Regarding return to office policy, I hear many speculations and reasons hypothesized. Mostly by employees who don’t really know and who had no choice in it.
I would like to know is if there are any lemmings out there who have been involved in these talks.
What was discussed?
How is something like this coordinated amongst others businesses even rivals.
What are the high level factors that have gone into the decision?
Bonus points: is it even possible for employees to prevent or reverse these policies at this point?
My company (small, < 50 people) basically did an informal survey and then CEO said that working from home is here to stay, with the option to work in the office whenever we want (and some do).
Our office allowed voting to elect a committee to determine what return to office should look like. I was elected to it. They also hired external contractors to mediate basically. Some people came into it thinking everyone should go back to office, but by the end of it we settled that being in office should be required for certain types of work activities and not for others, and apart from the required activities for in office employees could be wherever. We drafted this up into a formalized agreement and everyone was happy with it.
Then the president who did that program retired and the new guy immediately scrapped the whole thing and forced everyone back into the office overnight without any discussion from the committee or other employees.
And the Strategic Office Presence Task Force passed into legend lol.
Sounds legit
If you accepted a remote job, you should have it in writing that the job is ‘remote’ work.
If your job wasn’t remote initially, but assumed it would be remote going forward, you should have demanded that the job has changed to ‘remote’ in writing.
If your job wasn’t initially remote, was temporarily made remote, and they are now changing back. Be prepared to walk.
I think you’re still kind of screwed if they want you in the office and you’re officially remote.
But - yes - if your manager changes that does kind of protect you from sudden expectations from them of coming in.
I think you’re still kind of screwed if they want you in the office and you’re officially remote.
Depends on what you mean by ‘screwed’. If they hired you with certain expectations, like in writing job is ‘remote’, then you can refuse.
If they fire you as a result, yes, you are ‘screwed’ in the case of you’ve lost your job,
But you then sue for wrongful dismissal, in which case you have some recourse.
But if you live in a country/state that doesn’t allow you to do that, and offers no employee protections,
You were screwed from the beginning by accepting work in such a place to begin with.
But you then sue for wrongful dismissal, in which case you have some recourse.
Not in the US. “Remote worker” is not a protected class.
But if you live in a country/state that doesn’t allow you to do that, and offers no employee protections, you were screwed from the beginning by accepting work in such a place to begin with.
Yes, definitely the fault of every worker in the US for accepting work … checks notes … in the US.
It doesn’t need to be a ‘protected class’.
If you were hired as an accountant, and job description explains what the job entails.
The boss can’t tell you to go out front and mow the grass, and fire you if you refuse.
It’s not in your job description.
Same with remote work. If the job description said 100% remote work.
It would be the same as hiring someone in one city, and then demanding they move to another city, and firing you if you refuse.
Sure, they can let you go, but they’d be on the hook for compensation. (in most civilized places anyway)
It doesn’t need to be a ‘protected class’.
[In the US,] Yes it does.
The boss can’t tell you to go out front and mow the grass, and fire you if you refuse.
Yes they can.
Sure, they can let you go, but they’d be on the hook for compensation. (in most civilized places anyway)
Not compensation, but unemployment incsurance claims. If you’re let go “without cause,” you get to claim unemployment, and the business that let you go has to pay some portion of that. Unemployment insurance barely pays anything, though, so that’s not going to be a very high amount for the business.
It’s not in your job description.
I’ve noticed a lot of job offers say like “Other duties as required”
You are not going to outsmart the corporate lawyers.
The rich have class solidarity.
You can still sue if you find a lawyer who is willing to do it.
Pennsylvania is an “At Will” state, so in theory my wife could have fired any employee just because she felt like it. However, the steps laid out by our lawyer for firing someone were quite extensive.
We needed to have extensive documentation of failures and performance issues on file before we could consider it.
That’s also why my employer has such an extensive coaching and documentation process for poorly performing employees. The policy documents describe it as a way to ensure all employees have the opportunity and support they need to improve, but the real reason is definitely to protect against lawsuits.
Of course, if anyone in the US is thinking of moving to another state, this might be useful:
https://www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/issues/economic-justice/workers-rights/best-states-to-work/
I was going to suggest that you’d want to cross-reference other details as well, such as if the state allows doctors to refuse to treat you because they think their magic sky-daddy doesn’t want them to.
