Return to the office (employee, collecting, average, employers)

[lepoisson]

Has anyone else been called back into the office recently?

At my current employer, we have been back in the office since early 2022 and were able to do 2-3 days at home and the other days in the office. Then they said we had to be back in the office 3 days a week last fall. The rumor mill is now saying that they will ask people to return 4 days a week.

[tnff]

We've been back in the office mostly full time for about two years now. WFH is still available, esp if you need to attend some online training or a meeting. Mainly because you can focus on the meeting and not get pulled into real time "emergencies" that someone dreamed up that morning. But otherwise, back in the office isn't even on the discussion list anymore.

[Roselvr]

Originally Posted by lepoisson

Has anyone else been called back into the office recently?

At my current employer, we have been back in the office since early 2022 and were able to do 2-3 days at home and the other days in the office. Then they said we had to be back in the office 3 days a week last fall. The rumor mill is now saying that they will ask people to return 4 days a week.

I've seen articles in the news where companies are calling employees back. I think that it will be one way employers can fire people instead of doing a general lay off like some companies have done. It's one way they can "trim the fat". I think these companies changing their minds may not trust the WFH employees with what they do all day, even if their work gets done. Bosses don't want to hear that their WFH employees are getting their jobs done in a few hours instead of how long it took them in office. They may expect 40 hours of work when now it's only taking 15 or so hours.

I've also seen articles where towns are hurting because of the amount of office space not being used, they're not collecting taxes from the business plus the damage it's done to local businesses such as restaurants that now do not have the amount of customers they used to which leads to laying workers off.



Here's a list of major companies requiring employees to return to the office

Since COVID-19 restrictions eased, many companies have been calling their employees back to the office.

Some executives and leaders believe productivity increases when workers are in the office together, while others hope to increase in-person collaboration. Some employers are taking extremes to get people back, tracking attendance or threatening to terminate workers who don't comply.

Big city restaurants and bars are missing office workers’ spending on Mondays and Fridays

Workers are back at the office and spending on food and drink three days a week.
But that’s not enough for big city bars and restaurants, which have been forced to cut hours, rethink their business models and even close.
Hybrid work is costing cities and their businesses billions of dollars a year, according to new research.

Remote work costs Manhattan $12.4 billion per year: report

Hybrid office schedules are bleeding the Big Apple’s coffers of billions of dollars as employees continue to work from home, according to the results of a recent study.

Manhattan-based workers are spending at least $12.4 billion less per year than they were before the COVID-19 pandemic drove a shift toward remote work, according to calculations conducted by Stanford University economist Nicholas Bloom’s WFH Research group and reported by Bloomberg on Sunday.

On average, Manhattan workers are spending about $4,661 less per person in the areas near their offices – the largest loss per employee of any major US city, the study found. The typical office has seen a 32.9% reduction in days worked on site.

“Less spending by workers in the central areas means a lot less sales tax revenue,”

[SVTLightning]

My office was given away, so now I have no space to return to in the building I work in lol WFH has made me much much more productive though.

[Hemlock140]

We were given the option at the manager's discretion. I decided to work 2 days a week in the office, and all but one of my direct reports does the same. In order to have coverage every day they work different days to ensure at least two in the office every day. One person comes in just one day a week, but is on call to come in if the other two are both off on the same day.

In many other departments such as IT, legal and Finance no one comes into the office at all. We used to have 400 in the office. When I was there Monday I walked both floors and counted 23.

[MCNJ]

In late 2020 I was in the office 1 day a week for a couple of hours. By Spring of 2021 I was in the office 2 days a week full hours. In the Fall of 2022 they said they wanted me in 3 days a week which was ridiculous because 95% of what I do can be done remotely, and there were only a few other people doing 3 days a week. In February they said they wanted me in the office 4 days a week. Of course they can dictate what they want but the everyone else except the CFO and CEO do 3 days a week. I don't need to be in 3 days a week let alone 4 days a week. I can see where this is going. I'm retiring in June. Good luck to them.

[digitalUID]

No, we have not been called back. Primarily, because we no longer have a space. And if we ever do get a space, it'll likely be a "hotel" space of sorts where one can rent out an area on a given day or days. We are technically considered hybrid, but I only go in once a month.

[Therblig]

I just finished a nine month contract run at a major tech company. They were almost entirely remote, with one day a week in asked but not enforced.

Then the word came down that three days was required. As a contract worker, my mild refusal was overlooked.

Then the word came down that the fun was over; five days in, no exceptions. This despite the various teams already being distributed across the US, so most meetings etc. were still via Zoom. Utterly pointless, a ham-handed attempt by a clueless administration to cure some bad "siloing" of teams and departments.

It was not unusual to have every week bring one or more task reassignments in each team as people just vanished. By the time my contract ended this week, I was often the most senior person in most meetings. I often didn't know half the participants, and more time was spent in that "...what's that?" mode as newbs were brought up to speed than in actual progress.

GlassDoor is filed with excoriating reviews of the management and the pointless practice. Me, I was worried they were going to extend my contract again or offer a hire, and I'd have to turn them down. But I just walked out the door on schedule... having spent two early days actually in the vast empty cubicle farm.

There was an amusing article in the NYT recently about Ford and Tesla. One was completely restructuring office policies to make remote work permanent, with very reasonable in-office days and rules for certain major meetings and the like. The other had handed down draconian 'get yer azz in here and work it off' orders. Guess which was which....

[lunetunelover]

I never left...

[digitalUID]

Originally Posted by Therblig

There was an amusing article in the NYT recently about Ford and Tesla. One was completely restructuring office policies to make remote work permanent, with very reasonable in-office days and rules for certain major meetings and the like. The other had handed down draconian 'get yer azz in here and work it off' orders. Guess which was which....

Probably the one where the CEO (of many companies) is financially over-leveraged on one of his pet projects and who is seeing the stock of his other company plummet. The guy who publicly berates former and current employees on a well-known social media platform. Unless you're one of his stans, I don't know why anyone would choose to work for him.