Data is consistent with bosses using RTO to reassert control and scapegoat workers.
Overall, the analysis, released as a pre-print, found that RTO mandates did not improve a firm's financial metrics, but they did decrease employee satisfaction.
Drilling down, the data indicated that RTO mandates were linked to firms with male CEOs who had greater power in the company. Here, power is measured as the CEO’s total compensation divided by the average total compensation paid to the four highest-paid executives in the firm.
This is an interesting metric. And the research outcome makes a lot of sense.
Also, RTO policies are garbage - but I'm stating the obvious.
So many places run at varying levels of success in spite of their executives and not because of those asshats. It makes the pay disparities that much more.
Even stupider (to me anyway) was the hybrid schedule I was put on at my last job. You could work from home 16 out of 40 hours every week. Why not 20/20? No fucking idea. However, you could take those hours literally however you wanted.
So, like, I'd come in after lunch and another person would already be gone.
Because of that, all of our communication was via Slack and all of our meetings were via Zoom.
What was the point? I mean I appreciated being able to work from home at least part of the time, but if you're going to let us do it part of the time whenever we want, what's the point of having us in the office ever?
On top of this, it was an office inside a large manufacturing facility, meaning that if they had just had us all do WFH, they could have added two to three more production lines.
The whole thing was fucking stupid and it just made us resentful.
They owned the building and it was not kept up or in great shape, so I don't know if that was the issue. I really didn't understand it at all. They would have been able to be more efficient if we weren't there not because the office staff would be more efficient but because they could pump out more product, faster.
Yeah but if nobody works in offices anymore, the value of those properties will drop significantly. Lots if business have big money tied in their properties, they don’t want to lose that money.
Oh they care, just not about the worker. They care about their real estate holding company which owns the property the corporate HQ is sitting on, and the company is paying a wildly inflated lease to. They care about being able to justify renewing that lease next year.