Dell staff not alone in being squeezed to reduce remote work
- Reference: 1708075806
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/02/16/return_to_office/
- Source link:
Some 60 percent of 2,000 workers across the UK agreed with the statement: "In the past few months, my employer has become stricter about making sure staff come into the office," according to a survey by recruitment agency Randstad UK.
Bosses face losing 'key' workers after forcing a return to office [1]READ MORE
Yet, as [2]Atlassian , [3]Nvidia , [4]Dropbox , and analysts have pointed out in the past, mandating office work can weaken morale and hinder innovation, as employees who have grown used to the flexibility of remote working are questioning any productivity gains and are not happy about the time-suck of the daily commute.
Randstad UK found 54 percent of workers it surveyed described the option to work from home as "non-negotiable," and 55 percent said they'd quit rather than work more out of the office. Perhaps unsurprisingly, millennials and Generation Z workers had the strongest opinions about this.
"Organizations digging in and refusing to budge on remote working could face a great deal of pain as a result," said Victoria Short, CEO at the recruitment agency. "They need to keep that in mind when trying to attract and retain talent."
[5]
Reg readers, as we [6]revealed recently , are mostly bucking the trend, according to a survey that was filled in by more than 5,000 of you. Despite this, many companies in the tech industry including [7]Amazon , [8]Google , [9]Meta , [10]IBM , [11]Dell and many more are calling people back to their desks.
[12]
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Under ideal circumstances, two and a half days in the week was favored by the respondents to the Ransted survey, with civil servants and telecommunication workers wanting to spend the least amount of time in the classic workplace setting. Most employers are demanding at least three days a week at home, it found.
Work life balance was also highlighted as being the most important factor for employees - something many in the tech industry struggle with, as evidenced by the burnout rates recorded in [14]infosec and open source developer circles.
[15]
According to recruitment agency Robert Walters UK, a poll it ran showed that 27 percent of employers in professional services wanted staff to be at the desks more, yet 53 percent of staff said an official RTO policy would force them to look for another job.
Ben Litvinoff, associate director of technology at the agency, told The Reg : "Whilst there has definitely been more a shift towards working in office, this has all but stabilized at 3-4 days in office. So, employers expecting professionals to come into office 5 days a week are going to be faced with a very limited talent pool."
[16]'Return to Office' declared dead
[17]As TikTok surveils staff's office hours, research indicates WFH is good for planet
[18]Get your staff's consent before you monitor them, tech inquiry warns
[19]Results are in for biggest 4-day work week trial ever: 92% sticking with it
"In a similar sense, pure-remote work opportunities are very limited now – businesses in the early stages of expansion may be more open to candidates working fully remote – but many will have plans to localize teams later down the line."
Dell made a broad push to [20]get workers back into the office at the start of this month , yet recent research from the University of Pittsburgh found [21]no profitability benefits from such mandates , though they did make employees more miserable.
The tension comes from a so-called [22]productivity paranoia that bosses have toward staff who are remote working: if they can't see them, they [23]can't be sure they're doing what they are told . ®
Get our [24]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/29/wfh_rto_survey/
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/12/wfh_mandates_bad_for_staff/
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/16/nvidia_working_from_home/
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/23/dropbox_shrinks_hq/
[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=2Zc9AWCsy6rWQvqHIi9pI8gAAAYQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/05/register_working_from_home_survey/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/15/amazon_in_person_mandate/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/08/google_three_day_week_enforcement/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/02/meta_return_to_office_mandate/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/18/ibm_consulting_office/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/10/dell_remote_work_revision/
[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=44Zc9AWCsy6rWQvqHIi9pI8gAAAYQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[13] 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=33Zc9AWCsy6rWQvqHIi9pI8gAAAYQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2020/07/14/infosec_job_change/
[15] 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=44Zc9AWCsy6rWQvqHIi9pI8gAAAYQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[16] https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/03/return_to_office/
[17] https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/20/is_wfh_good_for_planet_ask_tik_tok/
[18] https://www.theregister.com/2023/08/10/workplace_monitoring_select_committee/
[19] https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/21/4_day_work_week/
[20] https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/03/dell_return_to_work/
[21] https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/02/return_to_office_mandates_do_not_boost_profits/
[22] https://www.theregister.com/2022/09/23/microsoft_highlights_productivity_paranoia/
[23] https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/29/wfh_report/
[24] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Stupid move
As far as I can see, it's not the "low level" managers who are behind this, it's low-talent corporate executives, who've read that some famous company is doing this, and they'll panic (the usual C-suite FOMO), and issue an edict that declares everybody must come back.
Saying you'll quit isn't the same as quitting
I'm no fan of these moronic mandated office working edicts, but I don't reckon many people will resign. A very few may move jobs, but with herd thinking by large organisations they'll be lucky to find somewhere that's genuinely focused on results over presenteeism.
Re: Saying you'll quit isn't the same as quitting
Agreed. Making noise on the Internet is easy, finding a new job is very much less easy. On top of that, you'll need to find a new job in your skillset at a company that is not mandating RTO and, apparently, those are getting fewer by the week.
The ultimate irony, of course, would be actually finding a new job with WFH, resigning, and being told RTO a few months later . . .
Re: Saying you'll quit isn't the same as quitting
With the shortfall in employment in most STEM sectors, tbh, if you have a reasonable CV you can definitely find something. Flexibility being on offer is a big draw to prospective recruits.
We have a lot of vacancies ourselves; so many in fact, that we do not advertise them all at once because the pool of people that consider applying is small enough that we are competing mostly with ourselves if we do so.
Whether you can find something else without moving house is a different question, though for a flexible business where presenteeism isn't on the agenda...
Our department boss lives in Glasgow; line manager in Rotherham, and myself in the Midlands. It isn't a problem.
Believe you me, good jobs and employers are out there. If you can't stand your current outfit, take a look around. What's the worst that can happen?
Hybrid
I work from home 4 days per week normally, and $EMPLOYER is perfectly OK with that.
There are 2 offices I can go to; one is fairly local (about 35 minute drive) but that is not the team I primarily work with. The one thing of value in that office is the cross-site engineering meeting where we all get together in the offices (which connect over teams). I find that particular meeting quite valuable because I am one of the design team and the local office is an integration team so we get a bit of a chat going.
The office where the team I primarily work with is about 250 miles away and I go there when it is necessary (new hardware commissioning, troubleshooting and the like) which happens between 4 and 10 weeks apart (it really is dependent on what is going on).
When I do go there I go for a week (all expenses paid) so I am in the office that entire week - that all seems to work very well. Quite a few of the team I work with are quite inexperienced and mentoring them is easier with a teams chat than in an open plan office [1].
Some of the things I work on (apart from designing electronics) are making templates for the relatively new ECAD tool to automate the outputs; that demands peace and quiet so I can properly focus and try things out.
This is a relatively small company, so we get to be flexible, although that does mean wearing a number of hats but I am comfortable with that.
This works for everyone, so why change it?
Note 1. I am not going into the problems of open plan offices but I detest them with a passion as it can be impossible to concentrate.
Stupid move
My pay is shit for what I do but I'm only staying as its a small IT team and I get to be home most of the time. When I go in the office I'm mainly going in cause I want to not because I'm forced to. The only reason this is happening is because there are lots of low level managers that are incapable of managing from home. They need to micromanage and can't when at home so know people will discover they aren't required.