SCC, one of Europe's largest resellers, orders staff back to their desks for three days a week
- Reference: 1729506554
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/10/21/scc_rto_3_day_week/
- Source link:
As is happening at many organizations in the world of tech, SCC is formally reverting to a more traditional style of working. This also applies to staff that specifically baked work-from-home clauses into their employment contracts.
Bosses face losing 'key' workers after forcing a return to office [1]READ MORE
James Rigby, CEO at the £3.4 billion reseller, told The Register , the three day a week office policy has "always been in place" for the last couple of years, but what has changed is that "we're reinforcing it."
He said some staff came into the office "sporadically" and SCC was now "mandating" the return. That "achieves the right balance of some flexibility and some home work… to get teams interacting together with customers, suppliers and other colleagues in the right mix."
The policy begins on November 1 "across the board" in terms of the UK, France and Spain and every trading department. The rationale is to foster a "greater level of collaboration and interaction, particularly for the younger people who need that contact to progress."
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SCC employs 8,000 staff across the organization. Some have told us they're not happy about the mandate, and see no reason why sales specialists, product and solution architects and other functions need to be on site. Those that requested work from home policies are, we're told, considering forming a group to take their case to employment lawyers.
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Rigby said it is a "relatively small number" of workers that specified work-from-home contractual clauses who joined during the pandemic or since. "We'll deal with those on a case by case basis, and talk to those individuals about, you know, how we can achieve the best balance."
He said the mandate is not designed as a stealth cost cutting measure as some staff fear, following a leaner fiscal 2023. UK sales grew 4 percent to £916 million in the year to March 2023, and earnings before income tax, depreciation and amortization fell 60 percent to £11.2 million, according to [5]profit and loss accounts [PDF] recently filed at Companies House.
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Business has since picked up considerably, said Rigby, and he reckons the RTO move is about a "long-term" strategy and "trying to get us back to a more productive, collaborative culture."
"I'm not looking to lose people deliberately by doing this."
[7]91% of polled Amazon staff unhappy with return-to-office, 3-in-4 want to jump ship
[8]Study finds a quarter of bosses hoped RTO would make employees quit
[9]Return to Office mandates boost company profits? Nope
[10]Most Londoners would quit before they give up working from home
SCC sells remote working tech and services, saying in its own [11]marketing material that the "way we work has undergone a seismic shift. Organizations have rapidly accelerated the adoption of remote working with solutions from Microsoft Teams to Town Hall events in an effort to achieve the benefits a work-from-anywhere strategy can deliver. Not only does this represent a shift in technology but also in culture, with remote working set to replace the office environment indefinitely."
The Reg asked Rigby what he'd say to customers that buy those solutions.
"I think most people would subscribe to a hybrid way of working. We've not gone all in the office, and we've not gone all remote working. And I think every customer I talk to would agree with that, they're all facing these challenges themselves with their own workforces to increase collaboration and productivity."
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It is certainly correct that unlike [13]Dell , [14]AWS and others, SCC is still currently allowing for some flexibility. The exact days in the week to work on site are to be determined by team leaders.
Asked if SCC can foresee initiating a five-day week, the CEO said: "We'll see how this goes. At the moment no, I think this is the right balance for us and I think it can work. We're not ready to move back to four or five days… that's not for everybody."
'Return to Office' declared dead [15]READ MORE
As for moving to 9.30am to 5.30pm working hours, instead of the option to start earlier and end earlier, or start later and finish the day later, the CEO told us:
"We did have a trial of core working hours… we're stopping that trial, then we get people back full time interacting those three days a week." He said this option was not abused by staff, though we suspect there is an element of that in the decision.
With so many companies – in and out of tech – calling staff back to their desks, this is a topic that isn't going away any time soon.
The advantages and disadvantages seem debatable and no doubt we'll keep on debating them. ®
Get our [16]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/29/wfh_rto_survey/
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/channel&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZxZ6pQrroCZoV3csRxf1eAAAAJE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/channel&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZxZ6pQrroCZoV3csRxf1eAAAAJE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/channel&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZxZ6pQrroCZoV3csRxf1eAAAAJE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/01428210/filing-history/MzQzNzMzOTE3NmFkaXF6a2N4/document?format=pdf&download=0
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/channel&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZxZ6pQrroCZoV3csRxf1eAAAAJE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/25/amazon_staff_return_office/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/09/rto_quit_study/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/02/return_to_office_mandates_do_not_boost_profits/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/15/wfh_pulled_quit_survey/
[11] https://www.scc.com/it-solutions/digital-workplace/remote-working/
[12] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/channel&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZxZ6pQrroCZoV3csRxf1eAAAAJE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/26/dell_sales_staff_full_rto/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/16/hybrid_amazon_return_to_work/
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/03/return_to_office/
[16] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
I think the words he's looking for are "constructive" and "dismissal". It'll be interesting to see how that works out.