The bar for tort cases in the US is at an all time low but it’s very unlikely you’d be successful suing for wrongful termination over RTO.
In the US we have like no laws protecting labor. They’ll just tell you to go into the office, or fire you.
I’m grateful for being hired on during COVID for this. My job description specifically says remote.
Bonus is that I work for a union and they have our backs. Even as the company tightens down on cyber security and starts forcing people to use the Ethernet or else apps on their personal phones (big no from me) to log into certain things - even with that, the union has our back and is making the company give us options to remain fully remote.
I hate this line of reasoning. It’s not something I subscribe to. We’re not robots. We’re not blindly following some set of logic rules. There’s no humanity in that.
My job was remote to start. Even if it wasn’t, this line of reasoning isn’t something I would ever use. Just because it was or was not a thing does not mean we’re forced to just accept things and not want life to be better. Especially if it’s a business decision based on things that do not make sense. Squeaky wheels get the grease. C suite makes decisions on information and if all people never spoke up just because things were a certain way when they arrived then nothing would change.
Written where? We don’t generally have employment contracts in the US.
You don’t get a letter of employment offer?
There might be a written agreement of what the work, hours, compensation agreed to is, but that’s not a contract for employment to the degree of “if the employee fulfills the conditions of this contract, they can’t be terminated.”
I did. That’s not the same thing as an employment contract. And whatever is on that letter can be changed without much, if any, notice.
Having that in writing won’t help a great deal. Even if somehow you make it binding, you’re still employed at-will. Unless you’re saying to make sure you have a full employment contract in place. Which, yeah, wouldn’t that be nice?
I happened to be involved in such a meeting this morning.
The conversation around the general policy was mostly supportive. The main concern is that we do not have an official policy in place and various teams are setting their own rules, which is occaisionally resulting in collaboration issues.
The other main issue, unsurprisingly, regards what we can do to make sure that people are actually working when they are at home. For the most part, people are getting their work done, but there are always going to be people trying to take advantage and we discussed ways to track that without getting too “big brother” across the board.
Sounds like we are going to implement a 2 day wfh allowance coordinated within teams, based on their schedules so that we have at least half of each team in the office each day, with exceptions for people with extenuating circumstances.
We are not going to put any kind of tracking software on their machines, but we are going to monitor overall output.
I gotta be honest- sounds weird you weren’t already tracking output already.
Like was output before wfh just “theyre in the office today”?
We are. Just not with software that checks keystrokes, mouse movements, etc.
I never understand places that dont have some sort of work management methodology.
In technology, we often use agile. Its complicated, but one key part is that the individuals determine what needs to be done to get an overall effort completed, creates the individual tasks in an application, schedules them for completion and makes notes about status as they go.
Its a little micro, but it ends all questions of “is this person working”. Either theyre getting stuff done or they aren’t. We have regular sessions to check progress and reports are generated on an ongoing basis. If someone is dicking around it shows up real fast.
I can’t imagine that places still just raw-dog all the work. What is Joe doing. No clue. When is he going to finish? Dunno. How is the project going? Beats me. Are we staffed appropriately? Good question.
2 day wfh allowance
So
- staff has to locate nearby
- new applicants must be nearby
- everyone needs a car
- the office doesn’t offset any of this
- but 2 days you get to be home and productive. Woo!
Someone needs to be fired. Pick the guy who talks about ‘organic conversations’, as if water cooler chat and constant interruptions are the true medium for knowledge sharing, or the sexist git who forces Linda to shop for office clothing where Gavin skates with khaki and a polo, and raise the average EQ with a quick meeting.
There are decades of case studies showing people interact with people they have never met with more hostility, skepticism and less patience compared to people they have met in person. I am very much in favor of flex and hybrid work, but people who work in teams need regular face time to maintain the rapport.
I guess that can be true, but my company is all over the country. Teams like mine are half local and half out of state. They are forcing us all back in the office, but not for all those far away. There are small teams that have only 1 or 2 people local and they are making that one person drive into an office anyway. It’s like a slap in the face to me.
We’ve proved remote work is better in every metric.
