Why return-to-office mandates fail::The question over whether to allow employees to work from home has been settled. Here’s the new normal.
You must log in or register to comment.
Let me solve this apparently unsolvable mystery for them. You spent the last 40 years making offices soul crushing hellscapes that are grounds for psychological warfare while helping contribute to increasing commutes. People had Stockholm syndrome for a bit then they got shown a better way and they’d rather not give up a large part of their day to be tormented in a place they they don’t need to be to do their job.
So when you try to force it the large majority are fighting back and you’re surprised? No ping pong, pool, mandatory fun, free drinks don’t offset the bullshit that is modern office design in-fact a lot of us would rather you keep all those give us a little padding in the ol paycheck and I can get my own soda and ping pong table
Besides: Fuck modern office design. Even in my company in Austria, other departments often have cushy 2-3 employee offices, plenty of space, really nice.
What do software developers get? Massive rooms with 13 people inside and no seperators for “collaboration”. But while you’re in online meeting A and your colleague is in online meeting B you can’t even focus on your own thoughts.
Overcrowding is the biggest issue I have with working at office. Too many people sharing a space. It feels claustrophobic and lack privacy
Not having access to natural light is what really drives me insane. During the winter, it’s possible to spend all your daylight hours at work, so you basically alternate between harsh artificial light and darkness.
Mandatory fun was always my least favorite god damn part. It isn’t fun if you have to force me to have fun.
My company took a different approach. It wasn’t mandatory but if a group of people wanted to get together and do something once a week, They would pay for dinner for however many people showed up and they had free soft drinks and beer. We’ve had board games, d&d, crafting, we even had a bar night where company would pick up the first drink.
I honestly miss all that terribly, but not more than is offset by not having to commute 30 min each way every day.
LOL I’ve always said that beer waffle Tuesday and a Foosball table aren’t worth working with entitled idiots.
People will choose a workplace in which they have greater control, over one with nicer accommodations.
But if people don’t go back to the office, commercial real estate will crash, they’ll convert it all into affordable housing, and my curb appeal will lose its sweet, sweet premium value.
Let’s not pretend there isn’t a micromanaging control issue involved in this, but the core is all about real estate.
The “they’ll convert it all into affordable housing” part I wouldn’t be so sure about it. 😅 Some might just abandoned it if no body wants it.
Also, I really want malls to be turned into mixed use facilities. Like all the small stores are apartments and the big anchoring spaces on the ends of the mall would be grocery stores and shopping. Imagine you forgot to pick up milk after work so you just walk to the other end of the mall and buy it. I love that idea.
It would be perfect for assisted living facilities or care home situations where accessibility is key
The old folks are already there every morning walking around, just set them up with some recliners by the water fountain and Wii tennis.
And gyms!
This. I work in commercial real estate and it’s kind of hard to turn into house. It’s cheaper for them to just knock it down and start over.
The issue is the electricity and plumbing. In a commercial building these tend to run up and down the middle or just one side of the building. Apartments need to equally have access to utilities so they’d had to do a ton of construction to move plumbing and wiring into the correct places.
Yeah, just look at how many abandoned buildings there are in most big cities. Seems like everything just expands outwards with new buildings rather than demolishing/converting old ones.
They’ve converted a hotel here in Calgary to condos and a work friend owns one.
It’s not classified as affordable housing but the conversion is possible and should be done en masse.
Are you telling me I could afford a Center City apartment if we don’t return to the office? Sign me up
I don’t know if the affordable part will be particularly accurate.
How come no one wants to talk about all the small business closing and people losing their jobs. This is a real tangible impact that shouldn’t be dismissed. I live in a big city and we’re all feeling the impact of people not returning to office work. Lack of revenue (small business, real estate, retail) is going to play a huge role in city budgets in the coming years. I work from home so I understand the appeal. Still, I don’t know how we, the city, come out of this.
I’m in a position to have knowledge about multiple bargaining committees working on their first union contracts. The demand to RTO is literally entirely the ego of CEOs and other executives that believe their opinion is more valuable than research. They also know that employees will never accept “because we say so”, so they cling to flimsy or highly biased data as evidence, without ever showing their sources or methods.
Another aspect that is likely overlooked: they’re counting on people to quit. It’s an opportunity to have a self-selecting layoff without massive payouts or running into the WARN act. Apple has made this more than apparent by mandating RTO at a location, and then relocating that office to Texas. They still have other labor laws to deal with, but they don’t care about talent retention.
The issue with the self-selecting layoffs is that it’s usually the best talent that leaves. Not that they care, as it won’t negatively impact this quarter’s numbers. But funny/sad to see them all confused a year later when number go down.
Have them come to office or fire them and loose maybe 50% of my company (code) knowledge while no new hires know what to do and the remaining coworkers are not trained fully in the task?
Easy choice.
I should become a CEO if I can think much beyond the horizon.
You’d be a terrible CEO because you would conserve resources during slumps to retain capacity for the future
This looks bad this year and you don’t have any reason to believe that your market will pick back up, so you would get fired and the new guy would look amazing pulling the company out of the slump.
This was such a big /s I felt like it wouldnt need an actual /s
My prior employer did an unforseen and sudden about face on wfh after embracing it fully. Guess who wasn’t the least bit surprised to hear a couple of months later that several old coworkers got WARNed…guess enough of us didn’t quit to get their financials where they wanted them.
because nobody wants to return to the office.
there. mystery solved, Sherlock.
EDIT: WRT the article: because the reasons given are always bullshit unsupported by fact.
It doesn’t help that the people mandating return to office are working from home when they demand it.
