Study finds a quarter of bosses hoped RTO would make employees quit
- Reference: 1717957635
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/06/09/rto_quit_study/
- Source link:
HR software biz BambooHR [1]surveyed more than 1,500 employees, a third of whom work in HR. The findings suggest the return to office movement has been a poorly-executed failure, but one particular figure stands out - a quarter of executives and a fifth of HR professionals hoped RTO mandates would result in staff leaving.
While that statistic essentially admits the quiet part out loud, there was some merit to that belief. [2]People did quit when RTO mandates were enforced at many of the largest companies, but it wasn't enough, the study reports.
[3]
More than a third (37 percent) of respondents in leadership roles believed their employers had undertaken layoffs in the past 12 months as a result of too few people quitting in protest of RTO mandates, the study found. Nearly the same number thought their management wanted employees back in the office to monitor them more closely.
[4]
[5]
The end result has been the growth of a different office culture, one that's even more performative, suspicious, and divisive than before the COVID pandemic, the study concludes.
According to the report, most employees working remotely and in-person both feel the need to demonstrate productivity, which for more than a third of employees means being seen socializing and moving around the office. That intense need to be visible may actually be harming productivity, study author and BambooHR's own head of HR Anita Grantham concluded in her findings.
[6]
A full 42 percent of employees who responded to the Bamboo survey said they show up solely to be seen by bosses and managers. If bosses think their presence in the office is making any difference to the amount of work getting done, the results indicate that's not the case.
Remote employees and in-office employees both report spending around two hours of every day not working. Those in-office ones, of course, are probably spending those ten hours a week looking as busy as possible.
[7]Dell staff not alone in being squeezed to reduce remote work
[8]To be, or not to be, in the office. Has returning to work stalled?
[9]IBM Software tells workers: Get back to the office three days a week
[10]Bosses face losing 'key' workers after forcing a return to office
Away from the office, employees feel the need to demonstrate presence by being hyper-available and never going offline - the so-called "green status effect," the data suggests.
"The distrusting and performative cultures some companies are cultivating are harmful to bottom-line growth," Grantham said, adding that RTO policies are okay, but not if they don't consider individual employee needs.
"The conversation around work modes is one of the most important things to address and get clear on as a business," Grantham said. "It often gets reduced to just RTO, but it's actually a much bigger conversation."
Also, RTO plans have been a disaster
The study might not be reality-shattering, but it does present data that matches what's otherwise been inferred from headlines.
Economist Nick Bloom declared [11]return to office dead late last year, arguing that implementation rates had flattened, and that remote work had won. By February of this year enough financial results had come out to draw some conclusions about the impact of RTO on profits, and that [12]data showed no improvement.
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And then there's companies and their impressions of RTO themselves: 22 percent of HR professionals who responded to the survey admitted that, despite going the RTO route, they had no metrics in place to measure success.
In other words, companies have been hasty with RTO plans, some have no way to gauge whether it's been positive, and meanwhile employees are miserable (even those who work remotely) because of an increase in [14]workplace surveillance culture. Employee happiness metrics tracked by Bamboo, Grantham noted, reached an all-time low at the end of 2023, although said that the biggest driver in that figure was low pay.
The key to success, whether staff stay remote, return to office, or go hybrid, is an open culture that listens to employees and doesn't micromanage, Grantham proposed.
"The mental and emotional burdens workers face today are real, and the companies who seek employee feedback with the intent to listen and improve are the ones who will win," she concluded. ®
Get our [15]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.bamboohr.com/resources/guides/return-to-office
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/14/return_to_office_mandates/
[3] 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=2ZmYmAZ2gE7zTFWOywMmQIAAAAFI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%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=4&c=44ZmYmAZ2gE7zTFWOywMmQIAAAAFI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] 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=33ZmYmAZ2gE7zTFWOywMmQIAAAAFI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] 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=44ZmYmAZ2gE7zTFWOywMmQIAAAAFI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/16/return_to_office/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/09/register_kettle_remote_work/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/11/ibm_software_tells_workers_to/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/29/wfh_rto_survey/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/03/return_to_office/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/02/return_to_office_mandates_do_not_boost_profits/
[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=33ZmYmAZ2gE7zTFWOywMmQIAAAAFI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/12/workplace_monitoring_report/
[15] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: And the interesting thing is...
