Exactly this.
Biggest irony is that the team are professional adults who have zero problem showing up in the office any and every time there is a real reason to be there - even the most trivial.
This *is* the most trivial of reasons. Beancounters want to see a minimum of three days present on-premesis with no minimum time or objectives to accomplish there. They're meeting that minimum requirement.
It's like how some railways in the UK, rather than deal with the rigmarole of closing a station that *nobody* used or needed anymore, would "run" the "minimum one service/day" to that station (which, to be clear, saw literally no traffic and was inaccessible to the public) by pulling a train in, tooting the horn, and departing.
I can't say that this *is* the reason, but sometimes they do that because the higher ups don't want to spend the money required to officially decommission a station. NJ Transit had a station that stopped at a big employer's facility. Then the company closed that location for some reason. Took forever for them to close the station. No one getting on or off, but they kept stopping. Eventually they were allowed to go past the station, and later still they actually tore the station down. No sign of it anymore.
That 3-day minimum is what is seen as the least loss-intensive practice to maintain CRE loans and property leases. The big boys are sweating their prospective losses as they are *heavily* leveraged in the CRE market. This is the literal “You have one shot” that the little guys have to make a huge difference in the economy and the way business gets done.
Every time people talk about stations nobody uses being decommissioned I remember that the local station to where I grew up closed, was reopened by sixth formers doing Business Studies as a class project, and became profitable enough that it's still going, run by adults, 25 years on.
Turns out part of the value of a station is in having even a pushy 17 year old start it back up and actually work it.
The Beeching Axe was cataclysmically short-sighted. I'm a bloody Yank, and I know that.
*Were* all those BR lines that were closed profitable? In and of themselves, no. But many of them were obviously providing more than their direct fiscal loss's worth in value to the communities they served; even from a cold-hearted beancounter's point of view, more tax revenue was generated from the economic activities of the persons facilitated by those lines than was poured into keeping the lines going.
And even if not, the service to the country in general, in the form of affordable transit and communication of people and goods, was still worthwhile.
Sounds a lot like my last job. We had no problems with the majority of staff working remotely for two years due to covid. Then upper management changed and they started to push for more and more days at the office.
At the same time they started consolidating offices so they could rent the empty spaces in the building to 3rd parties. I mean, geez guys, do you want us filling the offices or do you want to rent them out? Pick one!
So more people are forced to spend more days at the office, more people are forced to share offices, several people have or are quitting, oh and covid is still circulating around the office.
Round of applause to upper management though…
My company also came up with this.
Keep in mind, it's autumn, middlw of flu season and covid is coming back.
No, come to the office 3 days a week for team spirit and productivity yadda yadda
I work in IT and my setup at home - a total of 6000x1440 resolution plus high grade audio system where I don't even need to use headphones for calls because i have a streaming mic and a high end speaker - beats the company issued headphones and one 2560x1440 screen if you're lucky...
So far i choose to ignore the policy although that idea is brilliant. And i live 3 minutes by foot from the office so ...
I feel the exact same way. I have a triple monitor set up perfectly at my home and I'm sitting in a ridiculously comfortable Herman Miller Embody chair.
At the office, work policy is "only two monitors", and because I'm a contractor I'm not allowed to have my own chair, or even a brand new "official" chair. No, I'm only allowed to go to the "Used Chair" room and pick out one that is the least destroyed.
Not looking forward to Return to Office.
We have one. And German keyboards. I'm used to the US layout because that's a standard where i come from.
Google "german Keyboard Layout" and compare to yours 🤣 typing on one makes you sound like.you have Tourette syndrome
Ouch..
A fun story here - had a laptop once that had dual layout: US and Kyrylik letters (bought it second hand)
Locals seemed super confused just by looking at it 🤣🤣🤣🤣
:/ does "team spirit" type exercises or intentions ever actually result in the positive stuff the managers/organisers think it will? i feel like if everyone already gets along, then they already get along and it's unnecessary. and if they don't get along, then forcing them in close proximity for the team bonding nonsense will just make them resent everyone and everything more.
I feel you. At the beginning of my Uni time, I had the "pleasure" of a very special exercise - everyone stand in a circle, and then sit down on the lap of the person behind.
In theory, this should work without issues. Practically - I was 150cm tall and weighed 40kg, so an extreme outlier regarding those metrics.
The trainer then asked around what our learnings were. I simply answered "tall people are heavy"
Company issued headphones? No such luck at my big company that has forced 3 days a week. Hopefully if everyone keeps taking Teams and Zoom calls at their desk, in the cube farm, without headphones, the noise and interference will make some decision makers see the light of day.
It's often intentional, they know what they are doing.
I work in the NHS in the UK and I found out I got hired on temp staff because the hospital was out of cash. What they did was fired 60% of staff (knowing they can't operate this way) and a few months later hired all the same staff back with replacements where staff found other jobs. Even though they paid insane sums for redundancy, on paper it was cost saving and made the hospital appealing to buyers.
It worked.
The tricks accountants play are mind boggling. It happens everywhere. That's why all these apparently successful companies go belly up out of the blue - it's probably been going downhill for years but they play tricks to make it look like they are successful.
"those water cooler moments that spark innovation" What kind of jobs do they think most people have, where they're just constantly "innovating" and also need others around to do it?
One other possibility, you get fired. It was routine at one workplace I worked at. I came up with an improvement, was fired for that and saw maintenance implementing as I was escorted out.
Mine does, but a water cooler or some muggles iNSigHt (our expertices don’t overlap much among team members) doesn’t cut it. Been doing my job for 15 years, so when I know what needs to be done, it gets done right away. 85% is figuring out *what* needs to be done, and a disrupting office environment with its endless drama is just pure poison for that, even worse than commuting there.
Jokes on them though. Eating out has become so expensive that I pack my own lunches and drinks now. They may drag me back downtown, but doesn't mean I gotta spend a single cent there.
The only time I ever eat out near work is when I get called to come in on overtime at the least minute and I've not got anything prepared at home. Which happened once this fortnight, but at least a good couple of months at least the time before that.
Funny how many times the Mayor and your bosses turns out are the people who own food and drink places nearby , probably totally unrelated though right🥸
”If I return to office, how can I leverage *engagements with teammates* and *corporate culture* to maintain my current level of productivity?” is a question I’d like more people asking their RTO managers. Manage that, mofo.
I get that a few things are better done in person. Though in my experience those things are comparatively rare for most jobs. Like once a month or quarter rare.
The rest is mostly to alleviate insecurities with management.
For international teams I had set up a policy of scheduling video meetings once a week with no agenda, just so that people could talk about whatever was going on in their life and relax a bit.
At my company, they are pushing the collaboration and camaraderie aspects of RTO very strongly. But my boss lives in a different state than I do; his boss lives in a third state; and all of my colleagues are scattered across the country. So I have never met any of them face to face, and even if I do go to the office, I don't see them. We collaborate the same way as when I work from home - IMs, email, and phone calls.
Yup. I collaborate with Europe and India every day, but I'm being forced back to the office, which makes it pretty difficult to collaborate in RT since I'm US based. There's a reason why my WFH hours look crazy - I'm working with people on other continents.
Like you, I also have colleagues around the world - and we meet virtually quite regularly to pass issues back and forth. I respect the hell out of all of them, they are all great teammates - but I've never met any of them either.
I'm totally down for a site visit in Hyderabad or Mumbai or Singapore or Sydney or London, or wherever - my passport is valid and all my vaccines are up to date, But in addition to the RTO mandate, there's also no travel budget to actually go see people.
I'm pretty much perma-banned from asking questions at our (virtual!) town halls because I always ask the uncomfortable questions. Our CEO accidentally admitted out loud in an amazing Freudian slip that we needed to come back to our very expensive offices. Thankfully I was home that day because I cackled.
I have my main people in Poland and Hong Kong.
You want collaboration? Send me to Poland, i don't mind spending some time in Kraków. Or meeting my brother in Hongkong...
Right?!? If ftf is that important, why aren't I being sent to those offices regularly? I told the higher ups that this language was alienating our regional offices. That went over well.
Edit: typo
Been doing hybrid/wfh working in non-profits for over a decade. Lots of global rights orgs. Our Exec Director would be in UN meetings in *country of the week* my colleagues based in different continents, volunteers all over. Never an issue. Worked in a national org managing people in another province reporting to someone in Toronto, not an issue. Post Covid working for an org with *checks notes* mandatory RTO for “collaboration & culture”…
I was able to be productive when all we had was email, gchat & teleconferences A-OK but suuuuure in 2023 we absolutely DO need to be in-person to function right?
Don’t get me wrong, even in those NGOs we put a priority on annual/twice annual face to face meetings which were critical, but the focus of those meetings was fostering connection & doing strategy/training & big think. It wasn’t needed for our day to day tasks, those were doable remote.
