'Return to Office' declared dead
- Reference: 1701619031
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2023/12/03/return_to_office/
- Source link:
Stanford economist Nick Bloom this week went so far as to declare the death of "return to the office" – a campaign backed by those with real-estate commitments, commercial landlords, and cities deprived of labor force spending to undo the pandemic-driven pragmatism of working from home.
"Levels of WFH [working from home] were falling throughout 2020 to 2022, and office occupancy was rising," Bloom [1]wrote earlier this week. "That trend ended in 2023, with both now pancake-flat. Return to the Office is dead."
[2]
Data from the US Census Household Pulse Survey, from Bloom's Working From Home Research Project and the Survey of Working Arrangements and Attitudes, and from commercial property services firm Kastle, he opined, all show the same flatlined trend.
[3]
[4]
Numerous large employers appear to prefer otherwise. IBM back in June 2020 – when COVID19 health measures were still common around the world – decided to share its " [5]Return to Workplace Playbook " in an effort to provide employers with a roadmap to bring remote workers back into the fold.
Three years after publishing its playbook (and six years after it began [6]trying to reduce remote work ), IBM Software in September [7]declared workers would be required to work from company offices at least three days a week. And other tech firms, like [8]Apple , [9]Amazon , [10]Google , and [11]Meta have issued similar directives.
[12]
Screenshot from WFH Research slide deck, SWAA November 2023 Updates - Click to enlarge
Yet some employers, according to data from Envoy and Hanover Research, appear to [13]regret their return-to-office strategies. And around 42 percent of companies, according to workplace consultant Unispace, have [14]reported losing more employees than expected after my-way-or-the-highway mandates seem to have sent workers packing.
In [15]a paper published in September entitled, "The Evolution of Work from Home," Bloom and co-authors Jose Maria Barrero (ITAM - Business School) and Steven Davis (University of Chicago) reported that as of mid-2023, 28 percent of paid full workdays among Americans 20-64 occurred at home. That's about four times the rate in 2019, and ten times the rate in the mid-1990s, they report.
[16]Videoconferencing fatigue is real, study finds
[17]Amazon to staff: Come into the office – it'd be a shame if something happened to your promotion
[18]Wipro: Get back to the office for three days a week or else
[19]Google ends partnership to build four San Francisco GoogleBurbs
Back in 2021, Barrero, Bloom, and Davis wrote a paper titled "Why Working from Home Will Stick," in which they argue that support for remote work brings benefits for both employers and staff. While workers may demand at least some remote work option, it's employers who really stand to benefit from being flexible about work arrangements, the writers claim.
"The rise of remote work makes it easier for firms situated in high-wage areas to recruit and employ staff in areas with lower wages," the trio of economists note in their Evolution of Work paper.
[20]
"There is also evidence that quit rates and turnover costs fall when a firm lets its employees adopt hybrid working arrangements. And standard economic models imply that the rise of remote work puts downward pressure on real wages through labor supply effects."
Unless the goal of return to the office mandates is actually to drive workers to quit in order to avoid layoffs and severance pay – [21]as has been alleged in some cases – it's hard to see why corporate managers would reject remote work when that brings greater access to talent, reduced turnover, lower property cost obligations, and [22]greater productivity . ®
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[1] https://x.com/I_Am_NickBloom/status/1729557222424731894
[2] 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=2ZWy0NWlOlZaS4Dp6MQpfuwAAAJI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] 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=44ZWy0NWlOlZaS4Dp6MQpfuwAAAJI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZWy0NWlOlZaS4Dp6MQpfuwAAAJI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://newsroom.ibm.com/index.php?s=34178&item=32071
[6] https://qz.com/924167/ibm-remote-work-pioneer-is-calling-thousands-of-employees-back-to-the-office
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/11/ibm_software_tells_workers_to/
[8] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/15/apple-tells-employees-to-come-in-3-times-a-week-starting-september.html
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/20/amazon_mandates_return_to_office/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/08/google_three_day_week_enforcement/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/02/meta_return_to_office_mandate/
[12] https://regmedia.co.uk/2023/12/01/wfhresearch_slide.png
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2023/08/15/return_to_office_survey/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/29/wfh_rto_survey/
[15] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4564075
[16] https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/27/videoconferencing_fatigue_is_real_study/
[17] https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/15/amazon_in_person_mandate/
[18] https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/08/wipro_office_return/
[19] https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/03/google_san_francisco_bay_project_cancelled/
[20] 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=44ZWy0NWlOlZaS4Dp6MQpfuwAAAJI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[21] https://www.theregister.com/2017/02/09/ibm_workfromhome_cull_companywide/
[22] https://thehill.com/business/4110598-remote-employees-work-longer-and-harder-studies-show/
[23] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Stick
"The rise of remote work makes it easier for firms situated in high-wage areas to recruit and employ staff in areas with lower wages," the trio of economists note in their Evolution of Work paper.
and here is the stick.
Unfortunately idle government won't update the employment law so that employees doing the same job are paid the same wage. There is no reason why someone living in the backwoods should be paid lower wage if their work is as good as someone living in London. There is not going to be any levelling up if people outside of M25 earn third world wages.
Workers make that mistake not standing up for themselves and think that if they don't spend money on a flashy pad in the up and coming area, they deserve to be paid less.
It's a sort of paradox - when workers enjoy doing what they do, they think it is wrong to ask money for it.
I think the WFH rate will creep up
In a few years time, when various office leases start to expire, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the company bean counters lean on the the Csuits to come up with an amazing idea that cough nobody thought of - "why don't we mandate that our employees work from home, and say it's for their own good."
My-way-or-the-highway mandates
Since it's the highway that many people working from home wish to avoid, it's hardly surprising that people are voting with their comfortably-slippered feet.
" it's hard to see why corporate managers would reject remote work"
It's harder for micromanagers to micromanage when they can't see their staff, the sort of managers who justify their own jobs by the fact you can never speak to them as they are in pointless meetings all day as a measure of their (self) importance.
Of course
A couple years ago I quit my job after they changed requirement from work from home to working in the office every other week at the other side of the country.
This year my current job has started demanding people come into the office 2-3 days a week even after they said in the job interview that it was remote only. I am currently interviewing for new jobs.
There's always a shortage of Linux etc engineers like myself, why should I work in an office when I can do the entire job remotely from home?
There it is
"return to the office" – a campaign backed by those with real-estate commitments
There it is. There is nothing in "coming back to office" other than stuffing the pockets of landlords.
Empty offices risk losing value and landlords and investors losing money.
What should workers be used to prop up the commercial property bubble?
Why workers don't get a share of capital gains if they are forced to come to offices?
Ah sorry, it's all about those intimate accidental moments with your manager by the office coffee machine, where the brilliant ideas come to light.
They really think people are stupid.