Posted on 08/15/2023 10:58:01 AM PDT by ShadowAce
After three years of haphazard plans for getting workers back at their desks, the return-to-office movement has entered a phase of remorse.
A whopping 80% of bosses regret their initial return-to-office decisions and say they would have approached their plans differently if they had a better understanding of employees' office attendance, their usage of office amenities and other related factors, according to new research from Envoy.
"Many companies are realizing they could have been a lot more measured in their approach, rather than making big, bold, very controversial decisions based on executives' opinions rather than employee data," Larry Gadea, Envoy's CEO and founder, tells CNBC Make It.
Envoy interviewed more than 1,000 U.S. company executives and workplace managers who work in-person at least one day per week.
Some leaders lamented the challenge of measuring the success of in-office policies, while others said it's been hard to make long-term real estate investments without knowing how employees might feel about being in the office weeks, or even months, from now.
Kathy Kacher, a consultant who advises corporate executives on their return-to-office plans, is surprised the percentage isn't higher.
"Many organizations that attempted to force a return to the office have had to retract or change their plans because of employee pushback, and now, they don't look strong," says Kacher, the president of Career/Life Alliance Services. "A lot of executives have egg on their faces and they're sad about that."
As some business leaders accept hybrid work as a permanent reality, others are backtracking on earlier pledges to let employees work from home on a full or part-time basis.
As of July, 59% of full-time employees are back to being 100% on-site, while 29% are in a hybrid arrangement and 12% are completely remote, according to new data from WFH Research. Offices are still only half full compared to their pre-pandemic occupancy.
Across industries, major corporations including Disney, Starbucks and BlackRock are requiring employees to spend more time at the office, with executives often citing the need for more in-person collaboration.
Zoom is the latest to reverse course, telling employees who live within a 50-mile radius of a Zoom office that they need to come in at least twice a week.
It's an abrupt shift from the company's previous policy, which allowed employees to choose between hybrid, in-person or permanent remote work.
"We believe that a structured hybrid approach — meaning employees that live near an office need to be onsite two days a week to interact with their teams — is most effective for Zoom," a company spokesperson said in a statement to CNBC Make It, adding that the company will "continue to leverage the entire Zoom platform to keep our employees and dispersed teams connected and working efficiently" and "hire the best talent, regardless of location."
The sunk cost of unused office space has been a major factor in companies' decisions to change their RTO approach, says Kacher.
Even six months ago, companies were willing to eat these costs in a tight labor market to recruit and retain talent. But now, "Some companies are getting impatient, and want to recoup these large investments," Kacher explains.
In New York City, office space costs, on average, about $16,000 a year per employee, the New York Times reports.
Yet the constant risk of losing top talent has been enough to make companies reconsider their strict RTO mandates. Research has shown that companies that put pressure on employees to return to the office are more likely to experience turnover issues than those that don't.
Companies that have mandated a strict return to the office three days a week without first seeking employee input are experiencing the most angst, Kacher adds.
"They're the ones struggling with retention and recruitment," she says. "Some of the companies I work with have even scaled back the number of in-office days they're requiring in response to employee backlash."
The companies that are seeing the most success with returning to the office appear to be the ones that are making decisions with their employees, rather than for them.
Take Ernst & Young, for example.
The global accounting and consulting firm weathered some employee criticism for its initial return-to-office announcement in June 2021, when the firm told employees that they would be encouraged to spend 40-60% of their time in the office.
Their plan was put on pause through the end of the year as Covid-19 cases ticked up once again throughout the U.S., so EY leaders used that time to ask employees about their reluctance to come into the office.
Common threads stood out to Frank Giampietro, EY's chief wellbeing officer for the Americas: Employees weren't sure what to do about pet care or child care.
In response, EY announced a fund in February 2022 to reimburse up to $800 per year for commuting, pet care and dependent care costs for each of its 55,000-plus U.S. employees.
The fund, which is ongoing, had an immediate positive impact on employees' in-office attendance, Giampietro adds. Since EY first rolled out this benefit in February 2022, EY has seen a 150% uptick in office attendance across the U.S.
"It didn't take a complete rehaul of our return-to-office policies to make employees happy," he says. "We just needed to listen to our people and understand what, specifically, was problematic for them, and offer resources to address that."
Kacher anticipates that it will take at least another year or two before companies settle into an office routine that employees are content with and bosses don't regret.
"Some organizations are still in denial that people aren't coming back to the office, and some have moved into the acceptance phase, where they're ready to think more creatively or differently," she says. "But it'll take time for all of us to get there together."
The corporations decided to go in lockstep with petty government tyrants and now they are sad when employees tell them to pack sand. 75% of the corporate suite could be fired tomorrow and no one, especially the stockholders, would miss them.
Zactly.