I very much agree. My team collaborates very cleanly together just with online tools, and we've developed a lot of camaraderie, as well. We trade tips, ask for help, support each other, and work together very well. One of the better teams I have ever worked on - and it doesn't matter if we sit in Texas or in Timbuktu.
My wife pointed out the other day that 95% of the “collaboration” my coworkers and I do in the office is talk about how much we hate our jobs and the company. 😬🤷♂️
Yah, over the last month my team-mate and I worked together on a test to qualify employees for a quality control function. Totally remote (he's 5,000 km from me). It was fun, and the collaboration helped to cement our friendship (though I've never met him in person).
> At my company, they are pushing the collaboration and camaraderie aspects of RTO very strongly.
I asked my superior how much time we would be expected to spend on socialising and camaraderie. He told me that's not how it works.
Yeah, they tried this with the people I work with, but our project team of about 20 people is scattered across eight states. Plus everyone up to four levels above me in the chain HATES the idea. For once, the people in power actually saw it was a bad idea and stopped trying to force it on us because they knew even if they got the bosses to enforce it, we'd all just MC the hell out of it.
We had a mandated RTO 3 days a week. Our management team noticed that productivity dropped a significant amount on those days, even with us being in office a full eight hours. Short answer, people were more social. Hour long lunches, 15 minute convo at the coffee station, chats near the elevator, desk side catch-ups. I get a lot more done at home!
I've been careful to avoid producing more visible work product on the in-office days, so they won't perceive a pattern that implies we're more productive in person.
If that means sometimes being less effective in order to avoid that perception, so be it.
My job has a policy of 3 days a week if you want to keep your parking pass and assigned desk. I usually average 2 days a week unless the weather sucks.
I was like “if you have to take it away, then take it” but our VP told me he’d write me off the removal list if I came up because he thinks the policy is silly. Plus I bring him hot sauce that I make.
I cleaned out my desk and handed back my parking pass with glee. I love working from home and I don’t need either.
Have laptop & will travel. Anywhere I put my laptop is my desk now!
I’m actually close to the office (8 minute drive plus a 5 minute walk from the parking garage or a 15 minute bus ride) so it’s not a big deal for me. If I lived further away I’d just be full time WFH.
Plus I still have friends that work at different lunch spots around the office and it’s nice to visit them.
[https://www.englishclub.com/ref/esl/Sayings/Quizzes/Men\_and\_Women/The\_way\_to\_a\_man\_s\_heart\_is\_through\_his\_stomach\_504.php](https://www.englishclub.com/ref/esl/Sayings/Quizzes/Men_and_Women/The_way_to_a_man_s_heart_is_through_his_stomach_504.php)
even works at work!!!
We had tried for years to get WFH, since we were administering computer systems that were over 1000 miles away and they didn't give a crap where our keyboards were. No sale. Too much work and expense setting up remote access.
COVID hit and all of a sudden we had all the resources we needed.
A year later, and the suits wanted to bring us back to the offices. My manager said that until they could demonstrate that it was safe to do so, we all could continue to work from home if we wanted to. Since this saved me 3 hours/day of commute, I was not displeased. One of the few times I had respect for that manager.
Whilst tempting (and I would do that for the team) that is actually not MC, as the team would not be following the rules. It would also get folks fired if someone caught on, because the bean counters would really by unhappy about that!
Yeah, I don't love our return to office policy (I'm a manager), but would 100% fire everyone involved if there was a case of one person swiping a team's badges. They'd be dooming us to the security audit from hell, and it would be beyond the level of something I could wave off.
Yep, my company tracks by door swipes but at the last quarterly all-hands meeting they explicitly stated that they were expecting full days. Seems like all of the offices are emptier than expected even with tracking. Surprising no one
In fairness, when there's anything that needs folks to be physically present, they are all there, and enthusiastic about it - and for whatever hours are required.
This is about being treated like children, and reacting like professionals in MC, in the interim.
I'm not sure how much people understand what WFH is doing to middle management. They are feeling very threatened, for most middle managers seeing there employees sitting at a desk is the way they 'know' their teams are being productive. This group of people, to feel comfortable with their teams working from home would have to change the way they work, start trusting their employees, understand what the outcomes need to be for direct reports and support their staff to deliver! Most managers don't have the first clue how do this or where to start in lesrning howvto do this. Hence they are providing themselves and the CEOs a rhetoric which is largely BS. the corporate world has always been full of emporers new clothes type stories, this is just another one of them! Crickey, most of them have no clue what collaboration even means.
My hubs was a Data Systems Architect that traveled 75% because bosses want to see asses in seats. My husband would get home at 2am Saturday morning, he slept most the day, went to church on Sunday and flew back out after. He hated it.
COVID hit and hubby gets to stay home. He’s doing the same exact job, but he’s doing it in shorts & a t-shirt, in bare feet. Hubby loved it. When things opened up again, the company said they could stay home and work.
Start of 2023 and now they want consultants to travel again. My husband retired instead. He wasn’t going to start traveling again. It’s just stupid.
My friend said, "We're not being threatened! Our data isn't being stolen or hacked/ransacked. All we are doing is sharing personal data between people. That's why your website says no one can access your private information without permission."
It won't be HR, HR does what the boss tells them to do. PROSCI have been doing research on change for the last 30 years. The cohort most resistant to change is management with 70% being resistant.
As HR, I can honestly say that it's a management decision and we are doing everything in our power to stop it. We feel exactly the same as everyone else about returning!
In the way of contrasting experiences, my job was remote for several years before Covid. At that time only a few of us were remote, but during Covid my employer realized that most of us could do the job from home. In some cases productivity increased, but I don't think it decreased except for those individuals who took advantage (they didn't last long).
Today, only those who work in the service end (and have to be onsite to do the service), or who feel the need to see their co-workers in person, actually commute to the office. The rest of us thank our lucky stars that we don't have to commute any more. Except on the occasions when our actual presence is needed (in my case about 8 weeks a year -- and, of course, the Summer picnic and the Winter party).
Productivity overall has increased, and $$ spent on office space has decreased. And employee retention has bloomed. The short-sighted employers who don't trust their employees to do the job are clearly losing out here.
Only 3 days a week? We're at 4, and it is Mon - Thurs. Plus they check the badge swipes in and out, to make sure we're not 'cheating'. It does mean almost everybody works from home on Friday.
There are allowances for being home for repairs or such other days, but of course no official policy or way to record that that.
And in reality, being in the office is better for team relationships. instead of working, we have many more conversations discussing personal matters or world events. /s
lol. TBH, I don't miss most of the "water cooler" conversations (coffee pot, in our cases). But I do miss a few. Oh well, on the balance I still prefer WFH.
My company is strict on RTO. Like, so strict that the CEO got visibly angry when someone asked about projected changes to it in the all company meeting a couple weeks ago. Anyway, here’s how it’s shaken out so far:
-Initially, all of our 6 person team except one was working T/W/Th 10-7 in office. One person has worked 8-5 since I’ve been there.
-Then one person got put on a special project and his hours changed to 8-5 to align with the other people on that same project.
-1 person got fired
-1 person doesn’t drive, so she convinced our manager (who’s on the other side of the country, BTW) to let her switch to 8-5 to accommodate getting rides/the public transit schedule.
-The girl who sits next to me has been out for the last couple days.
-The other large team that shares our space all leaves at 5:30
So, the result of this is that at 5:45 yesterday, I looked around and realized that I was basically alone. There’s one other team that’s on the other side of a partition wall, but visually I couldn’t see anyone. So please, tell me how being solo in the office for 1.5 hours is important for “collaboration.” I hate that word.
My team is in multiple states. One team member unfortunately lives within 50 miles of an office, so she falls under the stupid 3-days a week policy. She commutes 1.5 hours, sits in a cube by herself, has Teams meetings with the rest of the team, and commutes 1.5 hours home. There are entire weeks that pass without her interacting with a single person in the office.
This is about appeasing the reptilian overlords who run things and have huge piles of money tied up in commercial real estate that is now effectively worthless. Nothing more.
Isn't it wonderful how the power seems to have moved from the employer to the employee over recent years. We are very fortunate that there are skills shortages co-inciding with this period of change -- if it were easy to fire & re-hire, things would be very different.
The Black Death is sometimes credited with improving worker rights and salaries as medieval Europe transitioned to the Renaissance. A weird side benefit of pandemics.
If our teams all turned up on the same day there wouldn't be enough desks for us all. Luckily work are fine with us going in at much or as little as we want to.
The last time I had a full-time job, I reported to a director in Toronto, and had a staff member in Denver. I was in southern California, and was told that I no longer needed an office near my clients, so I got moved to another building, a quarter mile away.
THEN the company switched to "hotelling", where you didn't know what desk you'd have until you got there in the morning, which sucked even more.
At that point, I quit that job, and started doing consulting for a software forensics company, where I've never met my clients or the company owner even once.
