Tech CEOs are backtracking on RTO mandates—now, just 3% want workers in the office full-time
Tech CEOs are backtracking on RTO mandates—now, just 3% want workers in the office full-time
Research shows tech CEOs have given up on rigid RTO policies.
Leaders are perhaps experiencing more resistance than they had anticipated.
Amazon is perhaps the most documented example of how ugly the RTO battle can get: Around 30,000 employees signed a petition protesting the company’s in-office mandate, and more than 1,800 pledged to walk out from their jobs to take a stand.
The tech giant is still complaining that workers are dodging the three-day in-office mandate, over a year after it was announced.
My job originally encouraged it. But we collectively ignored it. They tried to threaten us by saying, "We track your badges" and people laughing. Like, you really want to fire your best employees for that? I double dog dare you you POS.
There was even a brown nosing department lead who tried to bully people like, "I'm at the office, unlike X". And now we all say, "We come on days when you're not there."
I love it that the norms are shifting. Can't let the asskissers win.
My previous company conducted a six week experiment in late 2022 having everyone come to the office twice per week. They compared the metrics and saw that it didn't make a difference in productivity, told everyone they could wfh unless they needed to grab supplies, and rented a smaller office. We cut the space to around a third of what we used to have. In 2019, the owner was considering doubling our space. Some get it, some don't.
This is absolutely the way. One of the companies I work with, a couple years ago had a great employee who was moving out of the state. They had an office, but they didn't want to lose her, so they let her go remote. That employee became unintentionally a work from home trial. She did just as well remote as she did in the office. So when COVID happened everybody got a laptop and the exact same VPN setup she had. Business continued and the sky did not fall due to lack of 'water cooler chat'.
So when lockdown lifted, it was 'welcome back to the office everybody it's great to have you back here, first order of business pack your shit and get it out of the building cuz we're breaking the lease next month'.
They moved all their servers to the cloud and became a totally virtual company. Now they can recruit from anywhere in the country and pick the best people for the job no matter where they live. And what they pay for cloud costs is a tiny fraction of what they paid for office space.
My company reduced office space as well. This nailed the new 2-days office rule. They cannot roll it back
One time I worked for a small company (300ish employees) that was well known locally for being heavy handed and micromanaging. I have never before or since seen so much intentional time wasting by so many people in one place.
Turns out if you micromanage your workforce and are constantly slapping their hands for not appearing to be busy enough, you'll successfully create a bunch of actors who should get Emmys for playing the part of "productive" employees.
On the other hand, if you treat them well, give them the tools to do their jobs, and leave them alone most people will actually do their jobs quite well. Shocking, I know.
Can confirm, experienced this shift myself.
It's worth noting that my job was kind of special in the sense that it was usually field work. I visited the office once or twice a year. The ones with "normal" positions were mostly in the office because it was objectively a healthy work place with nice people, and under such circumstances the "collaboration argument" is actually valid to a certain degree. However, nobody (except from the ones who actually needed to be on site to do their job, such as manufacturing and repair) were under any obligation to physically be in the office, as long as the job got done well. Once in a while us riffraff from the field service department would coordinate and visit the head office together, and that's when it was pretty much packed, as it was one of the rare opportunities for everyone to meet. (This usually resulted in everyone getting an invite to a "technical meeting" at a pub nearby, with some department heads card in the bar)
However, then we were bought by a huge competitor, and they allowed none of this. I kept ignoring most requests that said I had to be in the office a certain amount of time. And when they began contacting me directly and insist, I made sure to select days that incurred the highest airline fees. That's when they started to back off and mostly make demands that made sense.
However, gone were the days when people actually enjoyed meeting each other, be it in or outside of the office. Nobody truly cared anymore, especially since the new corporate overlords wanted to micromanage everything. I left that job a few months ago, and I hear from a lot of my former coworker that there's a really big exodus.
My hope is that the new company ended up paying for pretty much nothing. The profit was in the people and their experience, and the people are taking their experience elsewhere for higher pay and less corporate bullshit.
Because companies are planning to increase hiring soon. The fed is going to cut the interest rate, spurring growth. RTO was just about making employees quit to avoid severance payouts and other layoff perks back when the economy was more slumped.
