Cory Doctorow/Pluralistic: Return to office and dying on the job
RTO employee
Denise Prudhomme's bosses at Wells Fargo insisted that the in-person camaraderie of their offices warranted a mandatory return-to-office policy, but when she died at her desk in her Tempe, AZ office, no one noticed for four days.
That was in August. Now, Wells Fargo United has published a statement on her death, one that vibrates with anger at the callously selective surveillance that Wells Fargo inflicts on its workforce.
The union points out that Wells Fargo workers are subjected to continuous, fine-grained on-the-job surveillance from a variety of bossware tools that count their keystrokes and create tables of the distancess their mice cross each day.
Wells Fargo's message to its workforce is, 'You can't be trusted,' a policy that Wells Fargo doubled down on with its Return to Office mandate. Return to Office is often pitched as a chance to improve teamwork, communication, and human connection with your co-workers, and there's no arguing with the idea that spending some time in person with people can help improve working relationships (I attended a week-long, all-hands, staff retreat for EFF earlier this month and it was fantastic, primarily due to its in-person nature).
But our bosses don't want us back in the office because they enjoy our company, nor because they're so excited about having hired such a swell bunch of folks and can't wait to see how we all get along together. As John Quiggin writes, the biggest reason to force us back to the office is to get a bunch of us to quit.
PwC tells employees it will use location data to police "back-to-office" rule
RTO employee
PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) will start tracking where its employees in the United Kingdom work, in a bid to dial back its current work-from-home culture.
Staff at the UK arm of PwC, one of the world’s 'Big Four' accounting firms, were this week informed by management that the new policy would take effect on January 1.
A memo sent to the company’s 26,000 UK employees on Thursday and shared with CNN said the measure was being taken to formalize the company’s 'approach to working together in person.'
Employees were told they must spend at least three days a week – or 60% of their time – in the office or with clients. Previous guidelines required them to be in for between two and three days each week, but the memo suggests that was not universally adhered to.
Ordered back to the office, top tech talent left instead,study finds (Washington Post paywall)
RTO employee
Return-to-office mandates at some of the most powerful tech companies — Apple, Microsoft and SpaceX — were followed by a spike in departures among the most senior, tough-to-replace talent, according to a case study published last week by researchers at the University of Chicago and the University of Michigan. Also see this Hacker News thread for comments.
Return to Office 5 days at Pratt and Whitney
RTO employee
Reddit /r/Raytheon: I knew it was inevitable…was told by a higher up in my org the there will soon be a push at PW for all Hybrid workers to return on-site 5 days/week to force more in person collaboration ( zoom calls with people around the world…). I am aware they are currently rennovating the empty office buildings in East Hartford due to lack of actual work space in preparation… I was told the push will be in September 2024… Obviously this is not official yet; Anyone else have any details or hear anything related to this?
How is the Collins return to office going?
RTO employee
Reddit /r/cedarrapids: My boss said the company line of "collaboration" is 100% corporate bullshit. Sounds like the main reasons for this are there were some sort of tax benefit when people stayed home that have expired and that the way they calculate distribution of overhead services is based on floor usage by departments. Many departments have figured out that WFH is optimal and since the building footprint is much lower, they dont pay nearly as much in to overhead services. Therefore the overhead services are hurting badly.
How is it going from your perspective? I know my boss is fighting against it and so is his boss and his boss above him.
I wish there was some underground method to protest this return to the office bullshit as my office environment is absolutely soul crushing and WFH is so much better.
I see a lot of email traffic from management that seems passive aggressive about returning to the office and Im hearing that it is not going exactly smoothly as employees do not want to return to the office.
Your thoughts/experience?
Return-to-office mandates will be worse for federal employment than leaders realize
RTO employee
Unispace finds that nearly half (42 percent) of companies that mandated office returns witnessed a higher level of employee attrition than they had anticipated. In other words, they knew it would cause some attrition, but they weren’t ready for the serious problems that would result.
Perhaps they should have. According to the Greenhouse report, a staggering 76 percent of employees stand ready to jump ship if their companies decide to pull the plug on flexible work arrangements. Employees from historically underrepresented groups are 22 percent more likely to consider other options if flexibility goes out the window.
IBM tells managers to come to the office or leave their jobs
RTO employee
IBM has given managers an ultimatum: Come into the office or leave.