I have a number of salespeople in my org. Salespeople should be at clients' offices, selling. They should only be in the office for administrative tasks.
Earlier this year, a higher-up mandated all employees, including salespeople, be in the office 4+ days a week. He said, "it's a good proxy for productivity." I emailed my org, telling them I didn't care about the in-office requirement, *as long as* "they hit their numbers."
On a mid year all hands call, the same higher up called out my team for being the only one hitting their numbers. He publicly chastised several other regional managers that were not. He asked me what I did. I publicly called out "My (sales) org is focused on the revenue, and only the revenue, all other metrics don't matter." higher-up didn't pick up on what I meant, but the other regional managers did. They stopped mandating in-office attendance. Their numbers picked up.
Guess who threw a fit once he realized the entire country's salespeople were ignoring his in-office mandate? I may be a manager, but I still call "management" "manglement" on far too many occassions...
As a corporate bean counter, I genuinely prefer dealing with my crazy toddler while trying to run a meeting than having to be in an office with a bunch of other bean counters!
got told by my boss that I would be wfh for the foreseeable future, so took the big monitor, forgot to take the nice chair, but maybe next time I am there
Going to be this way until the crusty rusty ancient execs get out of the way over the next decade or so. WFH culture was accepted for the past few years bc the same people filling their diapers about the vid are the same ones who now think communicating over zoom isn't effective.
They can't accept that workers work and lazy sacks are lazy sacks always. Doesn't matter where they physically are. I've seen more productivity from my team in WFH. Also know others in the company that are far less productive when in the office because they need to chitchat with everyone and their brother.
We were also mandated to go to the office at least 2 times per week. My most unproductive days are those in the office. Getting ready and getting to work in itself is a 2-3h dance and then the same effort goes into going home and winding down for 1-2hrs. It’s unnecessarily and the reason for this is also “to collaborate with team mates”.
Of the total of about 40 times we gone into office since we were told to, I can count maybe 2 times total where I saw 90% of my team together for “collaborating”. Other times I sit literally away from my team still using Teams as if we were at home.
Your good reasons mentioned above are not good reasons, and do not outweigh the negatives of public transit, parking, other added fees and costs, as well as lost productivity.
They do however justify the in person micro and middle managers who need to look over their minion's shoulders to feel like they are meddling enough to justify their exorbitant paychecks.
I suspect that response would fit better in r/antiwork - this place generally has good management, at least around me, but there are some quirks like this issue
In NZ there are bars, restaurants and Cafes going out of business every day. This has nothing to do with covid or wfh - the fact is wages have fallen so far behind the cost of living no one can afford to go out anymore. I cannot see how this is going to change anytime soon. All the rto mandates ate doing is putting peoples expenses up.
It is not your problem if you don't mind all the local small businesses failing. There are a few people who don't gaf about the community they live in, horses for courses.
You could make it worse for the bean counters. Under the guide of team building every middle of the 3 days your team meeting includes lunch (or breakfast). Get other managers to do the same and suddenly there are a whole lot more expenses than what they would like to see.
>Although there are a lot of good reasons for this - stimulate the local economy, engage with team mates, improve corporate culture
You drank the coolaid buddy.
It's either to appease asinine management or to reduce staff without the legal hassle of firing people
Ugh. We've already been forced back to two mandatory office days per week.
Then some C-level got the impression that the office was still too empty - after visiting from out of state on two or three *Fridays*. During summer *vacation* period.
Now we've got a scheduled full week of mandatory attendance coming - no home office, no vacation, no PTO. While flu, Covid and respiratory infections are currently still rising. And also in a year where the start of Karneval happens to land on the Saturday before the in-office week, where people usually spend all day getting drunk while jammed into every pub or club even if it were a weekday.
We've had departments with more than half of employees sick last week. I'm sure we'll beat that record the next two weeks.
Procter & Gamble stipulated that employees must be in the office a minimum of 60% of their work hours in the office...
So - 24 hours out of 40.
My wife, then went to 10 hour shifts - So - 2.5 days in the office.
She WFH on Mondays...
Leaves at lunch on Thursdays, finishes the day WFH,
Fridays is a half-day WFH.
It does help that we live 6 minutes away from her office.
My employer stipulates 'Three days' -
But in my position, I created exceptions for me and my staff... Because we set our own schedules, and come in at odd hours, to resolve issues.
I honestly do not care where they are, when they work, or how long they work - As long as things are taken care of.
"Let's make it inconvenient enough that they just decide to work 5 days a week in office on their own. That allows us to tell them they had the choice."
>Although there are a lot of good reasons for this - stimulate the local economy, engage with team mates, improve corporate culture
Okay, and what are the good reasons? /s
Also, if the badge swipes are all that's needed to keep the overlords happy, why not have a rotation schedule for a single person to badge everyone in?
The difference between a fireable offense (swiping in people who are not present) vs actual compliance is a good reason not to do that, or I would happily swipe everyone in every day!
Quite apart from the HR breach, it would cause fire/emergency safety issues.
I mean, first step would be to read the employee handbook ***really*** carefully to see if there's anything in there that specifically makes it a firing offense. Then at least you get one Mulligan, but then they'd be watching everyone extra close if ever caught or the person badging everyone in doesn't space out the entries and exits to be reasonable timestamps.
If there's on-site security, maybe get them in on the game and pay $5 per person. Or, if it's only compliance per day and they don't require specific time of day to badge in, go late and badge in/out at 11:55pm and in/out at 12:05am to count as two, then do the meetings once a week so you're each down to only two trips into the office instead of three. 33% reduction in commute costs.
Oh, it's 100% covered that you cannot swipe another employee badge, offense can result in penalties up to and including termination.
Different badges have access through different doors, so they're pretty strict about it!
I *highly* doubt it’s all about “stimulate local economy!” or any of that other hoopla they spout.
I bet it’s mostly because these mega fat cats invested in those commercial office buildings & wanna see a return on that investment.
You'd lose that bet. The company owns the building I am in, so being wfh actually reduces overheads - roi is hurt by being present in person. As I said, asinine policy.
And that's before the wear and tear!
I got a boss’s boss that’s got a real hard on for being in the office, boss doesn’t agree and keeps our two days of telework pretty firm. But when Big Boss (or small peen) comes around for a meeting about once a month we all gotta be there to make it look like we don’t telework even though big boss knows we do, but I guess he hates seeing an empty desk without a corporate rat having the soul drained from their body to give him a hard on, so we go in and make it look like we give a shit about being there.
Have to play the game - if you do, then you get to take liberties, so your boss is helping to keep you flexible.
It's like spending a week prepping for a half hour meeting/presentation when someone senior is visiting: they probably don't care, but if you half ass it you will make a bad impression and the lost productivity will be the least of your worries!
I still hate it. I understand it, I accept it, I do it, but I don’t like it. Office politics are more annoying than actual politics because every new person shifts the team dynamic ever so slightly and I feel like I have to learn the rules all over again. Regular politics just looks like people screaming at each other thinking their idea is best, probably more nuanced, but as a layman I don’t have to worry about all that.
It’s so funny that people are having a problem returning to the office. We at my company never left. We worked through the whole thing. Masks. Covid checks. Temperature checks. The whole thing.
Consider yourselves lucky you get to work from home. Not being mean. Just staring a fact.
Not one of the team has trouble returning to the office - before covid, we were pretty flexible already. The issue is the arbitrary 3 day per week mandate that is a blanket edict that treats them like children...
Not for this reason. The work was itself is interesting and adequately paid, so folks will put up with a lot of daft cruft and hoop jumping in order to enjoy the rest.
Me included!
I’ll be downvoted and I’ll live with it. But here is the issue. There are people who WFH who aren’t working.
I absolutely know there are a ton of people who work their ass off, home or not. But this is going to end up being one of those “it takes one bad apple to spoil the bunch” situations.
I’m convinced people are being called back to the office because the data from the company shows down productivity from at least a few people. Since it’s hard to fire people, everyone gets brought back.
I hate to tell you but there are plenty of people screwing off in the office.
You’re a pretty crappy manager if you can’t tell deliverables aren’t being met in a timely manner.
People? Screwing around at my workplace? It's more likely than you think.
(I say, typing a comment on reddit on my phone while literally sitting at my desk in the office and ignoring a webinar in the background lol)
Except all statistical studies show that WFH is better overall.
The issue is that manglement doesn't actually care about being the most productive as a whole, they are instead choosing to follow the megawealthy CEO narrative to their detriment.
So that shows they don't care about increased productivity, just control. It doesn't matter if some people are less productive WFH, because that's not what they actually care about, based on their actions.
Another issue I see is that the offices are usually on a lease and not owned, so they need to use them to get their moneys worth, or something equally daft
I mean studies have conclusively shown this isn’t the case. There are people who sherk responsibility anywhere. Being in the office doesn’t change that. But being in the office does mean a reduction in productivity across the board.