Previously our office was 2/3 WFH/office hybrid, which everyone interpreted as “2 days from home regardless of how long week was.” They recently put their foot down and said it’s actually 3 days in the office no matter how long the week is…but also all managers have to be in the office 5 days.
So my personal experience contradicts your claim. Do you have any evidence to back it up?
Every single all hands I’ve been in since return to work was a thing. ;)
I can’t make any sense of this. If your argument is that it sometimes happens, I would be surprised if it were untrue. But your claim implied that it’s common, rather than just your personal experience.
Working from home has its pros and cons. Fortunately, in my experience, the pros are all mine and the cons are all someone else’s. That kind of colours my judgement.
You, too, do the morning meetings on the shitter?
I know it’s a joke but I could barely join a meeting in my underwear without the paranoia of clicking the video, let alone without them
Happened with someone’s audio once, for some reason the sound of him pissing and sighing in satisfaction wasn’t getting filtered out. I just sat there wondering why nobody was muting him yet couldn’t bring myself to do it because of how funny and awkward it was.
Wasn’t there some city official somewhere (Jermany?) who had a wank during a meeting with camera on?
We don’t have the data, says the company that tracks their employees and customers relentlessly.
The data doesn’t say what we want it to so we’re ignoring it.
It has become a fake discussion already.
It is not the question anymore whether work at home is better or work at the office. It is not the question whether you go back to the place where you have worked before.
It is big bosses fabricating excuses for laying off people.
How? They have closed your old office long ago. Now they tell you that another place in a different state is “your” office. Now go and “return” to there. Or they have hired you for WfH with no plans to ever work in an office, and now they tell you to “return” to somewhere.
And then you can watch them moaning and whining how so many of their employees people just do not want to “return”, and therefore they need stronger policies…
I quit my job because my boss demanded RTO. They asked me to come back after they rescinded the RTO.
Did you?
No, I already had a new job that was founded on remote.
They asked me to come back
on their knees? LOL
To be fair many companies who said you have to return to work did this as they knew they had to do lay offs. It is cheaper if people just leave and you don’t have to pay a severance pay.
And more often than not, the people that left were the higher performing employees. Penny-wise, pound-foolish.
Sounds like a problem for 4 quarters from now, today we give out executive bonuses and cash out on the stock price increase!
Please don’t think you have to be fair over that kind of behaviour
Im not gonna click the link. I am gonna live under the assumption that, because that thumbnail is next to the headline, that chick is to blame.
Fuck you old lady. Let us work from home.
If people can talk without being tracked they might unionize.
There’s such a disconnect between the discussion on line about this and my experience in the real world.
I work in tech and it’s probably at least partially situational, but everyone in my office that I talk to about this agrees that working in office is more productive. Everyone wants the flexibility to work from home, and my company is still hybrid, but it’s universally agreed that the office is better. Granted I know some people left after we went hybrid from full wfh, and I’m sure some of those who left would be in disagreement.
But for instance, I’m a senior engineer and the juniors often ask for help from me multiple times during the day…if we’re both in the office. If one or both of us is home, I rarely hear from them. I don’t see how this isn’t a clear indication of lost productivity and learning from them.
But when you see this discussion online, the people arguing that WFH is just as good or better drown out the other voices.
Don’t get me wrong, I understand that commuting sucks and for the employees who is better, and I hope it stays that way. But I struggle to believe that from a business productivity perspective it’s better to be fully remote.
So the people who stayed at your company after WFH was taken away are the ones that think the office is better.
Definitely an engineer.
I explicitly pointed that out. I also gave a good reason why. But my experience in talking about this also extends beyond just people I work with.
But I would also like to point out that at least 80% of our team stayed on after hybrid was announced.
I dunno, you really come across as an engineer who doesn’t like to use Zoom or Teams. Yes it can be easy to point at a piece of paper in front of someone, but there’s nothing to stop you from getting on a call a couple of times a day for a few minutes each.
I was 100% WFH for about a decade before the pandemic. I’m perfectly fine with both teams and zoom. When I finally got my previous company on board for webex (the company was split in 2 small locations, and then me WFH), and then eventually a move to teams, it was great. I like in person meetings better, for sure, but I’ve long been very comfortable using video meetings.
And while I agree there is nothing actually stopping people from jumping on zoom, my experience is that there is a lot more psychological friction because it doesn’t happen nearly as much as it does when we are in the same physical space. And this doesn’t even touch on all the times I’m talking to someone else about something, and another person overhears me and either has a similar question or something to add. And it almost reads as if you are saying I should schedule meetings with these people to meet a couple of times a day, but that would be even more painful.
People on my team have a question, I start up Zoom and we chat for 5 minutes. I have a question for my boss that’s too big for Slack? Well we’ll just Zoom for a few minutes.
You definitely don’t want an ad hoc ticketing system, but nothing wrong with ad hoc meetings, especially if you’re trying to capture the random encounters that occur in the office.
But this is my point. . .when I’m in the office they’ll just turn around and ask me, on average, close to 3 questions a day. If it averages below 3 questions per week when one or both of us is WFH, I wouldn’t be surprised.
I’m not saying that there is no way to make it happen, but that it simply doesn’t happen. (Although I will say the ad hoc jump-in is something that can’t happen over video chat. . .unless everyone is always in the room, which is even worse than working in an office lol) I can’t explain why, but the barrier to initiating a conversation is much higher when it’s not just “turn around and ask” and instead “send a message.”
I agree that in office can be more productive. Otherside of the coin, many places aren’t a single monolithic office or even campus. These giant tech companies forcing RTO results in people driving into an office to get the same experience as at home. (Aka on zoom calls all day)