Not necessarily the best people. Some people were too trusting when told that remote work would be permanent, and moved to a new location where they could afford a bigger house or a house in the first place, be nearer family or the part of the country they liked best. They didn't have a choice but to quit if the company wants them to come in three days a week and the commute would be extremely difficult or completely impractical.
If a company really was instituting RTO as a way of getting people to quit so they didn't have to do layoffs they would never get what they want, even if the quitters were overall of average employee quality. You could have too many people in a particular department quit, taking a lot of institutional knowledge with them, and too few in another so you'd still have to do layoffs while at the same time hiring in the hollowed out department.
One thing I will call out as BS are the claims I keep seeing that companies want employees to return to work because of real estate. Most companies don't own their own buildings, and they have to pay the same lease cost whether or not someone is sitting in a seat. But there are still some savings not having to light, heat/cool, perform maintenance etc. on unoccupied sections of a building, and even if it is at a discount you might be able to find someone to sublease it. Even when they do own the building, the same applies. Other than being able to claim a larger book value for your building by showing a higher occupancy rate it doesn't matter - and that's a mirage because if they try to sell it it is only worth what a potential buyer think it will make leasing it out. Unless the company agrees to a long lease they won't realize that higher book value in a sale. Making employees return to the office makes no sense at all from the standpoint. The ones who care are those outside of the company like owners of real estate, and businesses in the area that benefit like restaurants and coffee shops, and a CEO is not going to take them into account in their decision making.
Re: And the interesting thing is...
"Most companies don't own their own buildings, and they have to pay the same lease cost whether or not someone is sitting in a seat."
True, but when they see the smpty seats they can't fool themselves they're wasting money. If they bring everyone back they can.
Re: And the interesting thing is...
Three of the companies I have worked for "leased" the premises - from the owners property trusts or other kinds of related parties.
It was one fairly standard way of getting money out the company into something more stable i.e. property.
One of them is now offshoring manufacturing, and a significant factor is that the factory site has become extremely valuable over 30 years, and is worth more than the business shareholding the controlling family still have.
Re: And the interesting thing is...
Quote
"One of them is now offshoring manufacturing, and a significant factor is that the factory site has become extremely valuable over 30 years, and is worth more than the business shareholding the controlling family still have."
I know of one company that did that, their site in north London was worth a fortune, so they transfered the business down here and sold the London site, sadly all the skilled staff stayed in London, so their new south coast plant took ages to start making money as the new staff were trained up.
They say that insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results.... well the south coast plant had just edged towards break even when they shut that down as being 'too expensive' and moved off shore to Turkey(as I remember)
They still did'nt make any profits as the new Turkish staff had to be trained up ......
Re: And the interesting thing is...
"They still did'nt make any profits as the new Turkish staff had to be trained up ......"
That's all sorts of fun for a company that has been only in its home country for it's life. Even moving from the East coast to the West coast of the US can be a big shift in culture although Spanish is widely spoken (or English depending on the type of company). To go from England to Turkey wouldn't be a great thing as a total move rather than an expansion. Different languages, customs, holidays and culture. Each country also will have different permitting and tax customs so learned workflows go out the door.
Re: And the interesting thing is...
"the best people quit"
And they'll have no means of measuring that because they probably didn't even know who they were.
Re: And the interesting thing is...
No probably about it.
I've left quite a few gigs where my coworkers, immediate boss and even their boss was straight up telling me I was quite the professional, so I'm thinking I've finally landed somewhere I can stay, yet HR and accounting was kicking me out the door.
You know, the old last in, first out.
Re: And the interesting thing is...