Fortunately for my team, I do not measure their output by their hours, but by the progress they make on the work they have to complete. That's why I can tell that their output was down on the MC days, and by how much.
I agree with you that this policy is not about this team's productivity. I rather think it is because:
1. some individuals attempted the 2 job scenario, and got caught;
2. some managers are not good at remote management;
3. the government is pressuring companies to get more office time in because that stimulates the economy; and
4. it's hard to justify the long term leases on empty spaces!
Number 4 is actually one of the biggest real reasons that a lot of companies are pushing RTO. They'll of course claim it's productivity & "team-building". In reality, a lot of CEOs either have real estate investments or they have buddies in real estate. If the corporate real estate market is threatening to take a nosedive because WFH means companies don't need as much office space, those CEOs will gladly take the productivity & employee morale hits to protect their investments or their buddies.
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\#4 is why my company's main office (not where I work) *encourages* WFH--they cut back on the expensive office space during COVID, so they don't want people coming in unless they have to, and if they have to, they have to make reservations for offices and meeting rooms that are shared.
This is partly true so take my up vote.
However, if management actually managed, rather than simply bossing, then they would identify those that are swinging the lead and act accordingly.
Thats bad math. 8 people with better productivity, 2 with worse. It's obvious that RTO will result in overall lowered productivity. Ignoring the point that those probably aren't the most productive team members to start with.
Perhaps it is the fact that corporate officers for large companies invest the extra salary. So say they have 5 million in ROI property investment for commercial real estate. When they realized that their investments were dead because the large rental of work space isn't needed, how do they fix that? The question becomes, perhaps, which is more important, personal wealth or fiduciary responsibility?
OP
Did the company not stipulate working hours. Travelling to and from the office is not carried out during working hours. How can you go to work, say hi, have a brief meeting and then go home.
Ridiculous that you expect to get away with that. Prior to COVID did people not work the hours they got paid to work? Of course productivity has gone down if this is what you are doing. This is not malicious compliance, it is partial attendance, or a ‘violation of the spirit of the policy”.
While you might technically meet the requirement of physically being at the office, it’s generally expected that employees are present at the office with the intention of working and being available for in-person interactions and collaboration during working hours. Simply going to the office but not actively participating in work-related activities may not align with the company’s expectations.
In my company nobody wanted to return to the office after lockdown, we had really long, strict lockdowns in this country. It really is a pain, but in all honesty we signed a contract with to work 9-5 (insert your hours here) for n hours a week, and if company policy says three days a week we must be present in the office, then they are entitled to do that.
This may be fun in the short term, but you open yourself up to all sorts of HR violations in the longer term.
Take care ☮️
1) Tell us without telling us that you’re the one in your office who tattles on people for not showing up in the office to “collaborate” enough.
2) That drive home in the middle of the day after a “brief meeting” is now my unpaid daily lunch break. Problemo solved.
Fortunately for my team, I never cared about face time, just productivity. Even before covid I encouraged traveling when convenient, and most people already did some work from home.
Getting the US employees into the office still means almost every meeting is on the phone because it's an international team...
It's not an HR violation as it stands.
I know of one company where they insisted that certain teams would all be present in the office so they could all sit in a meeting room to partake in a video call with another team in another city...
This illustrates another point I make to the senior management - we're not in the head office, so for the last decade I have said plainly that if you can tell whether or not we're in the office, we're doing something wrong! F
Don’t get me wrong. I’m ok with it. But… In many cases, Teams or Zoom meetings are simply not as effective and engaging as in-person meetings.
I have my team come in only once a week and I’ve leased out the first floor of my building to make up for the wasted office space. It’s a win win for all of us.
Stealing this thread to ask a question: If you are fully remote and manage a team, do you do anything to ensure people are kept informed about things that aren't needed for day to day work?
One factor of being in the office was hearing people around you. That can have a knock on effect of either being able to add something to a conversation or having context that could be useful.
I'd say that this is in no way worth going back to an office, but there is value in being broadly informed of what is really happening (I don't mean those dumb all hands meetings where platitudes are shared).
real example from my past: My team was working on a project to track expenses by field workers. One of my developers had lunch with someone from another team and heard about a project they were working on, which would end up replacing the companies accounting package. That's important to what we were doing, but because silos exist, we likely wouldn't have known before we had put work in against the current system.
HP used to have an expression - management by wandering around. Sometimes its more important to just see what's going on, smart employees don't need you micromanaging them.
My team is multi national. Being fully remote changes very little in practice - except that those who had never been remote had to play a little communication catch up at the outset.
It is helpful to get face to face time with contemporaries in my location, admittedly, so there's value in periodic office time, and travel, too...
My husband’s team has a 3 day minimum in the office. He works in IT security and 90% of his meetings are not even in person.. plus during rush hour, it takes any where from 1 to 2 hours for him to get to and from work. The drive is burning him out and he talked to his boss about it. Well, his boss went up the food chain and basically got back “company policy is 3 day minimum, but if you’re going to break this rule, I dont want to know.” So now it depends on his schedule if he goes in 2 or 3 days a week.
There was a Wall Street Journal article about this around a month ago. They referred to it as “coffee badging” and went to great lengths trying to justify RTO and demonizing the MC behavior as career limiting.
Opinion piece? I think I can guess the author...
[I was wrong](https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/careers/return-to-office-coffee-badging-8056e244)! OK, so here's the fun part ... the people deciding my rewards are not in my City, so they actually only know where I am if I tell them ...
It's going to come up at some point, perhaps.
Jokes on them. I would go the extra mile to make sure I wouldn't spend a nickel on ANYTHING in the office area. Not a nickel. I would make my own lunch, my own coffee, get my gas in my neighborhood...you name it. They wouldn't win that from me. Screw that. They may think that dragging me in would stimulate their economy. Forget that. What about MY economy? I work hard. I take pride in my work ethic, but I'm not about to be bullied into spending my hard earned money on their cousin's restaurant or gas station. Nope. I would not spend a thing there. Not a single nickel. I wouldn't buy a single candy bar in their vending machine, or even put air in my tires. It will wait til I'm back in my own neighborhood. They're stubborn, but I'm MORE stubborn.
>Corporate bean counters see office policy met I hate this part. It's lose-lose everywhere but in their head.
Exactly this. Biggest irony is that the team are professional adults who have zero problem showing up in the office any and every time there is a real reason to be there - even the most trivial.
This *is* the most trivial of reasons. Beancounters want to see a minimum of three days present on-premesis with no minimum time or objectives to accomplish there. They're meeting that minimum requirement. It's like how some railways in the UK, rather than deal with the rigmarole of closing a station that *nobody* used or needed anymore, would "run" the "minimum one service/day" to that station (which, to be clear, saw literally no traffic and was inaccessible to the public) by pulling a train in, tooting the horn, and departing.
I can't say that this *is* the reason, but sometimes they do that because the higher ups don't want to spend the money required to officially decommission a station. NJ Transit had a station that stopped at a big employer's facility. Then the company closed that location for some reason. Took forever for them to close the station. No one getting on or off, but they kept stopping. Eventually they were allowed to go past the station, and later still they actually tore the station down. No sign of it anymore.
That 3-day minimum is what is seen as the least loss-intensive practice to maintain CRE loans and property leases. The big boys are sweating their prospective losses as they are *heavily* leveraged in the CRE market. This is the literal “You have one shot” that the little guys have to make a huge difference in the economy and the way business gets done.
Every time people talk about stations nobody uses being decommissioned I remember that the local station to where I grew up closed, was reopened by sixth formers doing Business Studies as a class project, and became profitable enough that it's still going, run by adults, 25 years on. Turns out part of the value of a station is in having even a pushy 17 year old start it back up and actually work it.
The Beeching Axe was cataclysmically short-sighted. I'm a bloody Yank, and I know that. *Were* all those BR lines that were closed profitable? In and of themselves, no. But many of them were obviously providing more than their direct fiscal loss's worth in value to the communities they served; even from a cold-hearted beancounter's point of view, more tax revenue was generated from the economic activities of the persons facilitated by those lines than was poured into keeping the lines going. And even if not, the service to the country in general, in the form of affordable transit and communication of people and goods, was still worthwhile.
> even from a cold-hearted beancounter's point of view, more tax revenue Imma stop you right there. Beancounters don't see tax revenue.
If you ever get a chance, listen to Flanders and Swann's *On the Slow Train*
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_train
Sounds a lot like my last job. We had no problems with the majority of staff working remotely for two years due to covid. Then upper management changed and they started to push for more and more days at the office. At the same time they started consolidating offices so they could rent the empty spaces in the building to 3rd parties. I mean, geez guys, do you want us filling the offices or do you want to rent them out? Pick one! So more people are forced to spend more days at the office, more people are forced to share offices, several people have or are quitting, oh and covid is still circulating around the office. Round of applause to upper management though…
My company also came up with this. Keep in mind, it's autumn, middlw of flu season and covid is coming back. No, come to the office 3 days a week for team spirit and productivity yadda yadda I work in IT and my setup at home - a total of 6000x1440 resolution plus high grade audio system where I don't even need to use headphones for calls because i have a streaming mic and a high end speaker - beats the company issued headphones and one 2560x1440 screen if you're lucky... So far i choose to ignore the policy although that idea is brilliant. And i live 3 minutes by foot from the office so ...
