Remote workers who’ve been ordered back to the office might suspect the directive is nothing more than a power trip by the boss, and research suggests they’re probably right.
Return-to-office (RTO) mandates are often a control tactic by managers and don’t boost company performance, according to a new research paper from the Katz Graduate School of Business at the University of Pittsburgh. What’s more, the mandates appear to make employees less happy with their jobs.
Article content Article content Researchers at the university examined how RTO mandates at 137 S&P 500 companies affected profitability, stock returns and employee job satisfaction. They discovered that companies with poor stock market performance were more likely to implement RTO policies. Managers at such companies were also likely to point the finger at employees for the company’s poor financial showing, seeing it as evidence that working from home lowers productivity. Companies pushing for more days in the office tended to be led by “male and powerful CEOs,” the researchers said, underlining a belief among workers that mandates were being used by leaders to reassert control.
“Our findings are consistent with employees’ concerns that managers use RTO for power grabbing and blaming employees for poor performance,” the authors said in their paper. “Also, our findings do not support the argument that managers impose mandates because they believe RTO increases firm values.”
Indeed, requiring more days in the office did nothing to improve profitability or boost stock prices, the researchers said. But it did seem to make employees miserable, and more likely to complain about the daily commute, loss of flexibility and erosion in work-life balance, according to reviews on Glassdoor. It also made them less trusting of their managers. “We find significant declines in employees’ overall ratings of overall job satisfaction, work-life balance, senior management and corporate culture after a firm announced an RTO mandate,” the researchers said.
I think it’s more likely a way to get a portion of your employees to resign without having to deal with the socio-econo-political headache of layoffs or give severance packages.
It doesn’t boost productivity, but it may cut payroll.
It absolutely does.
https://www.computerworld.com/article/3712680/return-to-office-or-quit-ibm-tells-managers.html
IBM has a history of this kind of stuff - when they need to expand: Remote work schemes, and flexible work hours become more common. When they need to tighten the belt, the first step is a RTO. So long as you are willing some flexibility in the time line, and support employees in the move - it will lead to plenty of people quiting, a few people moving, then you do a small round of layoffs avoiding people who willingly moved closer to the office etc as these are people unlikely to have quick new opertunities and are more stuck with the company/loyal to it.
The Pandemic is not the first time IBM has done something like this, and it won’t be the last.
Now, if we really get into the weeds - a lot of Companies that know this can be pulled off REALLY DO NOT want Remote work/hybrid work schedules to become industry norms, as once they do - these practices for ridding your company of say 1-2% of it’s staff periodically stop being viable and you need to go for a more traditional layoff scheme.
IBM has a history of this kind of stuff
But they never shed the people they’d want: they shed the talent, where those who can’t leave will stay behind.
This is why they can now only exist by buying companies, sucking them dry and moving on, as they slowly offshore all actual work. #byeRedHat
Man, that “Welcome Back” balloon sign is the most passive aggressive thing I’ve seen in awhile.
Real estate portfolios
That and middle management needing to justify their existence. They become much less “relevant” without an office to prowl around in.
Don’t forget HR.
If people aren’t in an office, around other people, their aren’t really a lot of opportunities for random nonsense complaints to come out. And if they do, there are email messages, recorded video calls, and so on that can clarify reality far easier - meaning HR’s job is made clearly irrelevant, and clearly demonstrates it is a mop job for a handful of busy bodies that cost the company more in efficiency, than they earn the company after accounting for their wage.
Media corporations don’t often report on it, but that’s a major contributor. They don’t want to inform people that they’re being forced back to the office because WFH culture is costing the top 0.1%, and the government a trillion dollars per year.
That logic doesn’t work as it’s much cheaper to keep the buildings empty while waiting for the loan to end (businesses rarely own their downtown office) and there’s more profit long term for the owner in converting them to apartments.
Would you rather have a trillion dollars today, or need to wait 10 years and then invest $500M to maybe make a little more several years later? Obviously the trillion dollars isn’t all going to one person, but they’re definitely not all chomping at the bit to completely change their revenue model. Commercial real estate is much easier to manage than residential, for one. Additionally, the big corporations like Amazon, Microsoft, Expedia, etc. all get massive tax breaks from the cities and states that they’re in, with the contingency that they maintain a minimum occupancy in their headquarters. The reasoning is that they get tens of thousands of people moving through the city every day, paying tolls, parking, sales tax, etc… Those businesses aren’t eager to give up their tax breaks that they spent a billion+ obtaining.
I’m not convinced by this tack. Wouldn’t most businesses prefer to just cash in their now unneeded real estate?
Worse than that, most businesses rent. Being able to downsize the office space is boon for any office-based business. Commercial real estate is an expenditure for them, not an investment.
But they still pulled people back into the offices, because it’s actually about management power tripping.
Most bosses would rather burn money in the name of asserting ownership over someone else.
Office space isn’t worth nearly as much if people are working remotely. Much less demand.
youdontsay.jpg
Companies pushing for more days in the office tended to be led by “male and powerful CEOs,”
I think it’s more of an indication that they’re power-hungry, controlling personality type CEOs. CEOs with actual power don’t need to state “but I am the king!”. They just know they are.
The Government of Canada pushed for RTO for all federal public servants under TBS head Mona Fortier. Let’s not pretend this is a gender thing. It’s class warfare. I’ve heard a lot of men and women upper management parrot the same BS talking points. They’re all scum.
Right, but phrasing it as a gendered issue gets us fighting each other instead of acknowledging it for what it is.
Our ceo is a woman and she values being around people, so being the boss means we all have to share her worldview.
CEOs are extroverted personality types, and they’ve built their careers off of talking, manipulating, and interacting, so they’re almost always going to be the types of people who can’t understand why someone would want to stay home. Plus they get company cars with company drivers, or company helicopters to pick them up at their mansion every morning, so they don’t understand why commuting sucks for most of us.
Management in general, too, often just sees employees as trying to take from them and the company without giving anything in return.
Because that’s what they try to do to people.
It’s certainly what they try to do to employees.
So, obviously, any time they’re not in the panopticon, they must be cheating the company out of something.