80% of execs regret calling employees back to the office

L4sBot@lemmy.worldmod to Technology@lemmy.world – 244 points –
80% of execs regret calling employees back to the office
theregister.com

80% of execs regret calling employees back to the office::Or so says a worrying survey

24

But they’ll keep doing it anyway to help out their golfing buddies who are real estate moguls

I work at a bigger company and i'm so fucking happy they've embraced it recently and reduced office space by around 60%. There literally isn't enough desks/space for everyone to work on site down and actively expect people to work from home.

They've seen the reduction in real estate and energy bills (this is a big one)

Wow, what a clickbait headline which misconstrues what the sales pitch document actually says totally and completely.

80% of executives say they would have approached their company’s return-to-office strategy differently if they had access to workplace data to inform their decision-making.

Sure, this means some executives may have chosen different strategies - but this does not mean they regret their decisions. They probably would have opted for 5 days in office or just told select groups to come back to the office or something else. Very different than "we wish we didn't have in person staff!" or "We regret asking people to return to the office!"

Shhhh... that doesn't fit this site's narrative that everyone should somehow work from home, and all companies are evil institutions which should be abolished, and we should all get free money from somewhere.

Employees come and go at different times of the day and week, and adherence to onsite policies can vary greatly by location.

This makes it impossible for workplace managers to know how many people are onsite on any given day, and how to best allocate space and resources across the organization.

This short-sightedness always blows my mind. My friend said he needed to be in the office 50% of the week. I said it's 60% right unless you do a half office day. He said, more like 2 sometimes but if everyone did show up at once then there would be no spots.

How do you mandate return to office if you're not going to be doing some the most basic planning for it.

Also, I love this quote:

Meta chief and human being Mark Zuckerberg

Companies do not use valuable metrics to run their business as much as they claim (or tell themselves) and this is no different.

Remote and flexible work is more productive, gives a company access to better talent and improves retention. The metrics are clear.

Companies do not use valuable metrics to run their... ah screw it.

Are your hands rather small? Do you moderate a certain streamer’s chat? Just asking because your name is very familiar to me.

Sorry if that above block doesn’t pertain to you, please ignore if so lol

Wouldn't everyone agree they would do something better if they had more data to inform their decisions?

At the very least most people would tick a box saying they would.

At the time if no appropriate data was available, decisions still have to be made based on whatever is available. And a return to the previous status quo isn't a crazy idea in that scenario.

Yes, most people hate the idea of commuting and trying to focus in an open plan office, but that's not what the question was about.

This is also done by a company, envoy, that helps companies understand their office data. So it's a bit of a conflict of interest.

The greenhouse recruiting study was more interesting. Attrition goes up and companies had a harder time filling the newly vacated roles compared to companies that didn't force a back to the office.

Personally I think the back the office mandates are a way to do voluntary layoffs without making the execs look bad

Agree re it sometimes being a back door redundancy without penalties to the employer, but also senior management are often lazy and assume that others will not work unless closely monitored. This goes hand in hand with being incompetent enough to believe that they can effectively monitor the employees.

Which is shitty, because they lose all of their best people - the ones who feel secure enough that they could get a remote job elsewhere pretty quickly.

Attrition goes up and companies had a harder time filling the newly vacated roles compared to companies that didn’t force a back to the office.

Work from home as an option is a HUGE boon to the employee so of course offering it weighs heavily upon an employee's decision to take an offer. I'd give up 10-20% of my salary for 100% wfh, i'd expect more salary for 0% wfh or some other huge benefit like the office being very close to home.

I already turn down jobs because they are located inconveniently in relation to where I live.

Companies do not use valuable metrics to run their business as much as they claim (or tell themselves) and this is no different.

Remote and flexible work is more productive, gives a company access to better talent and improves retention. The metrics are clear.

The hippo principle, HIghest Paid Person's Opinion. Musk is a nice example for this, making changes that have to be turned back the next day all the time.

Nice, hadn't heard of this. I mean, it's horrible, but glad I know the term for this garbage at least. So thanks

The four day workweek is another example. Productivity is kept, but worker wellness goes way up. Yet no one offers it because it has nothing to do with metrics.

Edit: Four day workweek, not four hour workweek. I wish.

I wonder if it's because it seems like it would be so wonderful, with very few downsides - it feels like we shouldn't do it. Like, no we couldn't possibly dare to have nice things. But the pandemy showed us that we could dare to make radical changes, and that they could just be undeniably better in every way.

But there's not going to be a pandemic to push this one through for us, so we've got to exert our own pressure from the bottom up. I know of at least four people personally who insist on four day work weeks now, two of them developers. If hiring managers just keep hearing "four day work week" as a requirement, and they start losing applicants because they don't have their act together, you'll start to see the change.

Part of the issue is that the current tech market has hiring managers with all the power. Once that flips back, I hope to see this as a common recruitment tactic.

Companies do not use valuable metrics to run their business as much as they claim (or tell themselves) and this is no different.

Remote and flexible work is more productive, gives a company access to better talent and improves retention. The metrics are clear.

Companies do not use valuable metrics to run their business as much as they claim (or tell themselves) and this is no different.

Remote and flexible work is more productive, gives a company access to better talent and improves retention. The metrics are clear.