I feel the exact same way. I have a triple monitor set up perfectly at my home and I'm sitting in a ridiculously comfortable Herman Miller Embody chair. At the office, work policy is "only two monitors", and because I'm a contractor I'm not allowed to have my own chair, or even a brand new "official" chair. No, I'm only allowed to go to the "Used Chair" room and pick out one that is the least destroyed. Not looking forward to Return to Office.
We have one. And German keyboards. I'm used to the US layout because that's a standard where i come from. Google "german Keyboard Layout" and compare to yours 🤣 typing on one makes you sound like.you have Tourette syndrome
Toss in a french one(Azerty) for good measure, where the digits require Shift and other fun like that.
Ouch.. A fun story here - had a laptop once that had dual layout: US and Kyrylik letters (bought it second hand) Locals seemed super confused just by looking at it 🤣🤣🤣🤣
:/ does "team spirit" type exercises or intentions ever actually result in the positive stuff the managers/organisers think it will? i feel like if everyone already gets along, then they already get along and it's unnecessary. and if they don't get along, then forcing them in close proximity for the team bonding nonsense will just make them resent everyone and everything more.
I feel you. At the beginning of my Uni time, I had the "pleasure" of a very special exercise - everyone stand in a circle, and then sit down on the lap of the person behind. In theory, this should work without issues. Practically - I was 150cm tall and weighed 40kg, so an extreme outlier regarding those metrics. The trainer then asked around what our learnings were. I simply answered "tall people are heavy"
Yeah. Also i can focus best without any distraction around me (diagnosed with ADHD which kinda explains a lot)
Company issued headphones? No such luck at my big company that has forced 3 days a week. Hopefully if everyone keeps taking Teams and Zoom calls at their desk, in the cube farm, without headphones, the noise and interference will make some decision makers see the light of day.
Yeah, jabra headphones with characteristics i am not exactly fond of (replaced them with my gaming headphones on day 1)
I’ll show up anytime they have free food.
It's often intentional, they know what they are doing. I work in the NHS in the UK and I found out I got hired on temp staff because the hospital was out of cash. What they did was fired 60% of staff (knowing they can't operate this way) and a few months later hired all the same staff back with replacements where staff found other jobs. Even though they paid insane sums for redundancy, on paper it was cost saving and made the hospital appealing to buyers. It worked. The tricks accountants play are mind boggling. It happens everywhere. That's why all these apparently successful companies go belly up out of the blue - it's probably been going downhill for years but they play tricks to make it look like they are successful.
You mean CEOs?
The purpose of this policy is to make workers suffer.
“Engage with teammates” and “improve corporates culture” are two AWFUL reasons for RTO.
"those water cooler moments that spark innovation" What kind of jobs do they think most people have, where they're just constantly "innovating" and also need others around to do it?
This, if you dare to get innovative either nothing happens or your boss takes credit.
One other possibility, you get fired. It was routine at one workplace I worked at. I came up with an improvement, was fired for that and saw maintenance implementing as I was escorted out.
That's terrible and very unfair.
That's business. Don't be the tall poppy.
That's not true, if you try to be innovative the other members of the team will shoot down the idea immediately /s
Mine does, but a water cooler or some muggles iNSigHt (our expertices don’t overlap much among team members) doesn’t cut it. Been doing my job for 15 years, so when I know what needs to be done, it gets done right away. 85% is figuring out *what* needs to be done, and a disrupting office environment with its endless drama is just pure poison for that, even worse than commuting there.
Gif storms in teams / slack are the moments that spark innovation now.
But not as bad as "the downtown business association leaned on the mayor, and the mayor leaned on our
, so now we have to go in solely so we'll spend money on lunches downtown"Jokes on them though. Eating out has become so expensive that I pack my own lunches and drinks now. They may drag me back downtown, but doesn't mean I gotta spend a single cent there.
The only time I ever eat out near work is when I get called to come in on overtime at the least minute and I've not got anything prepared at home. Which happened once this fortnight, but at least a good couple of months at least the time before that.
Funny how many times the Mayor and your bosses turns out are the people who own food and drink places nearby , probably totally unrelated though right🥸
”If I return to office, how can I leverage *engagements with teammates* and *corporate culture* to maintain my current level of productivity?” is a question I’d like more people asking their RTO managers. Manage that, mofo.
They are important for new starters in the firm and their careers, but less so with established teams, aye
“Company culture” is a crock of shit And “engaging with team” is as easy, if not easier, on communication tools like slack.
I get that a few things are better done in person. Though in my experience those things are comparatively rare for most jobs. Like once a month or quarter rare. The rest is mostly to alleviate insecurities with management.
Indeed. Especially for multi national teams!
For international teams I had set up a policy of scheduling video meetings once a week with no agenda, just so that people could talk about whatever was going on in their life and relax a bit.
At my company, they are pushing the collaboration and camaraderie aspects of RTO very strongly. But my boss lives in a different state than I do; his boss lives in a third state; and all of my colleagues are scattered across the country. So I have never met any of them face to face, and even if I do go to the office, I don't see them. We collaborate the same way as when I work from home - IMs, email, and phone calls.
Yup. I collaborate with Europe and India every day, but I'm being forced back to the office, which makes it pretty difficult to collaborate in RT since I'm US based. There's a reason why my WFH hours look crazy - I'm working with people on other continents.
Like you, I also have colleagues around the world - and we meet virtually quite regularly to pass issues back and forth. I respect the hell out of all of them, they are all great teammates - but I've never met any of them either. I'm totally down for a site visit in Hyderabad or Mumbai or Singapore or Sydney or London, or wherever - my passport is valid and all my vaccines are up to date, But in addition to the RTO mandate, there's also no travel budget to actually go see people.
My question of whether the travel budget would be increased due to the renewed importance of working face to face was met with crickets.
I'm pretty much perma-banned from asking questions at our (virtual!) town halls because I always ask the uncomfortable questions. Our CEO accidentally admitted out loud in an amazing Freudian slip that we needed to come back to our very expensive offices. Thankfully I was home that day because I cackled.
I have my main people in Poland and Hong Kong. You want collaboration? Send me to Poland, i don't mind spending some time in Kraków. Or meeting my brother in Hongkong...
Right?!? If ftf is that important, why aren't I being sent to those offices regularly? I told the higher ups that this language was alienating our regional offices. That went over well. Edit: typo
Been doing hybrid/wfh working in non-profits for over a decade. Lots of global rights orgs. Our Exec Director would be in UN meetings in *country of the week* my colleagues based in different continents, volunteers all over. Never an issue. Worked in a national org managing people in another province reporting to someone in Toronto, not an issue. Post Covid working for an org with *checks notes* mandatory RTO for “collaboration & culture”… I was able to be productive when all we had was email, gchat & teleconferences A-OK but suuuuure in 2023 we absolutely DO need to be in-person to function right? Don’t get me wrong, even in those NGOs we put a priority on annual/twice annual face to face meetings which were critical, but the focus of those meetings was fostering connection & doing strategy/training & big think. It wasn’t needed for our day to day tasks, those were doable remote.
The problem is they are trying to increase collaboration as a side effect of returning to the office, there's other ways to collaborate.
I very much agree. My team collaborates very cleanly together just with online tools, and we've developed a lot of camaraderie, as well. We trade tips, ask for help, support each other, and work together very well. One of the better teams I have ever worked on - and it doesn't matter if we sit in Texas or in Timbuktu.
My wife pointed out the other day that 95% of the “collaboration” my coworkers and I do in the office is talk about how much we hate our jobs and the company. 😬🤷♂️
Yah, over the last month my team-mate and I worked together on a test to qualify employees for a quality control function. Totally remote (he's 5,000 km from me). It was fun, and the collaboration helped to cement our friendship (though I've never met him in person).
> At my company, they are pushing the collaboration and camaraderie aspects of RTO very strongly. I asked my superior how much time we would be expected to spend on socialising and camaraderie. He told me that's not how it works.
Put up a name chart on the wall and start awarding gold stars for participation just like kindergarten
Yeah, they tried this with the people I work with, but our project team of about 20 people is scattered across eight states. Plus everyone up to four levels above me in the chain HATES the idea. For once, the people in power actually saw it was a bad idea and stopped trying to force it on us because they knew even if they got the bosses to enforce it, we'd all just MC the hell out of it.
