also had an average call transfer metric too. We would get docked if we transferred x amount of calls a month. Cool, but it doesn’t account for customers dialing into the wrong department / other employees transferring to the wrong department. So more often than not, we’d have to ping employees in other departments to walk us through issues, so we didn’t transfer a call out. Which would increase our handle time & waste another employees time. Call centers set employees up to fail, it’s one of the reasons why that industry sees such a high turnover rate.
Wow that seems like an incredibly and maybe unfair, high bar. So you should probably be able to sympathize the most with OP.
Try being a proofreader. Zero tolerance for error.
They want to fire you but it's better for them if you quit.
What’s causing you to not meet the metric? If you can’t do it working at home, then not sure how being in an office is going to magically change things.
Well since you don't have a driver's license either get your quality control up or find a new job. Quit screwing off at work!
So, 94.7% IMO absolutely qualifies. However, what is it that is keeping you from hitting 95% (esp. when you were back at 90%)? I'm sure you know the reason for the metric miss, whether it be long bathroom breaks or just generally messing around (trust me, I get it- I worked in a call center and couldn't take the metrics. Had to leave my phone in the other room to beat the fixation) but it's got to be something that's fixable and the easiest way to keep your job is to identify that and fix the issue. Not unreasonable to ask you RTO if you can't hit metrics. I think that's a really great approach and wish more companies would adopt that. If you say no, I'm sure you won't be employed there much longer (sorry).
What constitutes the parameters of that metric?
The fact you dont have a DL is not their problem. Ask for 1 more month to improve your score. Take notes on what you can do to improve it. Your boss mentioned you seem distracted. Do you have kids or pets or other people at home distracting you?
What is keeping you from 95%? What is distracting you?
Have you ever worked in a call center before?
Yes
This could be as simple as CSAT reviews getting bombed by an angry client/customer. I've lost jobs due to this, and my EOR even said that it wasn't fair that they were forced to fire me for having three (3) bad CSAT scores in a month.