New employee (Gen Z} doesn’t want to meet in person

[outofofficeon]

I took on a graduate for a new position, she’d been job hunting for a few years, I felt good about giving her a hand up into a great career.
She lives about an hour away so works remotely. She bright and polite and reliable and a good member of the team.

The problem I have is that she doesn’t want to visit the office in person or meet her colleagues in person, I offered to put her up in a nice hotel and pay travel costs so that she could spend a few days with us in person. She declined. My latest issue is that she doesn’t put her camera on when we are communicating at work as part of daily work or chats. I understand she might not be very confident but I think that you have to get out of the house / your comfort zone if you want a career.

im not sure what to do- any advice oh wise ladies.

I presume she is in her probationary period, and even if not, she's got fuck all legal protections until she's been there for 2 years. Put her on weekly performance reviews or whatever you want to call them, and make it clear to her that there are ettiquette expectations that are non-negotiable, and camera on is one of them. Tell her directly that you are disappointed that she isn't willing to come to the office once to meet the team, and that her job is at risk if you don't see significant effort to integrate and play an active part in the team, that meeting and getting to know them is part of that, and that this is NOT possible faceless.

Agree with most of what has been said. I would speak to her 1-2-1 and find out if she has any particular issues beyond being a bit shy having not been working for a while. Explain you have a policy of cameras on and why you feel it's important for both her and the team then ensure you enforce it consistently. If she needs coaching, maybe start by having a few 121s with camera on to get her used to it.
As for working remotely, you're in a weak position as her contract is remote, but I would try to get through to her that she is disadvantaging herself by never going in, both personally and professionally.
You won't be helping her if you allow her to be socially and professionally isolated. A 1 hr commute is absolutely standard in London and I really don't think it needs an overnight - in fact, if she's anxious being away from home then the suggestion of a hotel stay may be making it worse!

Cameras are because remote has replaced meeting in person. The number of meetings I have driven hours to, because we could not actually effectively get it all done over the telephone, all of the time, back in the dark ages. If she wants to not commute 2 hours a day, she can stick her camera on in meetings. God knows we've all had enough practice at this by now.

Have you asked her why she is refusing OP? She sounds like me, social anxiety makes it virtually impossible for me to have video calls or attend the office in person. My company has made reasonable adjustments by allowing me to WFH all the time.

If cameras on is the general way of working in your organisation, then she should be putting her camera on. Seems unprofessional and rude not to.

She’s been there less than two years, you can just sack her.

Blimey, that’s compassionate

Has she given a reason for not putting the camera on? I don't for regular informal ones, but have to for important ones. They are a bit of a joke, I'm dealing with unbelievable gen z diva demands recently.

But the challenges you are eferring to here, I assume, are because it would be a logistical nightmare to do a 20 way telephone call and not able to see who wants to speak etc. Teams or zoom meetings successfully overcome that. People can use reactions to raise hands and indicate they want to contribute and do this verbally. Again, I don't understand the added value having of having a camera on accomplishes that doing the same thing without a camera, doesn't. Especially when screens are so tiny when multiple people are meeting that you can't see individual expression or faces anyway.

But the challenges you are eferring to here, I assume, are because it would be a logistical nightmare to do a 20 way telephone call and not able to see who wants to speak etc. Teams or zoom meetings successfully overcome that. People can use reactions to raise hands and indicate they want to contribute and do this verbally. Again, I don't understand the added value having of having a camera on accomplishes that doing the same thing without a camera, doesn't. Especially when screens are so tiny when multiple people are meeting that you can't see individual expression or faces anyway.

Managing humans also occasionally involves telling people to do something that they'd rather not, for the greater good of the team.

I'm going to be the odd one out here (and no, I'm not gen z) but I think if she's good at her job and does the work she's contracted and paid for, who on earth cares if she doesn't participate in some kind of team 'feeling' or 'vibes'. I'm quite socially awkward and if I could have a job where I could work from home and never have to deal with any office chit chat or pointless catch ups I would be over the moon. It just seems needlessly judgemental of her personality. Is she doing her job well? If not, sack her. If she is, lay off obsessing about her not being friendly. It's her job, not her social life. She is paid to work, she does it, that's it.