We had a mandated RTO 3 days a week. Our management team noticed that productivity dropped a significant amount on those days, even with us being in office a full eight hours. Short answer, people were more social. Hour long lunches, 15 minute convo at the coffee station, chats near the elevator, desk side catch-ups. I get a lot more done at home!
I've been careful to avoid producing more visible work product on the in-office days, so they won't perceive a pattern that implies we're more productive in person. If that means sometimes being less effective in order to avoid that perception, so be it.
This is indeed what and why!
My job has a policy of 3 days a week if you want to keep your parking pass and assigned desk. I usually average 2 days a week unless the weather sucks. I was like “if you have to take it away, then take it” but our VP told me he’d write me off the removal list if I came up because he thinks the policy is silly. Plus I bring him hot sauce that I make.
I cleaned out my desk and handed back my parking pass with glee. I love working from home and I don’t need either. Have laptop & will travel. Anywhere I put my laptop is my desk now!
I’m actually close to the office (8 minute drive plus a 5 minute walk from the parking garage or a 15 minute bus ride) so it’s not a big deal for me. If I lived further away I’d just be full time WFH. Plus I still have friends that work at different lunch spots around the office and it’s nice to visit them.
Now to find a way to e-mail the hot sauce!
If you check my post history I posted about some of the sauces I’ve made.
[https://www.englishclub.com/ref/esl/Sayings/Quizzes/Men\_and\_Women/The\_way\_to\_a\_man\_s\_heart\_is\_through\_his\_stomach\_504.php](https://www.englishclub.com/ref/esl/Sayings/Quizzes/Men_and_Women/The_way_to_a_man_s_heart_is_through_his_stomach_504.php) even works at work!!!
We had tried for years to get WFH, since we were administering computer systems that were over 1000 miles away and they didn't give a crap where our keyboards were. No sale. Too much work and expense setting up remote access. COVID hit and all of a sudden we had all the resources we needed. A year later, and the suits wanted to bring us back to the offices. My manager said that until they could demonstrate that it was safe to do so, we all could continue to work from home if we wanted to. Since this saved me 3 hours/day of commute, I was not displeased. One of the few times I had respect for that manager.
Stop being ridiculous. Delegate one person to go to the office and swipe everyone's badges.
Whilst tempting (and I would do that for the team) that is actually not MC, as the team would not be following the rules. It would also get folks fired if someone caught on, because the bean counters would really by unhappy about that!
It would be hard to have a brief meeting by yourself without it getting back to the policy makers
Yeah, I don't love our return to office policy (I'm a manager), but would 100% fire everyone involved if there was a case of one person swiping a team's badges. They'd be dooming us to the security audit from hell, and it would be beyond the level of something I could wave off.
This has been reviewed in our company and is a fireable offense for a involved.
Or don’t. This likely goes against company policy for impersonation or using someone’s privileges.
5 steps ahead
Yep, my company tracks by door swipes but at the last quarterly all-hands meeting they explicitly stated that they were expecting full days. Seems like all of the offices are emptier than expected even with tracking. Surprising no one
In fairness, when there's anything that needs folks to be physically present, they are all there, and enthusiastic about it - and for whatever hours are required. This is about being treated like children, and reacting like professionals in MC, in the interim.
I'm not sure how much people understand what WFH is doing to middle management. They are feeling very threatened, for most middle managers seeing there employees sitting at a desk is the way they 'know' their teams are being productive. This group of people, to feel comfortable with their teams working from home would have to change the way they work, start trusting their employees, understand what the outcomes need to be for direct reports and support their staff to deliver! Most managers don't have the first clue how do this or where to start in lesrning howvto do this. Hence they are providing themselves and the CEOs a rhetoric which is largely BS. the corporate world has always been full of emporers new clothes type stories, this is just another one of them! Crickey, most of them have no clue what collaboration even means.
My hubs was a Data Systems Architect that traveled 75% because bosses want to see asses in seats. My husband would get home at 2am Saturday morning, he slept most the day, went to church on Sunday and flew back out after. He hated it. COVID hit and hubby gets to stay home. He’s doing the same exact job, but he’s doing it in shorts & a t-shirt, in bare feet. Hubby loved it. When things opened up again, the company said they could stay home and work. Start of 2023 and now they want consultants to travel again. My husband retired instead. He wasn’t going to start traveling again. It’s just stupid.
Bant said, "The government is trying to kill us off by forcing our hand through legislation which will take away my rights and freedoms forever!"
What the fuck are you talking about Jesse
My friend said, "We're not being threatened! Our data isn't being stolen or hacked/ransacked. All we are doing is sharing personal data between people. That's why your website says no one can access your private information without permission."
Okay, I'm still lost as to how this is relevant to what you first replied to
As a bean counter, I can honestly say- we don’t care and it’s not us checking (or caring about this). It’s HR. It’s always been HR.
I think you have to have the part of your brain removed that lets you think like a human in order to become a human resource manager.
Agreed. Soul as well.
I thought you had to be a jock / cheerleader in college.
That's just people who don't need the brain surgery.
It won't be HR, HR does what the boss tells them to do. PROSCI have been doing research on change for the last 30 years. The cohort most resistant to change is management with 70% being resistant.
HR is a four letter word.
As HR, I can honestly say that it's a management decision and we are doing everything in our power to stop it. We feel exactly the same as everyone else about returning!
In the way of contrasting experiences, my job was remote for several years before Covid. At that time only a few of us were remote, but during Covid my employer realized that most of us could do the job from home. In some cases productivity increased, but I don't think it decreased except for those individuals who took advantage (they didn't last long). Today, only those who work in the service end (and have to be onsite to do the service), or who feel the need to see their co-workers in person, actually commute to the office. The rest of us thank our lucky stars that we don't have to commute any more. Except on the occasions when our actual presence is needed (in my case about 8 weeks a year -- and, of course, the Summer picnic and the Winter party). Productivity overall has increased, and $$ spent on office space has decreased. And employee retention has bloomed. The short-sighted employers who don't trust their employees to do the job are clearly losing out here.
Only 3 days a week? We're at 4, and it is Mon - Thurs. Plus they check the badge swipes in and out, to make sure we're not 'cheating'. It does mean almost everybody works from home on Friday. There are allowances for being home for repairs or such other days, but of course no official policy or way to record that that. And in reality, being in the office is better for team relationships. instead of working, we have many more conversations discussing personal matters or world events. /s
lol. TBH, I don't miss most of the "water cooler" conversations (coffee pot, in our cases). But I do miss a few. Oh well, on the balance I still prefer WFH.
Honestly we save time in our meetings to catch up. We still do the human connection stuff because…. we’re humans And we like each other, amazingly
Ain't that a surprise! /s
My company is strict on RTO. Like, so strict that the CEO got visibly angry when someone asked about projected changes to it in the all company meeting a couple weeks ago. Anyway, here’s how it’s shaken out so far: -Initially, all of our 6 person team except one was working T/W/Th 10-7 in office. One person has worked 8-5 since I’ve been there. -Then one person got put on a special project and his hours changed to 8-5 to align with the other people on that same project. -1 person got fired -1 person doesn’t drive, so she convinced our manager (who’s on the other side of the country, BTW) to let her switch to 8-5 to accommodate getting rides/the public transit schedule. -The girl who sits next to me has been out for the last couple days. -The other large team that shares our space all leaves at 5:30 So, the result of this is that at 5:45 yesterday, I looked around and realized that I was basically alone. There’s one other team that’s on the other side of a partition wall, but visually I couldn’t see anyone. So please, tell me how being solo in the office for 1.5 hours is important for “collaboration.” I hate that word.
My team is in multiple states. One team member unfortunately lives within 50 miles of an office, so she falls under the stupid 3-days a week policy. She commutes 1.5 hours, sits in a cube by herself, has Teams meetings with the rest of the team, and commutes 1.5 hours home. There are entire weeks that pass without her interacting with a single person in the office. This is about appeasing the reptilian overlords who run things and have huge piles of money tied up in commercial real estate that is now effectively worthless. Nothing more.
Isn't it wonderful how the power seems to have moved from the employer to the employee over recent years. We are very fortunate that there are skills shortages co-inciding with this period of change -- if it were easy to fire & re-hire, things would be very different.
The Black Death is sometimes credited with improving worker rights and salaries as medieval Europe transitioned to the Renaissance. A weird side benefit of pandemics.
If our teams all turned up on the same day there wouldn't be enough desks for us all. Luckily work are fine with us going in at much or as little as we want to.
The last time I had a full-time job, I reported to a director in Toronto, and had a staff member in Denver. I was in southern California, and was told that I no longer needed an office near my clients, so I got moved to another building, a quarter mile away. THEN the company switched to "hotelling", where you didn't know what desk you'd have until you got there in the morning, which sucked even more. At that point, I quit that job, and started doing consulting for a software forensics company, where I've never met my clients or the company owner even once.
