80% of execs regret calling employees back to the office
- Reference: 1692124325
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2023/08/15/return_to_office_survey/
- Source link:
But a recent [1]survey [PDF] has many such executives admitting exactly that: they didn't have the data and they just went with their gut. This is according to info from Envoy and Hanover Research, which surveyed over 1,156 senior executives (vice president or greater) and workplace managers in the US. According to their report, a whopping 80 percent of the execs say they would have approached their company's return-to-office strategy "differently" if they had access to workplace data to inform their decision.
The report notes that "this is cause for concern — since individual biases and limited perspectives can turn out to be costly" and adds:
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.
The report is dotted with quotes from building managers, catering crew, and facilities and real estate managers hoping their bosses are going to stop throwing them into the deep end by not providing data on who will be in when.
Who sits where?
Google appears to be a bit thoughtful about the logistics of its return, having spent half a billion exiting real estate contracts to "align with" its new headcount after laying off [2]12,000 staff .
After describing the empty desks that met those who returned to the office as a "ghost town" in [3]March , Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the company had to optimize its use of what expensive real estate remained, and that coming into the office once or twice a week was not efficient. "We should be good stewards of financial resources. We have expensive real estate. And if they're only utilized 30 percent of the time, we have to be careful in how we think about it." The search giant recently sent workers missives threatening to take [4]"next steps" if they don't come in three days a week.
[5]
And more and more businesses are sending their workers in, with even [6]remote working poster child Zoom restructuring its hybrid model and sending folks to a desk. Judging by an email leaked by its staffers, [7]Amazon appears to be sending warning letters to those who don't report for duty at an office for the required three days.
[8]Dell reneges on remote work promise, tells staff to wear pants at least 3 days a week
[9]Working from home could kill career advancement, says IBM CEO
[10]Get your staff's consent before you monitor them, tech inquiry warns
[11]Bosses face losing 'key' workers after forcing a return to office
Did you really move to the countryside, though?
According to Eptura's Q2 Workplace Index, desk bookings across the UK have risen 73 percent year-over-year. Epitura provides software for workplaces, people and assets.
That report also noted that while during the pandemic much was made of people relocating to more affordable, desirable properties, farther from the office, the real picture is "somewhat different." Eptura said the vast majority of those it surveyed (73 percent) have always lived within commuting distance of their office (the highest being 81 percent in the US and the lowest being 54 percent in France). Overall, only 9 percent of those surveyed have moved away and not subsequently returned, it said.
[12]
Neither of these reports address the underlying question many have, which is "what is the key driver for changing the policy and what is the hoped for outcome?"
[13]Meta chief and human being Mark Zuckerberg has said that "engineers perform better in person," and we can only hope that is true. IBM's Arvind Krishna, meanwhile, is [14]concerned about everybody's careers. And then there's pressure from the state to [15]keep cafes open , plus pressure from investors who own commercial property, not to mention the pension funds who do – some of them the same funds that will ultimately look after affected tech workers. After all, [16]$453 billion has been wiped off the value of office real estate since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
[17]
Whatever the motivation – a nefarious plan linked to the real estate market, performance-based shares or bonuses – many would sleep better at night knowing it's a rational act rather than execs reacting to reading about [18]Elon Musk doing the [19]same . What do you think, readers? ®
Get our [20]Tech Resources
[1] https://envoy.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Workplace_Data_Report_Final-Document-Envoy-230808-1.pdf
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/20/google_to_chop_12000_employees/
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/07/wfh_google_clouds_offices_empty/
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/08/google_three_day_week_enforcement/
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZNv1itjH2hWds0bXTWePGAAAAYE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2023/08/11/zoom_london_office/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2023/08/11/amazon_memo/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/10/dell_remote_work_revision/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/04/working_home_ibm/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2023/08/10/workplace_monitoring_select_committee/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/29/wfh_rto_survey/
[12] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZNv1itjH2hWds0bXTWePGAAAAYE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/02/meta_return_to_office_mandate/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/04/working_home_ibm/
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/27/ohio_budget_wfh/
[16] https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/03/remote_work_real_estate_values/
[17] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZNv1itjH2hWds0bXTWePGAAAAYE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[18] https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/22/interview_digital_transformation/
[19] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-10/musk-s-first-email-to-twitter-staff-ends-remote-work
[20] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Idiocracy
The real estate lobby has pushed hard to spin a narrative for the C level that says doom awaits companies that don't drag their staff kicking and screaming back to the office, despite all the problems that created, and despite the fact that not a single company appears to have collapsed due to THEIR employees not coming back. But many of them want your manager to bring you back in so they can renew their lucrative contract to supply prison grade single ply toilet paper.