That post makes me so happy that I work remotely and avoid the 'politics of the office'.
I work in a completely remote organisation. We don't have an office to come to. We're not even all in the same country or even the same continent. We can train people perfectly well.
We do have to have our videos on for calls though.

for lots of people in our workplace, the internet at home won't allow for a call with 10+ people with cameras on, plus audio and screensharing. If she's living in a HMO, or even just a house where there is someone else working from home, the internet bandwidth may not allow for her to have her camera on and participate properly in the meeting. [And this is often the case in the office too, so it's not a case of people should just get better internet at home]
There's also lots of other reasons not to have camera on - background noise/ happenings being disruptive, generally don't want people seeing their living space,

If she's not keen on attending the office, and she's contracted home working, and you've not put arrangements into the contract or job description to mandate office visits, there's not much you can do there, but again, lots of (perfectly reasonable) reasons she may not be able to or want to - caregiving responsibilities, difficult commute, disability, feeling guilty about the company spending money. Also, if you've just offered, or asked, you may need to be slightly more insistent on it, if it's actually that important to you and the company 'We need you to come into the office because XYZ, lets have a look at some dates that would work for you over the next month'.
The world is quite different to how it was even 10/15 years ago in terms of employer and employee expectations, and 'grabbing the opportunity' may actually mean something different to her - proper focus on work, maximum output, high productivity, which she may feel are all better at home.

Again, what about the rest of the team? What about the needs of the manager/employer?

As with my example up thread, actually meeting as a team and discovering that the person who was slightly difficult online was actually a really cool person, and making that connection, resulted in us working together much more positively. Other colleagues had felt the same about her, so the team and our organisation benefited from her being asked to come down for the day. And who knows, maybe she ultimately benefited too.

Small teams, nowhere near 20 people. I was one of the ones telling the northern office that no, they could not have me working there every single week, they'd have to manage with once a month, but I wouldn't have liked to have done the job without those monthly face to face days.

We also met with our agencies supplying various services face to face, from time to time. I haven't really thought about specifics until now, but now that I do, I think any conversations involving more than 2 people certainly used to be much more effective face to face. We DID have teleconference facilities which we did use, just FYI.

I managed the Australian part of my department's workload for a while, from the UK. Now that was a fucking nightmare and absolutely needed boots on the ground! They just ran away with EXPENSIVE ideas in the year that I was maternity cover for the role. The person I was cover for used to visit once every 3 months and when she returned from Mat Leave moved out there. I strongly suspect that no amount of software or cameras would have made any difference!

I suppose it depends what you do but I don't really mind what my colleagues are like. It's all part of the Linkedin kind of mindset where you have to pretend to be 'passionate' about road resurfacing or data compliance.

You can't hire someone on a remote working contract without a clause about occasional office visits and then be annoyed at them not going into the office. Would it be good for her? Sure, and if you were her friend or mentor you could tell her that. But you can't mandate it as the boss.

You can ask her to put her camera on, that's different. If she has any additional needs that impact her ability to do that, like being neurodivergent, she can raise them at that point and there can be adjustments (e.g. camera on only for 1-1s and small meetings, or just when talking).

I have been to a few trainings lately which stipulate cameras on unless they are showing a clip or on a break in which case you can turn them off. Seems like a decent rule to me.

Yes but years ago phoning would probably have involved phoning OUT of the office, not within it..And if within it, then you knew you could probably pop round to a different part of the building to see someone if you needed to. So I dont really think your analogy works. And even if someone is a bit aloof within the office, they are still there using their ears and eyes and picking up on what is going on.

It's not remotely like that.

But again, if she is contributing to the meeting but just doesn't want the camera on, what difference does it make?
Years ago, we used to have to have conference calls on the telephone. So you sat at your desk and dialled into a group call. You didn't see anyone.
I can't understand why it is so important when it isn't impacting work.

Or you could try being a decent human being. Ironically enough, people with this kind of attitude often don't play very well with others, and so their colleagues end up wishing they were working remotely.

This to me screams social anxiety. If you haven't already, you might just want to be specific in your concerns and ask her why she's so averse to meeting in person or appearing on camera.

It's very much an organisational culture. Our norm is camera off, being on camera is rare and usually requested well in advance of the meeting. Meeting rooms have cameras but the online participants are displaying their profile picture only. We generally work our online meetings around screen shared powerpoints or collaboration document editing.

Camera on for me is a pain, as I have a laptop which is connected via hub to a triple monitor set up and there is no space on my desktop to place and open my laptop w/camera. We are not issued with webcams or monitors with webcams and rely on the inbuilt laptop one. My laptop lives folded under my desk when I am working on my screens. Most of my colleagues are in similar position, hence it's just not our organisation's culture. I would honestly feel weird doing it, having gotten so used to working on speech only.