"I've left quite a few gigs where my coworkers, immediate boss and even their boss was straight up telling me I was quite the professional, so I'm thinking I've finally landed somewhere I can stay, yet HR and accounting was kicking me out the door."
I work in the field of organisational strategy. I ought to be calling out poor decisions, poor performance, asking uncomfortable questions, and (some of the time) being a corporate irritant. What I've learnt time and again that that is what companies say they want, in practice they only want people who turn the handle, and don't give too much challenge. And at any redundancies, it'll be the faces like mine that don't fit who are on the list. I've even seen a £4bn business flown into the ground because the CEO wouldn't accept the advice of the head of strategy (my boss). Discussions got very heated, and eventually, at the point where my boss was about to be sent packing, he backed down and stopped going on about the "cost to serve crisis". That meant he kept his job, at least for the four years it then took for the company to go bust.
Re: And the interesting thing is...
""the best people quit"
And they'll have no means of measuring that because they probably didn't even know who they were."
Beyond that, they aren't controlling who they are encouraging to leave since they might get in trouble by making some people return with no clear reason while allowing somebody else doing a similar job to remain WFH. If they just want to Elon the headcount, this is what would do it.
Hoped they quit?
Why can't they just fire them?
Rhetorical question. You can't fire the teachers pet. Nor find that unicorn to replace them. Nor pay them what the skills are really worth.
I guess my (now ex) company won then as I tendered my resignation when they tried to force us back into the office 60% off the week. Sadly for them they've also just lost their entire payroll team (including the manager) and half of the HR team, who have also either gone already or been offered other jobs and are just waiting for their new contracts before tendering their resignations.
And all because senior management don't like that they don't see us in the office every day looking busy (though they wouldn't admit that was the reason). No, we were at home actually BEING busy getting the job done!
Speaking to the payroll manager just before he got his job offer the company are apparently also struggling to find replacements for the staff they've lost. Oh well ...
"Speaking to the payroll manager just before he got his job offer the company are apparently also struggling to find replacements for the staff they've lost. Oh well ..."
There's also the issue of who will be around to train anybody new. If I had to train somebody, that would mean my output would go down while getting very little from the new hire until they were up to speed. If the new person doesn't work out, that just extends the pain as I'd have to start with the next hire from scratch once again. Do I leave at that point? If I don't like training noobs, I might. If it's something I enjoy, I'd stay. If I started getting flack about my output falling off, I'd start shopping for a new position elsewhere.
Who
""The distrusting and performative cultures some companies are cultivating are harmful to bottom-line growth," Grantham said, adding that RTO policies are okay, but not if they don't consider individual employee needs. "
The article goes on to say that HR and the companies in general didn't put in place an metrics to see if RTO was a positive for the company or not.
Companies can't cater to employee needs on an individual basis. Perhaps in a few very limited cases a key employee will get special consideration, but not overall. The company has to do what is best for its own health going forward.
Newspeak
What I gather from the article is that the abominable word "performant" does not mean, as one would expect, "highly-performing," but instead means, "giving a false image of being highly-performing."
UK - tribunal cases to rise...
"Tribunal cases to rise as UK firms push back on remote working, experts say
Some employers emboldened by ruling against FCA manager’s claim over working at home full-time"
[1]https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/jun/04/employment-tribunal-cases-remote-working-from-home-office
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/jun/04/employment-tribunal-cases-remote-working-from-home-office?
Collaboration, Collaboration, Collaboration
That is what my bosses are saying - that we collaborate better face to face.
It is the same bosses who have shifted the work offshore - so now, most of the people in the team I need to collaborate on a daily basis are offshore - and due to timezone differences, on the days I WFH, the time overlap between on-shore and offshore is greater, as I am not spending the time commuting when offshore are already working - Soon, it will just be me onshore - which I take as time to update the CV before the inevitable happens
And the interesting thing is...
.... the best people quite, those that can score a better paying gig somewhere else. Yeah, sucks for the rest. And the company, in the end.