If they really want people to have a better rapport, there are other ways besides decreeing blindly that everyone must travel to a central space. It just puts all the cost and burden on the employees and takes 0 effort from management to actually, ya know, manage.
- finding and hiring staff will be harder
- attracting top tier talent will be harder
- rent will be more expensive
- childcare will require more sick leave
- illness will require more sick leave
- expanding to new territories will be harder
The c-suite evaluated the cost of rent pretty good and had an existing problem of not being able to hire above average younger talent because the work they were doing was pretty boring. Advertising a good hybrid wfh policy (once a week or once a month in-office depending on different factors) has brought in good people.
Basically, they saw that it was bringing in cash.
The biggest challenge has been getting new hires integrated well with existing team leaders.
There’s also team leaders that refuse to use Teams/zoom, but also don’t answer their phone. In the past you could corner them in their office but now they sort of anchor their team. It’s mostly self-repairing as they stagnate and other teams flourish.
In my corporate experiences, these decisions were made unilaterally by the C suite without discussion.
Our CEO literally woke up one Monday and demanded RTO by Friday. Fucking asshole works from home in Hawaii
what really needs to happen is for all the workers to just say “no” and continue working from home
what are they gonna do, fire everyone? good luck
With tech, they hire a bunch of visa folks
The meeting was pretty much, we are going back to work in the office. I went back for the time it took me to find a remote job
At the beginning of COVID, when our CEO decided all non-essential staff should immediately begin working from home wherever possible, our CIO declared all of IT to be essential on-site. Shortly after the meeting when the CIO made that announcement, people at my level (bottom-level manager) essentially all announced to our supervisors that we were going to refuse to abide by that directive.
My direct supervisor told us to relax and essentially said that the entire management team was going to sit the CIO down and have a come to Jesus meeting. Shortly after that the directive was reversed, and it was left up to managers to decide if their team could be WFH, hybrid, or fully on-site. It’s hard to stay CIO if the entire IT group is in revolt.
For many months after that, in the regular management meetings, the CIO would talk about how difficult it was and how everyone was suffering due to the requirement to work from home. He would talk about how many people told him they were longing for the day when we could all be on-site again. I have no idea who those people were, because everyone I spoke to thought WFH was fantastic.
I have heard that when productivity didn’t drop, the CEO asked, “Why are we paying all these high rents for office space if everyone is just as productive and happier working from home?” It was around that time that the CIO started to talk about WFH like it was a good thing.
At this point, there’s no sign it will ever end. We are allowed to hire people from out-of-state and most people are WFH full time. They’ve reduced office space to the point where we all couldn’t work on-site even if we wanted to.
CIO been spending their money on REIT shares…
He would talk about how many people told him they were longing for the day when we could all be on-site again. I have no idea who those people were, because everyone I spoke to thought WFH was fantastic.
My old CEO would pull this bullshit, too. He’d say like “I’ve heard from people that [wild claim]”. The team was like 5 people it’s not like I couldn’t go ask people if they actually said that. I think it’s some sort of asshole-lying mechanism.
It’s a classic manipulation technique. It’s never “I think that…” It’s always framed as “Lots of people think that …” to give it credibility, but it’s a lie and meant to manipulate you into feeling like you are alone and the group all thinks differently than you to force you to comply.
Lots of leaders do it. Trump does it constantly. CEOs do it. Abusive people do it in their relationships.
Once you know it and recognize it you start seeing it EVERYWHERE from dishonest people.
It’s funny to ask them “Which people say that?” If you can. It makes them SQUIRM.
Boiled down to “Me in charge. Come in” as a response to leadership.The reality is they rented out an office to hold 200 people, laid off half of them, and then were upset the place always looked empty when they brought clients around. It went from “You all need to be in office on Wednesdays, so we look like a big company”, to wanting everyone to return.
The problem is a good majority of people had moved away during covid. Those were the first people to be laid off unless they were superstars. They had a lease agreement until 2026 and were already subletting the previous offices (They kept moving into new spaces as they grew before other leases were up) that also had long contracts. I am no longer there, but rumor is they are trying to sublet the 200 person office and find yet another small space. They are slowly turning into a real estate company.
very depressing, I barely tried on the handjob.