(it was also about commercial real estate values taking a land dive but otherwise spot on)
Why would they make employees quit when they are just going to hire again? Weeding out the job hoppers?
First you cut the costs and get a bonus for that, then you fill the empty roles, and then get a bonus for that
It's like when you cancel your Netflix when money is tight and then resub once you can afford it again.
We are just labor subscriptions for corporations.
Quarterly profits were down. Next quarter is irrelevant.
Because a lot of CEOs these days only care about quarterly reports. When interest rates went up, companies cost to do business also went up, so to keep the red profit line going up, they had to cut costs somewhere. Labor makes up most of the expenses so layoffs and forced RTO happened.
These CEOs don’t care that they lose years of experience when employees leave. And by the time the lack of experience catches up to the companies shitting themselves, the CEOs hope to have moved on to something else with their massive stock rewards for “increasing shareholder value”. Even the Boeing CEO who wasn’t lucky enough to leave before shit hit the fan is going to get a golden parachute. So really no downside for them.
The office is now full of unhappy underperforming employees and firms are looking for people to replace the talent that bailed when the RTO became mandatory. All of the top people I know are remote except a couple who need the structure to perform at that level. Everyone else won't be coming back so good luck with all that.
There are only 3 reasons employers force RTO: control, real estate, impending RIFs.
what is RIF?
Reduction In Force. I e. Layoffs
An investment vehicle. Reserved Investor Fund
"KPMG surveyed U.S. CEOs of companies turning over at least $500 million and found that just one-third expect a full return to the office in the next three years.
It’s a complete 360 from their stance last year, when 62% of CEOs surveyed predicted that working from home would end by 2026."
Reminds me of a joke from the early days of the Sony/MS console wars:
You know why they call it the Xbox 360? Because when you see it you turn 360 degrees and walk away (or moonwalk away)
Man it's been a minute since I've thought about that movie.
It's criminally forgotten despite having a rare balance of interesting plot balanced with great action and solid special effects. Had the child lead been someone famous it would have stuck around longer. A classic in my book, up there with True Lies, T2, and Predator as Arnolds enduring movies.
I love how Fortune ignores their previous reporting. We all know that RTO was largely about control and a sunk cost in property. It still is. Companies switch between RTO and WFH whenever they want to restructure. Efficiency is the argument, but that's not the goal. Fortune staff know this, but they're writing for the bosses, so they feign ignorance. Meh.
Also Fortune is ignoring the serious damage done to the health of many industries by arbitarily hurtig workers and forcing them off of career paths for no fucking reason.
Fuck MBA rich asshats, people need to stop putting them in charge of things they dont know shit.
offices cost money. companies that are smart would keep small offices in major cities to entertain clients/customers and act as a space staff who wants to use it can. Like if their electricity goes out or just prefer to go someplace besides home. locate downtown or near the airports
Exactly what my employer did during the pandemic. Hired more people and reduced the amount of leased office space. Would be impossible to call us back into office now because we simply wouldn't all fit.
No sign of that changing either. They announced just last week that they're letting the lease on a large chunk of our remaining offices lapse next year, and have already sub-leased out about half of that. We're fully remote for good at this point.
same here. had a name for it that was sorta like work where you want to but realistically only a slice of the company could actually work from an office. I mean just on population it would make sense to do like NY, LA, chicago, and then either houston or dallas.
Offices are physical assets. Companies without physical assets aren't worth investing. Every company knows this. If that goes unused for office space, it might be space where the... poors can live. And they can't think they can live there! /s
Sorry to burst your edginess here, but... You do know most companies rent their office space?
I end up getting in late and leaving early on the days I'm in office and yet somehow I still get good reviews. That should be impossible according to c-level execs that are never in office, come and go as they please, and hold these thrice-rescheduled-hastily-engineered all hands meetings where there are never updates to the things they say they're working on. They just say they've put a large group of middle-management on it right before they introduce yet another half-assed convoluted system to measure employee producivity that they don't even understand. Gotta fire some people because the plan the execs heard about on a retreat didn't work at all and they lost a bunch of money so they need cash to build that AI in order to fire more people!
Sure ... now that they've pumped and dumped their office real estate holdings.
Some companies are desginating some cities as "hub cities". If you're full time remote and can't relocate or go to an office in a hub city, they let you go.