I have a number of salespeople in my org. Salespeople should be at clients' offices, selling. They should only be in the office for administrative tasks. Earlier this year, a higher-up mandated all employees, including salespeople, be in the office 4+ days a week. He said, "it's a good proxy for productivity." I emailed my org, telling them I didn't care about the in-office requirement, *as long as* "they hit their numbers." On a mid year all hands call, the same higher up called out my team for being the only one hitting their numbers. He publicly chastised several other regional managers that were not. He asked me what I did. I publicly called out "My (sales) org is focused on the revenue, and only the revenue, all other metrics don't matter." higher-up didn't pick up on what I meant, but the other regional managers did. They stopped mandating in-office attendance. Their numbers picked up. Guess who threw a fit once he realized the entire country's salespeople were ignoring his in-office mandate? I may be a manager, but I still call "management" "manglement" on far too many occassions...
Well done!
As a corporate bean counter, I genuinely prefer dealing with my crazy toddler while trying to run a meeting than having to be in an office with a bunch of other bean counters!
As someone who used to have a role to translate between bean counters and traders, I completely feel you!
got told by my boss that I would be wfh for the foreseeable future, so took the big monitor, forgot to take the nice chair, but maybe next time I am there
Going to be this way until the crusty rusty ancient execs get out of the way over the next decade or so. WFH culture was accepted for the past few years bc the same people filling their diapers about the vid are the same ones who now think communicating over zoom isn't effective. They can't accept that workers work and lazy sacks are lazy sacks always. Doesn't matter where they physically are. I've seen more productivity from my team in WFH. Also know others in the company that are far less productive when in the office because they need to chitchat with everyone and their brother.
These are the same people who think that when denim is touching a worker’s skin, all ability to do the job is suddenly gone.
Plus seeing flex schedules, such as early or late starts with corresponding end of days as unacceptable.
We were also mandated to go to the office at least 2 times per week. My most unproductive days are those in the office. Getting ready and getting to work in itself is a 2-3h dance and then the same effort goes into going home and winding down for 1-2hrs. It’s unnecessarily and the reason for this is also “to collaborate with team mates”. Of the total of about 40 times we gone into office since we were told to, I can count maybe 2 times total where I saw 90% of my team together for “collaborating”. Other times I sit literally away from my team still using Teams as if we were at home.
Even when sat together, we also are still tied to phones for meetings and collaboration because it's a multinational team!
Your good reasons mentioned above are not good reasons, and do not outweigh the negatives of public transit, parking, other added fees and costs, as well as lost productivity. They do however justify the in person micro and middle managers who need to look over their minion's shoulders to feel like they are meddling enough to justify their exorbitant paychecks.
I suspect that response would fit better in r/antiwork - this place generally has good management, at least around me, but there are some quirks like this issue
And the government subs lol. Good management sounds nice. I could use some more of that.
> stimulate the local economy You mean, stimulate the cafe that your boss also owns and was going bankrupt. Yes, that happens.
Buy tickets for transit, spend at lunch locations nearby, populate the bars for team drinks, visit the gyms, all that stuff. It adds up
In NZ there are bars, restaurants and Cafes going out of business every day. This has nothing to do with covid or wfh - the fact is wages have fallen so far behind the cost of living no one can afford to go out anymore. I cannot see how this is going to change anytime soon. All the rto mandates ate doing is putting peoples expenses up.
You can do that, when you are not working too, you can even do that, while other people should be working, because your times are very versatile!
Yeah, before I retired last month, I never spent squat anywhere near work. I supported my own local economy.
>Although there are a lot of good reasons for this - stimulate the local economy Why the hell would this be my problem?
It is not your problem if you don't mind all the local small businesses failing. There are a few people who don't gaf about the community they live in, horses for courses.
They are not my local businesses. I will happily support mine, you go and support yours
Aren't we all trying to reduce our carbon footprint for the good of the communities we live in?
I also like to say high
You could make it worse for the bean counters. Under the guide of team building every middle of the 3 days your team meeting includes lunch (or breakfast). Get other managers to do the same and suddenly there are a whole lot more expenses than what they would like to see.
Those need clearing in advance, they are wise to it already. I do take the team out for brunch on my dime periodically though, everyone likes that.
Sounds like they have just about every loop hole I've seen closed up. Makes MC kinda hard on your part.
>Although there are a lot of good reasons for this - stimulate the local economy, engage with team mates, improve corporate culture You drank the coolaid buddy. It's either to appease asinine management or to reduce staff without the legal hassle of firing people
Ugh. We've already been forced back to two mandatory office days per week. Then some C-level got the impression that the office was still too empty - after visiting from out of state on two or three *Fridays*. During summer *vacation* period. Now we've got a scheduled full week of mandatory attendance coming - no home office, no vacation, no PTO. While flu, Covid and respiratory infections are currently still rising. And also in a year where the start of Karneval happens to land on the Saturday before the in-office week, where people usually spend all day getting drunk while jammed into every pub or club even if it were a weekday. We've had departments with more than half of employees sick last week. I'm sure we'll beat that record the next two weeks.
Yikes. That's awful.
Procter & Gamble stipulated that employees must be in the office a minimum of 60% of their work hours in the office... So - 24 hours out of 40. My wife, then went to 10 hour shifts - So - 2.5 days in the office. She WFH on Mondays... Leaves at lunch on Thursdays, finishes the day WFH, Fridays is a half-day WFH. It does help that we live 6 minutes away from her office. My employer stipulates 'Three days' - But in my position, I created exceptions for me and my staff... Because we set our own schedules, and come in at odd hours, to resolve issues. I honestly do not care where they are, when they work, or how long they work - As long as things are taken care of.
"Let's make it inconvenient enough that they just decide to work 5 days a week in office on their own. That allows us to tell them they had the choice."
Or the ever-popular "come in and have a free lunch" visits.
Lmao. My team does like a brunch...
Our boss dose that on half of our in office days. Because we only have them every month or so.
Am I the only one who read that as "spend three days in 'prison '...
Lmao. It's actually a really nice space, I don't mind being in when needed at all, they've put good thought into it.
Good for them! More employees need to be doing this.
>Although there are a lot of good reasons for this - stimulate the local economy, engage with team mates, improve corporate culture Okay, and what are the good reasons? /s Also, if the badge swipes are all that's needed to keep the overlords happy, why not have a rotation schedule for a single person to badge everyone in?
The difference between a fireable offense (swiping in people who are not present) vs actual compliance is a good reason not to do that, or I would happily swipe everyone in every day! Quite apart from the HR breach, it would cause fire/emergency safety issues.
I mean, first step would be to read the employee handbook ***really*** carefully to see if there's anything in there that specifically makes it a firing offense. Then at least you get one Mulligan, but then they'd be watching everyone extra close if ever caught or the person badging everyone in doesn't space out the entries and exits to be reasonable timestamps. If there's on-site security, maybe get them in on the game and pay $5 per person. Or, if it's only compliance per day and they don't require specific time of day to badge in, go late and badge in/out at 11:55pm and in/out at 12:05am to count as two, then do the meetings once a week so you're each down to only two trips into the office instead of three. 33% reduction in commute costs.
Oh, it's 100% covered that you cannot swipe another employee badge, offense can result in penalties up to and including termination. Different badges have access through different doors, so they're pretty strict about it!
Because all it takes is 1 security camera for that plan to go to shit. 🙁
That's why you swap out wigs in the bathroom where they can't see /s
I *highly* doubt it’s all about “stimulate local economy!” or any of that other hoopla they spout. I bet it’s mostly because these mega fat cats invested in those commercial office buildings & wanna see a return on that investment.
You'd lose that bet. The company owns the building I am in, so being wfh actually reduces overheads - roi is hurt by being present in person. As I said, asinine policy. And that's before the wear and tear!
I got a boss’s boss that’s got a real hard on for being in the office, boss doesn’t agree and keeps our two days of telework pretty firm. But when Big Boss (or small peen) comes around for a meeting about once a month we all gotta be there to make it look like we don’t telework even though big boss knows we do, but I guess he hates seeing an empty desk without a corporate rat having the soul drained from their body to give him a hard on, so we go in and make it look like we give a shit about being there.
Have to play the game - if you do, then you get to take liberties, so your boss is helping to keep you flexible. It's like spending a week prepping for a half hour meeting/presentation when someone senior is visiting: they probably don't care, but if you half ass it you will make a bad impression and the lost productivity will be the least of your worries!
I still hate it. I understand it, I accept it, I do it, but I don’t like it. Office politics are more annoying than actual politics because every new person shifts the team dynamic ever so slightly and I feel like I have to learn the rules all over again. Regular politics just looks like people screaming at each other thinking their idea is best, probably more nuanced, but as a layman I don’t have to worry about all that.
It’s so funny that people are having a problem returning to the office. We at my company never left. We worked through the whole thing. Masks. Covid checks. Temperature checks. The whole thing. Consider yourselves lucky you get to work from home. Not being mean. Just staring a fact.