If KPI’s and MBO’s were measuring tools in the past then they can be measuring tools going forward.
I have a friend who is a VP of sales and was informed she and her team to need to be in office 3 days a week.
Well, many tried to come to office but, found no one else was their and the commute wasn’t worth the effort so, back to working in pajamas and they still over achieve....
Company I just left made it mandatory to come to office everyday. Why? Who knows. It’s not like we ever had a meeting to discuss anything and besides, I’m in outside sales.
WTH would you want your people in the office everyday to do nothing, particularly your highest performers?
That was their answer to dwindling sales and loss of existing revenue.
Lame....
I left...
If they really were worried about carbon footprint, working from home is a really easy solution.
I drive about 5k/year now and most of that is vacations.
In reality, this is all about Commercial Real Estate.
SF is getting pummeled with vacancy and vacancy penalties.
Commercial real estate is dropping in SF.
I am retired, but I still have contacts back at my job.
They told everybody they had to come to work 3 days a week, but they don’t have enough desks. Now the managers are fighting over desks for their employees. Some people come at 7 AM and grab a desk while one is still available.
Some of us are applauding it because we warned about these inevitable consequences way back in March 2020 when this COVID idiocy started.
Now these morons are reaping what they’ve sown. Too bad.
***************
Good point.
They regret it because employees revolted, the best ones quit, and the managers wound up looking stupid
Every last one of them is a duplicitous jerk but, nice try(punks).
Ain’t no one coming back.
Take Great American Parkway in Santa Clara.
About 3 miles long, East to West.
Take a left turn or a right turn anywhere on Great America and travel North or South. 60% of building are empty husks and the rest are partially occupied.
Intel pretty much stabbed many of their loyal employees.
Many of their best left for better treatment and pay.
Now the only employees they can find are those who are stuck or suck.
If you’re job can be done from home, it can ultimately be done by A.I.
These people have leverage, until they don’t.
Zactly what happened at the company I just left.
They had people coming to office who where in outside sales before covid.
They then dumped sales nationally and only had Customer Account Managers.
When I hired back, after a year and a half, I informed them in the interview I could not do that.
Not 3 weeks after starting job, they made it mandatory or fired.
Dasvidaniya...
“The physical office is a relic of the past and only to be used by outdated industries.”
We started seeing that reality before we could spell covid.
One of my wife’s long time friends and a relative gave their notices to their bosses re retiring due to the increase in traffic, wear and tear on their vehicles and them and costs to go to work 5 days a week.
Their former company’s ended up installing offices in their homes and giving them raises to come back to work from their home offices. They worked from their homes during and post Covid B$!
Post Covid, we have 3 younger relatives cutting deals re working fewer days but more hours per day. Basically they work 3~ 12 hour days and get a weeks pay.
One BIL by marriage took retirement during the covid B$ because his company kept adding unpaid hours and work.
Now, he works 3 half days/week, sharing an office in his hometown, with his wife. He still gets his retirement and benefits, and he charges his company a flat fee for 3 hour work days. His company provides all computer/phones and other electronic business tools/services. Also, he has zero travel and no living in airports.
His wife jokes that they/he can do this for decades.
Not coming to an office is a perk that doesn’t cost money to offer so, Catch-22 on the one hand.
On the other is you are judge off KPI’s or MBO’s and regulary exceed them, why would you care where your employee is?
In 2008 the average speed for Internet at home was 3 meg.
In 2020 everyone has a better than 80, 500 meg or 1 Gig connection.
You can send and receive some pretty large files on those connections and still have priority and bandwidth for multimedia...
As I stated on another post, many of my customers are paying for logo to be on the outside of the building but, in 2025...The end.
They are just going to continue to work from home and they don’t care if their employees are on a cruise ship, so long as their complete their tasks.
Bankruptcies will skyrocket in the beginning of 2025 and continue for years as the courts will be backlogged and more companies figure they can work from home and newer companies just never have an office.
Bosses who insist on presenteeism for the sake of it are nutters.
Zactly
In many case a difference without distinction...
7AM? I've already been at work for two hours by then.
I WFH and I start everyday at 5:00AM.
Nope--that's too broad a brush to paint with.
I've been trying to figure out if my job could be done by AI.
So far, I haven't been able to visualize it--even if I were to go all Sci-Fi.
A tight labor market will do that.
~~~
Yep. All the weinies who can’t focus for more than 15 minutes at a time and need their bunny slippers and chai latte are going to blame the whole big, mean, horrible world for not giving them a paycheck when jobs dry up and employers actually get to pick and chose the best producers from the lot.
Of course, that doesn't prevent people from always believing it. Just like there are people who for decades have believed Algore every time he's warned us that we have only 5 or 10 years left.
As long as they force everyone to keep the video on during Zoom calls so race tabulations can be verified, everything should be OK.
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