We should start subdividing these spaces into additional housing, right sized for work from home, and for smaller corporate offices build around the customer facing operations and team spaces. That will leave space for startups and room in budgets for a living wage.
Meta chief and human being Mark Zuckerberg
Citation needed.
Re: Meta chief and human being Mark Zuckerberg
I'm pretty sure I've seen sources saying he's chief of Meta.
Re: Meta chief and human being Mark Zuckerberg
I think he passed Voight-Kampff test on his second try.
We have expensive real estate.
> And if they're only utilized 30 percent of the time, we have to be careful in how we think about it
> Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the company had to optimize its use of what expensive real estate remained, and that coming into the office once or twice a week was not efficient.
In other words, you are less important than the real estate. You are worth more to Google as a seat warmer than you are - well, anything else, really.
Re: We have expensive real estate.
Translation: We've still got all this office we don't need and it's embarrassing.
Overall, only 9 percent of those surveyed have moved away and not subsequently returned, it said.
Given how long moving typically takes, and the fact that many people won’t have really believed that they would never have to come back to the office, isn’t 9% a fairly high number to have actually moved three years on?
Vast majority??
> Eptura said the vast majority of those it surveyed (73 percent) have always lived within commuting distance of their office...
Since when has 73% been a vast majority? I would class it as a moderate majority (and 52% as a wafer-thin majority). 95% would be "vast".
always lived within commuting distance of their office (the highest being 81 percent in the US and the lowest being 54 percent in France)
Is the criterion the same in all countries? In my experience the French (outside Paris) consider a commute of more than 20 minutes to be excessive, they thought I was crazy to have 45 minutes. My US colleagues didn't find 2 hours to be unusual.
I'm in the US, and people who live near me think 20 minutes is about as far as they want to drive each way to work. My last job where I had to go in every day (pre-COVID) was 15 minutes.
Of course I'm not in one of the big dysfunctional cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, Houston... Those completely warp your psyche and sense of reasonableness. The 2 hour each way commuter is someone who gets a job in, say, Los Angeles, but can't afford to have a family home in Los Angeles, so they go live in one of the outer ring areas. And of course we have no decent rail systems so then they have 'no choice' but to drive into the complete hellhole that is Los Angeles traffic every day, and then drive out at night, ditto. I don't think (opinion time!) anyone in their right mind would consider 2 hours each way a reasonable commute daily, especially if it's driving so they can't be reading, gaming, etc while doing it like people on a train can. I've known some people who 'had' to do it for a while, but at least they understood it was a terrible thing, hated it, and eventually escaped it.
If you're talking about two hours total (one each way), then I would still consider it quite excessive, but it's what typical people driving in those big dysfunctional cities are doing every day and they've just accepted their fate. So yeah, not 'unusual' for them. And even in the medium sized cities (Honolulu, San Diego, Charleston, Colorado Springs, El Paso, Knoxville), where you can reasonably get a home near your job (or vice versa) you have some people who just decide to live way the heck out in the middle of nowhere because they can build a house cheaper there, but that's their choice, not necessary. Most of us do not want to drive that much. Driving cross country on holiday is fun, commuting is zero fun.
Ha ha, no
Management never knows what it's doing. It always goes by its FEELINGs.
And their FEELINGs were telling them that their FEELINGs were hurt by not having enough employees to jabber at senselessly all day in the office and ruin their productivity.
So back to the office you go so executives can feel like they're actually doing something useful again (they're not).
"engineers perform better in person,"
How could they work any other way?
To steal and modify a line from Spock:
"Humans have gut instincts"
"...Have you considered having them removed?"