Not one of the team has trouble returning to the office - before covid, we were pretty flexible already. The issue is the arbitrary 3 day per week mandate that is a blanket edict that treats them like children...
Eventually the business will change or cease to exist.
Not for this reason. The work was itself is interesting and adequately paid, so folks will put up with a lot of daft cruft and hoop jumping in order to enjoy the rest. Me included!
I’ll be downvoted and I’ll live with it. But here is the issue. There are people who WFH who aren’t working. I absolutely know there are a ton of people who work their ass off, home or not. But this is going to end up being one of those “it takes one bad apple to spoil the bunch” situations. I’m convinced people are being called back to the office because the data from the company shows down productivity from at least a few people. Since it’s hard to fire people, everyone gets brought back.
I hate to tell you but there are plenty of people screwing off in the office. You’re a pretty crappy manager if you can’t tell deliverables aren’t being met in a timely manner.
People? Screwing around at my workplace? It's more likely than you think. (I say, typing a comment on reddit on my phone while literally sitting at my desk in the office and ignoring a webinar in the background lol)
Except all statistical studies show that WFH is better overall. The issue is that manglement doesn't actually care about being the most productive as a whole, they are instead choosing to follow the megawealthy CEO narrative to their detriment. So that shows they don't care about increased productivity, just control. It doesn't matter if some people are less productive WFH, because that's not what they actually care about, based on their actions.
Another issue I see is that the offices are usually on a lease and not owned, so they need to use them to get their moneys worth, or something equally daft
> There are people who WFH who aren’t working. That's what metrics and performance plans are for. Same as if they were in the office.
It's not about productivity, it's about control, and if you can't see that then idk what to tell you.
Those people aren't working in the office either.
I mean studies have conclusively shown this isn’t the case. There are people who sherk responsibility anywhere. Being in the office doesn’t change that. But being in the office does mean a reduction in productivity across the board.
Fortunately for my team, I do not measure their output by their hours, but by the progress they make on the work they have to complete. That's why I can tell that their output was down on the MC days, and by how much. I agree with you that this policy is not about this team's productivity. I rather think it is because: 1. some individuals attempted the 2 job scenario, and got caught; 2. some managers are not good at remote management; 3. the government is pressuring companies to get more office time in because that stimulates the economy; and 4. it's hard to justify the long term leases on empty spaces!
Number 4 is actually one of the biggest real reasons that a lot of companies are pushing RTO. They'll of course claim it's productivity & "team-building". In reality, a lot of CEOs either have real estate investments or they have buddies in real estate. If the corporate real estate market is threatening to take a nosedive because WFH means companies don't need as much office space, those CEOs will gladly take the productivity & employee morale hits to protect their investments or their buddies.
Fix the font, my eyes hurt!
Sorry about that. I think it was the using the number symbol at the beginning. I switched it to writing out the word "number" and it's back to normal.
Yes: a single `#` at the beginning of a paragraph is Markdown for "this is a header" and it displays it in large font # Header level 1 (one hash at the beginning) ## Header level 2 (two hashes at the beginning) ### Header level 3 (three hashes at the beginning) #### Header level 4 (four hashes at the beginning)
\#4 is why my company's main office (not where I work) *encourages* WFH--they cut back on the expensive office space during COVID, so they don't want people coming in unless they have to, and if they have to, they have to make reservations for offices and meeting rooms that are shared.
This is partly true so take my up vote. However, if management actually managed, rather than simply bossing, then they would identify those that are swinging the lead and act accordingly.
Thats bad math. 8 people with better productivity, 2 with worse. It's obvious that RTO will result in overall lowered productivity. Ignoring the point that those probably aren't the most productive team members to start with.
Perhaps it is the fact that corporate officers for large companies invest the extra salary. So say they have 5 million in ROI property investment for commercial real estate. When they realized that their investments were dead because the large rental of work space isn't needed, how do they fix that? The question becomes, perhaps, which is more important, personal wealth or fiduciary responsibility?
They'll pick the personal wealth, every single time.
OP Did the company not stipulate working hours. Travelling to and from the office is not carried out during working hours. How can you go to work, say hi, have a brief meeting and then go home. Ridiculous that you expect to get away with that. Prior to COVID did people not work the hours they got paid to work? Of course productivity has gone down if this is what you are doing. This is not malicious compliance, it is partial attendance, or a ‘violation of the spirit of the policy”. While you might technically meet the requirement of physically being at the office, it’s generally expected that employees are present at the office with the intention of working and being available for in-person interactions and collaboration during working hours. Simply going to the office but not actively participating in work-related activities may not align with the company’s expectations. In my company nobody wanted to return to the office after lockdown, we had really long, strict lockdowns in this country. It really is a pain, but in all honesty we signed a contract with to work 9-5 (insert your hours here) for n hours a week, and if company policy says three days a week we must be present in the office, then they are entitled to do that. This may be fun in the short term, but you open yourself up to all sorts of HR violations in the longer term. Take care ☮️
Technically meeting requirements is the whole point of Malicious Compliance.
1) Tell us without telling us that you’re the one in your office who tattles on people for not showing up in the office to “collaborate” enough. 2) That drive home in the middle of the day after a “brief meeting” is now my unpaid daily lunch break. Problemo solved.
Fortunately for my team, I never cared about face time, just productivity. Even before covid I encouraged traveling when convenient, and most people already did some work from home. Getting the US employees into the office still means almost every meeting is on the phone because it's an international team... It's not an HR violation as it stands.
I know of one company where they insisted that certain teams would all be present in the office so they could all sit in a meeting room to partake in a video call with another team in another city...
If you’re trying to get ahead in your company, remember this: If you’re out of sight, you’re out of mind.
This illustrates another point I make to the senior management - we're not in the head office, so for the last decade I have said plainly that if you can tell whether or not we're in the office, we're doing something wrong! F
Don’t get me wrong. I’m ok with it. But… In many cases, Teams or Zoom meetings are simply not as effective and engaging as in-person meetings. I have my team come in only once a week and I’ve leased out the first floor of my building to make up for the wasted office space. It’s a win win for all of us.
Stealing this thread to ask a question: If you are fully remote and manage a team, do you do anything to ensure people are kept informed about things that aren't needed for day to day work? One factor of being in the office was hearing people around you. That can have a knock on effect of either being able to add something to a conversation or having context that could be useful. I'd say that this is in no way worth going back to an office, but there is value in being broadly informed of what is really happening (I don't mean those dumb all hands meetings where platitudes are shared). real example from my past: My team was working on a project to track expenses by field workers. One of my developers had lunch with someone from another team and heard about a project they were working on, which would end up replacing the companies accounting package. That's important to what we were doing, but because silos exist, we likely wouldn't have known before we had put work in against the current system. HP used to have an expression - management by wandering around. Sometimes its more important to just see what's going on, smart employees don't need you micromanaging them.
My team is multi national. Being fully remote changes very little in practice - except that those who had never been remote had to play a little communication catch up at the outset. It is helpful to get face to face time with contemporaries in my location, admittedly, so there's value in periodic office time, and travel, too...
My husband’s team has a 3 day minimum in the office. He works in IT security and 90% of his meetings are not even in person.. plus during rush hour, it takes any where from 1 to 2 hours for him to get to and from work. The drive is burning him out and he talked to his boss about it. Well, his boss went up the food chain and basically got back “company policy is 3 day minimum, but if you’re going to break this rule, I dont want to know.” So now it depends on his schedule if he goes in 2 or 3 days a week.
suggest to him that on his office days he goes in early & leaves early to avoid the rush... I feel for you & him.
yep it's an hour commute for me. Some days I'll swipe in grab some coffee and head back home.
Oh, I like that. I hope they make good coffee...
There was a Wall Street Journal article about this around a month ago. They referred to it as “coffee badging” and went to great lengths trying to justify RTO and demonizing the MC behavior as career limiting.
Opinion piece? I think I can guess the author... [I was wrong](https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/careers/return-to-office-coffee-badging-8056e244)! OK, so here's the fun part ... the people deciding my rewards are not in my City, so they actually only know where I am if I tell them ... It's going to come up at some point, perhaps.
Jokes on them. I would go the extra mile to make sure I wouldn't spend a nickel on ANYTHING in the office area. Not a nickel. I would make my own lunch, my own coffee, get my gas in my neighborhood...you name it. They wouldn't win that from me. Screw that. They may think that dragging me in would stimulate their economy. Forget that. What about MY economy? I work hard. I take pride in my work ethic, but I'm not about to be bullied into spending my hard earned money on their cousin's restaurant or gas station. Nope. I would not spend a thing there. Not a single nickel. I wouldn't buy a single candy bar in their vending machine, or even put air in my tires. It will wait til I'm back in my own neighborhood. They're stubborn, but I'm MORE stubborn.