The technology firm is pushing for an end to remote work, telling US-based managers to immediately report in-person or exit their role, according to an internal January 16th memo from senior vice president John Granger.
Executives and managers will now be expected to be in-person at least three days a week, and remote workers living more than 50 miles from an office have until August to relocate closer. There will be some exceptions for employees with medical issues or military service.
CEOs Are Using Return To Office Mandates To Mask Poor Management
RTO employee
According to a recent research paper published by University of Pittsburgh, compelling evidence suggests that organizations are leveraging Return-To-Office mandates not to enhance firm value, but rather to reassert control and shift blame for poor performance onto employees. Contrary to the belief that RTO boosts company value, the analysis revealed that RTO mandates are more likely in firms with poor recent stock performance and have had no significant impacts on firm profitability or stock-returns. Moreover, a notable drop in employee job satisfaction was observed, further questioning the efficacy of these mandates.
Why return-to-office mandates fail
RTO employee
Mike Hopkins, the senior vice president of Prime Video and Amazon Studios, said at an internal meeting recently about Amazon’s mandate forcing employees to work in the office rather than from home: 'It’s working…. I don’t have data to back it up, but I know it’s better.'
Hopkins’ claim reveals what’s really behind back-to-office mandates: irrationality — specifically, favoring 'belief' over data.
Amazon's Silent Sacking
RTO employee
There has already been an increase in large scale events (LSE) throughout Amazon , but AWS is so big most customers don’t notice. This is a direct result of RTO and Amazon’s silent sacking of thousands of people.
On September 1st, 2023 I was told by my skip level manager and VP that my team and an adjacent team were being eliminated. They claimed we all did such good work that they wanted us to remain at Amazon. 'We still have a job, just not a role.'
I was skeptical of how it was communicated–or rather not communicated–by management and I asked if severance was an option. I was repeatedly told it would be once we’d exhausted other options.
They told us our number one priority was to find another job. Every role we found had significant downsides. Lower pay, lower title, RTO, or various other things.
It was clear they wanted us to take a different role we could quit later. My management wanted to retain the headcount, but couldn’t do layoffs.
What Is Coffee Badging, and Why Is It Mostly Men Doing It?
RTO employee
One workplace report has found that a whopping 58% of hybrid workers have “coffee badged” in the past — a term used for employees who show up at a physical office in order to make an appearance, but leave soon afterwards to work the rest of the day remotely.
The fight over return-to-office is getting dirty
RTO employee
It's reasonable to wonder why Amazon, a company that has data on hundreds of millions of people and their decisions, is struggling to come up with hard numbers to back up its dictatorial push back to the office. Perhaps the reason is that the data supporting Amazon and other companies' RTO policies is threadbare, relying mostly on a few studies that use sample sets of questionable usefulness to back up their claims that remote work is less productive.
But the weakness of the evidence won't stop bosses from making these RTO mandates. They indicate a failure of imagination on the part of management and a refusal to do the work necessary to create a positive company culture.
Bosses want people back in the office, but employees are finding a workaround—it’s called ‘coffee badging’
RTO employee
More than half, 58%, of hybrid workers admit to “coffee badging,” or the act of going into the office building for their morning coffee, earning an imaginary badge for it, and then going home to work for the remainder of the day.
‘Coffee Badging,’ New Coping Trend To Get Around In-Office Mandates
RTO employee
The “coffee badging” trend is a creative way that workers have found to get around return to office mandates to save time and money. Employees are showing up to the office for enough time to have a cup of coffee and earn an imaginary badge for it, then going home to do their work.
The Owl survey discovered why employees are resisting—people don’t want to spend time and money on frequent office visits, and many companies have more work to do to provide an attractive, productive and stress-free office environment that makes employees want to gather. 'People don’t want to spend time and money on frequent office pilgrimages if they’re just going to be sitting on the same video calls they’d be doing in the comfort of their own homes or on tasks that they feel less productive doing from the office,' says Frank Weishaupt, CEO of Owl Labs.
Why RTO mandates are layoffs in disguise, according to workplace experts: ‘Companies are daring employees to quit’
RTO employee
The return-to-office debate sees no end in sight as companies grapple with mandates and the employee backlash that follows.
