Posted on 06/16/2023 9:32:42 PM PDT by DoodleBob
CEOs are increasingly issuing return-to-office mandates. They may well have legitimate reasons to require workers to return to their desks—and see it backfire anyway.
After prolonged remote work, “people are realizing that there’s been this slow erosion of the culture of their organization,” author and workplace strategist Erica Keswin said on Bloomberg’s The Tape podcast on Friday. “A CEO said to me this week, ‘The party’s over. We are bringing our people back.’”
Venture capitalist Paul Graham recently tweeted that founders he’s spoken with have changed their minds about remote work and are trying to get staff back to the office. “Why were all these smart people fooled?” he wrote. “Partly I think because remote work does work initially, if you start with a system already healthy from in-person work.”
But Keswin warned against bringing employees back in an ineffective or possibly damaging way.
“I talk a lot about designing a day in the office that’s worth the commute,” she said. “What we don’t want is people coming in and no one from their team is there, and they’re on Zoom all day and they’re not seeing anybody. That creates what I call the recipe for resentment. They are mad.”
…
That might also make it more likely that employees simply ignore a return-to-office mandate. Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz betrayed an annoyance earlier this year that workers had disregarded a request to come back to the office one or two days a week.
And some employees will simply not want to return to the office, period. Amazon recently saw an employee walkout over its return-to-office mandate, and workers at Google let their displeasure be known last week, as well.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
If cubicle hives become a permanent COVID casualty the CCP did us a huge favor.
“Office culture” is often as toxic as a Superfund site.
Take a look at the job boards, where counts are posted, hundreds and thousands of people apply for new job postings, plenty of Americans to replace these departing workers.
Funny my neighbors bought a new car recently. yesterday i saw the young woman and said: “looks like your vacation is over” we talked a bit and yes they are all back to actually working.
But can be very productive ... I know it's comfy to belly up to the old lap top in a bathrobe with a cup of joe ...but
just the act of “dressing” for work starts the chemicals flowing in the brain.
Nothing stimulates the idea center like conflict and competition.
All this namby pamby “team” crap is just a way for losers and slackers to hide in the crowed.
now ... I don't mind work from home ... a lot of jobs can be done, and I hope the big cities fold up like cheap tents in a high wind, But as a general rule if we are going to get productivity back on track ... it will happen in the office.
but I could be wrong ..... naaaw
My employer had me work remote from long before Covid, unfortunately there were layoffs last summer, and I had no problem accepting that I would be expected to show up at my new job, and I bought a used car to address the new reality.
Come to find out half the people at my new employer are working from home, and only 20% show up on Fridays. That’s ok, the people signing the checks can set some terms.
Some guy nobody ever heard of is an expert at people working at or from home and returning to work in their offices. What does he say? It depends. No that’s what he says, it depends. Anyone can say it depends and frequently they are very annoying because they don’t add anything to the conversation except more indecision.
Well said!!
The years I worked we grimly joked we were cubicle wage slaves.
Does this mean I can apply for slavery reparations?
If not I might start feeling like the guy with the red stapler at the end of Office Space.
Come on man ....... you like this line ^^^^ better then
this line >>>>>
All this namby pamby “team” crap is just a way for losers and slackers to hide in the crowed.
Well I guess that is a pretty good line ... I thought the second one had a more “hold my beer” and let me tell you ..sort of vibe.
The first one seems more “analytical”
hmmmmmmm ......
You sound vaccinated.
“they don’t add anything to the conversation except more indecision.”
He’s probably working from home .....
What they’re discovering is something that should not be surprising, but is to senior management. The office bees were never there because of a sense of belonging to a “team” and its “culture”; they were there because of the pay and benefits. If they can provide sufficient return for that pay and benefits from home, there’s no reason to subject themselves to commuting and office culture.
Good luck replacing them. Our company is one of many begging people to go on social media and to use their connections to attract people to fill the dozens of vacancies we have for professional staff.
We already slid into having the C team doing what the A then B teams used to do. I work with companies that are filling positions with staff with five years of experience where their predecessors had fifteen years.
Except in many cases “it depends” is at least correct, as opposed to, say, the smug Freepers here who are certain that all work from home is fraudulent.
Culture? LOL. Most corp culture is soul destroying
Most large companies rival the federal government for bureaucratic idiocy. Similar dynamics take hold in both cases - multiple, often redundant layers of management that must approve everything, slowing down every action - administrators and executives afraid to make decisions because they don’t want to be held accountable for a bad one - organizational inertia because of the sheer size of the organization - a tendency toward group think and punishment of independent thinkers, etc.
I HATE brainless bureaucracy with every fiber of my being, whether found in the public or private sector. One of the worst things about it is the assumption that those with lofty titles must be smarter and wiser than everyone below them, which is almost never the case. Yet, because of the authority those people wield precious few of their employees are willing to pop their heads up out of their cubicles and point out an error or a decision that might be putting the company at risk. The more authoritarian the leader, the more they, no matter how many employees they have, are really just sailing out into the turbulent waters of business alone because everyone tends to defer to their judgment, good or bad.
The best organizations have leaders that are aware of their limitations, as well as the strengths of their employees, and don’t feel threatened by a subordinate pointing out where they may be wrong. That kind of humility builds trust which builds real teamwork and ultimately, success. Unfortunately, I’ve witnessed far more of the former than the latter.
Pro tip: If you’re in an organization run by narcissists who can’t utter a simple sentence without loading it up with corporate buzzwords like “buy-in”, “synergy”, “best practices”, “core competencies”, “reach out”, “circle back” (we all hate that one), or my number one pet peeve, “ask” misused as a noun (“What was the ask?” - Really, you can’t just say “request?”). Most of those I witnessed speaking like this were insufferable, pretentious, hyper-ambitious ladder climbers trying to impress people, and the rest were pathetic creatures just trying to prove that they belonged in “the club.” And the organizations these people inhabit are usually pretty dysfunctional because the hyper-ambitious posers are more interested in their own advancement than in the long-term health of the company.
I’m VERY happy to be retired now and no longer having to deal with that weirdness. It used to make my skin crawl to watch and listen to such phony, disingenuous people.
Oops…got lost in my own rant. Meant to say if you’re in an organization led by people like I described, RUN. Life is too short to suffer under such fools.
I wouldn’t want to go back unless they could put me in a cubicle, and I would need only one electrical outlet for myself because I wouldn’t be plugging things in like a personal coffee pot w/warmer, mini-microwave, toaster oven, mini-panini press, boombox or a mini-component stereo system, mini-fridge, mini-juice blender, air purifier, aroma therapy machine, oscillating 3-speed fan, ceramic portable heater, mini-desktop aquarium, etc., etc., etc...Better yet, a corner cubicle with a large window behind it and a really kick-ass office chair. Oh, and I would need only a single 27 to 32-inch monitor, not two or three. Just because you’re not working at home doesn’t mean you should bring all kinds of crap to work with you! I don’t care what “AI” says about it, you can’t be in two places at the same time...Now get back to work, you f*cking jerks!
Office people are no better than the common man who has to show up for work
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