I had an employer that took a survey and had managers get feedback from their teams. The most common thing seemed to be wfh from it was not all of it. In discussions many would not mind having an office option for those who preferred it and as an emergency place to go if one lost power/internet and for some big time meetings (project scope type of things). Ultimately the companies formal policy was work where you want to but they rented so they basically stopped renewing contracts. By the time I left they had three offices. One was the original office of the company in the stix that they owned. The other was a new headquarters on the east coast and the last was in atlanta and im pretty sure that would go away once it contract ended. Would not be surprised if they sold the original office if they could get a good price.
It seems surprisingly reasonable.
They let us know their thinking here. I don’t personally have a dog in this fight, live a few blocks from the office so either way is fine with me. They landed on “hybrid” but now I just work at the office and do not bring my laptop home.
Their thinking:
Collaboration really is better in the office, zoom does not replace the experience of just being here and aware of conversations around you (fair enough) we are already paying for the office (not a real reason, could sublease, we already did with half of it).
My thinking (they don’t care but) working from home benefits the rest of my family more than it does me. I can bike to work and do. Reclaimed the space in my house that was office, and absolutely ignore work when I’m home. Certainly would not force anyone else to, like my job did, but glad to have a space to work outside my house.
I can’t speak to what’s said in the meetings, but in a similar vein, we were told we needed to come back to the office 2-days a month because other people had to work from the office, and it wasn’t fair to them.
That’s it. That’s the rationale. Because it wasn’t fair to the people who had to be here. Mind you, my team has been successfully working remote since COVID.
🤦♂️ fml
It’s funny to me because of the return to office policy, the price of parking is going up, a lot. Like now I have to fight for an extra $2000 for parking + $1000 for meals + whatever day care will be.
Make a sandwich. You don’t have to buy meals.
The rest sucks, though.
That’s what I do.
Sandwiches don’t grow on trees. Peanut butter is banned in the office. Deli meat is expensive.
Well then explain this one smarty pants!
Hole in one, checkmate! Pshh.
:P
Peanut butter is banned in the office
Most schools have even backed off on trying to do this. For children. Why are adults prevented from eating what they want? No one should be touching othe people’s foods.
It’s my understanding that some people have such an allergic reaction that even the smell fucks them up. It may sound silly, but compassion is in short supply these days, and subsequently should be lauded when seen in the wild.
Peanut butter is sticky. I’ve seen what people do with gum. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ban it in places.
If you’re worried about an adult making a peanut butter mess, that motherfucker should not have a job.
It happens. It’s why we all clean our kitchen everyday. Peanut allergies rose a lot in the past few decades. It’s not like they just get hives. It’s not a hard thing to give up at work or school considering it could kill them. Like in my office we don’t even have assigned desks. I see people leaving crumbs all the time. Imagine them munching away on a bag of peanuts. They’re leaving that dust and crap all over the place. It’s such a small consideration that makes a huge QOL improvement for others. It doesn’t bother me at all.
I just make a bit extra for supper every night, and put it in a fridge, the leftovers are then my meal a couple days latter (never the next day - that gets boring!)
Yep. I suspect that where I work, parking has some role to play in the RTO. I can imagine the department in charge of collecting parking fees saw a dramatic decrease in revenue.
Not that what I think matters to anyone (where I work), but any company that owns and manages their own parking facilities should not make employees pay for parking. It’s just bad form. But what do I know?
Yep it’s just a stealth paycut
Yep. Not counting the time I spent in traffic, nor the gas it took to drive, today I spent $59 just for the privilege to do the same job I could’ve done at home. Tomorrow I don’t plan on forgetting my lunch, so that’ll save me $13.
My company required everyone come back to the office. My team works in a terminal, we can do our work from anywhere. Everyone of my department went back in. I said no.
They said I could be terminated
I said go ahead and fire me, I’m the lead tech, 40 experience, I built and maintain more then half of the automation, I’m the only one who understands networking onprem and I cloud and has a security background.
I dare you.
They said they would make a special exemption for me.
The moral of the story… You can demand stuff from your company if your company can’t function without you.
Can you hire me and teach me the way 😆
You’re what I want to be when I grow up. I’m middle aged.