While a whopping 90% of companies plan to implement return-to-office policies by the end of 2024, flexibility remains a top priority for employees — and the lack of it might push them to seek other opportunities.
However, that is exactly what some companies want, according to workplace experts that CNBC Make It spoke to.
The state of return-to-office policies: a post-Labor Day reset?
RTO employee
Last month, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told employees they were free to disagree with the company’s policy requiring them to be in the office at least three days a week. But, he added, if they don’t comply, their futures at Amazon might not be, um, bright. A few weeks prior, the company had sent emails to some employees letting them know their badge swipes indicated they were not coming in as often as required.
Meta, meanwhile, told employees that come September 5 those already assigned to an office must come in three days a week, and managers would track attendance, according to a report from Business Insider. Noncompliance could result in disciplinary action, including a lower performance rating or, if unaddressed, dismissal.
Amazon CEO tells employees to return to the office or their days may be numbered
RTO employee
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told employees to get on board with the company’s return-to-office plan or to consider employment elsewhere, the company confirmed to CNN, after a report by Insider highlighted Jassy’s remarks from a recent internal event.
Jassy’s message reflects Amazon’s continued pressure on US office staff to comply with a policy requiring them to report to a physical office at least three days a week.
Meta updates RTO policy with stricter mandate, saying workers may lose their jobs if they don't show up 3 days a week
RTO employee
Meta is committing to its return-to-office mandate, telling employees that they will be monitored by management to make sure they comply and that they may lose their jobs if they don't.
The company, formerly known as Facebook, on Thursday afternoon updated employees on its guidance for an RTO policy announced in June. Lori Goler, Meta's head of human resources, wrote in a post to Workplace, the company's internal forum, that all employees 'assigned to an office' would be required to work from that office or otherwise participate in in-person work at least three days a week. Employees already approved for fully remote work do not have to comply with the mandate.
'Accountability will be central to making this fair and effective,' Goler wrote.
Managers at Meta will be responsible for following up with workers on a monthly basis, making sure they are complying with the policy. Workers may be disciplined or even lose their jobs if they repeatedly fail to comply.
Even Zoom is making its staff return to the office
RTO employee
Zoom, the company that powered the remote work revolution during the pandemic, is telling its employees to come back to the office.
In a statement, Zoom said it’s now enforcing a 'structured hybrid approach', meaning that employees who live near an office 'need to be onsite two days a week' because it’s 'most effective' for the video-conferencing service.
Meta asks office workers to return to in-person work
RTO employee
Meta is the latest tech company to call its workers back to the office, more than three years after the COVID-19 pandemic first compelled many companies to adopt flexible work-from-home policies.
The internet giant — which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — has asked that employees currently assigned to an office return to in-person work three days a week starting September 5.
Meta employees who are designated as remote workers will be allowed to keep their remote status.
Return-to-office mandates won’t magically improve young employees’ career development
RTO employee
CEOs and other senior leaders very often want employees in the workplace for more days than employees who can do their jobs remotely would like.
Many leaders assert more in-person experiences can, among other things, provide better career development for the youngest and newest employees.
They have a point...up to a point.
Update from Andy Jassy on return to office plans at Amazon
RTO employee
These are just a few examples, but they’re important ones with respect to our overriding priority to deliver for customers and the business. And ultimately, they’ve led us to conclude that we should go back to being in the office together the majority of the time (at least three days per week). We made this decision at a s-team meeting earlier this week, and for a number of reasons (including the adjustments I know will be required for some of our employees), I wanted to share with you as early as I could even though we haven’t worked out all the execution details yet. Of course, as there were before the pandemic, there will still be certain roles (e.g. some of our salespeople, customer support, etc.) and exceptions to these expectations, but that will be a small minority. We plan to implement this change effective May 1.
Zoom will lay off 1,300 employees and CEO is taking a massive pay cut
RTO employee
Zoom on Tuesday said it will lay off about 1,300 employees, or approximately 15% of its staff, becoming the latest tech company to announce significant job cuts as a pandemic-fueled surge in demand for digital services wanes.
In a memo to employees, Zoom’s CEO Eric Yuan said the layoffs would impact every part of the organization. Yuan also said he and other executives would take a significant pay cut, after acknowledging he made 'mistakes' in how quickly the company grew during the pandemic.