I suspect pressure will be applied to those employees to change their contracts. I still don't really get why tech companies, especially ones flogging remote working or collaboration services are doing this. The expression 'eat your own dog food' springs to mind. Or perhaps SCC isn't hiring the right employees. WFH can increase productivity and save money because employers don't need as much office space or costs maintaining that space. As long as the work is getting done, it's great. Measuring productivity is pretty simple, and doesn't mean installing spyware.
My business has mostly been on the design side, and and a lot of 'productivity' tools can't measure key things like thinking time. So I may be staring into space or pacing around trying to figure out how to make something work, which activity monitoring can't measure. I've had staff supporting this kind of work, ie bids, RFPs etc who've pretty much all been home workers. I can measure productivity simply by checking tasks and responses are coming in on time. Or preferably early, which then factors into any bonus or pay rise decisions. Staff aren't stressed by commutes and I think that can be a big productivity bonus. A happy employee is a productive employee.
I also get a bit boggled about the companies that think a 3-day in-office week is a good thing. I haven't needed to buy a season ticket in a while, but those were weekly, monthly or annual, and I've no idea if train companies have come up with an offer that suits the 3-day thing. That seems a lousy idea when general policy is supposed to encourage the use of public transport.
>I also get a bit boggled about the companies that think a 3-day in-office week is a good thing. I haven't needed to buy a season ticket in a while, but those were weekly, monthly or annual, and I've no idea if train companies have come up with an offer that suits the 3-day thing. That seems a lousy idea when general policy is supposed to encourage the use of public transport.
With LNER at least, you can buy flexible season tickets that usually work for something like 10 days in a month. Not enough to meet the ~12 days that 3/week in the office would need and not much cheaper than a standard season ticket (and more expensive than a Hull Trains season ticket)
Bad management
You shouldn't care where your employees are working just that they're doing a bloody good job for your company.
If you feel the only way to do this is to have them sat in an office then you really should move away from management.
The best balance for who?
I still don't see any evidence to back up claims about better productivity or "collaboration". I've worked fairly much exclusively from my home for the last three decades. Although I'm a sample size of one, I get twice as much done when I'm working from home than I do at any of the company's offices.
This type of "one size fits all" management is what causes normal folk to rename management to manglement.
A company that has a toxic culture, incompetent leadership, a lack of strategy, and a weak CEO, says what?
Paying for the office space
Yet another case of a company deciding that if they are going to be paying for all of this office space then their staff are damn well going to use it!!
WFH... not for every manager
WFH is great, but it is not suitable for everybody and every job. And even more so, not suitable for every manager...
During Covid my company worked explicitly from home, for the duration of some 12 months or so... it worked great for me, but we lost a few people who could not manage the independence and self-discipline which is an absolute must in such conditions. In my conversations with some colleagues, they have stated that they absolutely cannot concentrate and work from a home environment and they definitely prefer going to the office.
There is the other issue with allowing some people to work remotely: What criteria would be used to determine who can, and who cannot, work from home?
I do prefer working from home, it allows me the peace and quiet to concentrate and be productive. In the office, a lot of time is lost in random chatting, discussions not work related, etc. And at home, if I need to discuss something with a colleague, we can always use chat, or voice/video calls. And because we use such tools, the discussions are kept on topic (most of the time), which saves time.
The problem is that if your manager is not one of these people who can work from home, then you are doomed. The manager will force his/her point of view, regardless of what is the best way to achieve the highest productivity from the employee.
Shiver!
"We'll deal with those on a case by case basis, and talk to those individuals about, you know, how we can achieve the best balance."
This is the sort of menacing talk that would send cold chills down anyone's back.
This sort of talk would better fit a maniacal overlord relaxing in his secret base inside an extinct volcano. Complete with a white cat.
Would you work for someone who speaks like this?
If you do you have my deepest sympathy.
"This also applies to staff that specifically baked work-from-home clauses into their employment contracts."
I think the words he's looking for are "constructive" and "dismissal". It'll be interesting to see how that works out.