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Executives spent the better part of three years enticing, coaxing, cajoling, asking, and then finally demanding their employees return to the office. White-collar employees wanted the flexibility to work remotely, while companies decided coming to the office was non-negotiable, and lax suggestions to return to the office eventually became clear directives—even threats. In the latest example of the latter, Bank of America recently sent “letters of education” to workers who repeatedly skipped out on the office, warning them that a failure to come in within the next two weeks could lead to “further disciplinary action.” For as much as some...

Tech workers at the New York Times plan to walk out Monday afternoon to protest the company's return-to-office policy.Why it matters: The Times' Tech Guild, which represents more than 600 staffers, is trying to negotiate its first contract with management after voting to unionize in March 2022.Catch up quick: The guild has argued that new remote-work policies violate the terms and conditions set when their union was ratified in 2022.A Times spokesperson told Axios in August that the company's return-to-office policies were introduced before the Tech Guild was recognized.The New York Times Guild, which represents the majority of the Times'...

…A strong RTO push is likely to blunt the gains of the last two years — when U.S. women reached new highs in labor force participation and men a new level of unpaid household work. It was nowhere near equality, but we were heading in the right direction. … A 2016 analysis from …Australia found that men's applications for flexible work arrangements were twice as likely to be rejected as women's….Although such arrangements increased women's job satisfaction, they seemed to have the opposite effect on men, who said they had been stigmatized by upper management. One manager actually said it...

LGBTQ dating app Grindr ended its remote work policies and forced employees to relocate. Nearly half of its staff left. In early August, Grindr announced a return-to-office mandate. The policy gave workers two weeks to choose between relocating to their respective team’s newly assigned “hub” city to work in-person twice a week or leave the company with severance, according to the Communications Workers of America (CWA). Approximately 80 of Grindr’s 178 workers were forced to leave as of August 31, the CWA said Wednesday. Many of these workers were hired remotely and were required to relocate to new “hub” cities...

Office attendance is slumping again and bosses have a warning: We are a worse company when you stay home. In buildings across 10 major U.S. cities, office occupancy has fallen back below 50% for the past three weeks, according to Kastle Systems, which tracks security swipes into offices. The drop comes despite new return-to-office mandates that affect more than 600,000 workers and counting.Hundreds of Wall Street Journal readers—many of them bosses and team leaders—responded to our story on the workers who say “it’s not my responsibility” to save the office economy. These bosses say employees who insist they are more...

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...

Some Amazon employees in Seattle are making plans to stage a walkout later this month, according to a recent report from The Washington Post. On Monday, some Amazon staffers began distributing Slack and email messages calling for other workers to join the protest at the company's headquarters on May 31, the Post reported. The one-day walkout aims to address employee concerns over the company's return-to-office directive, as well as recent layoffs and the company's impact on climate change, the publication said. The event coordinators told the Post they need at least 1,000 Amazon employees based in the Seattle area to...

...Ask these executives why they're pushing the office so hard and you'll get some HR-concocted jumble of "productivity" and "creativity" and "culture." But their less-filtered peers will tell you what they really think. Jamie Dimon declared that working from home "doesn't work for those who want to hustle." Elon Musk demanded that employees commit to an "extremely hardcore" schedule consisting of "long hours at high intensity." And in a recent op-ed article in The New York Times, the finance executive and professional blowhard Steven Rattner railed against working from home as evidence that America has "gone soft." I mean, they...

...Car-charging Software company SAP's office in Feltham, west London, has 10 parking spaces with free electric car-charging points. There are 600 employees, so these parking spots are highly sought-after explains Paul, who works there. ...Free Food A typical offering of free food at the office of firm Time Etc includes veggie chicken, chicken, cheese, veggie sticks and dips, and wraps ...Dog Hotel Sausage-maker Heck has built a 'dog hotel' at its headquarters in Bedale, Yorkshire, where it has 130 employees. ... Team Holidays "We've previously gone to Bansko in Bulgaria for skiing and we've been quad biking in Marrakesh," says...

The beating heart of the Pittsburgh region is the Golden Triangle, and people are its lifeblood. For the sake of the social and economic health of Downtown, and of the entire city and region, employers in the urban core should encourage as many workers as possible to return to the office, at least a few days each week. It’s not just about maximizing the number of warm bodies in office chairs: More workers mean more lunches and happy hours, more shopping and catering, more cycling and transit riding, more haircuts and shoe shines. In other words, more people mean more...

In June, Tesla CEO Elon Musk demanded that all employees return to their onsite workspaces, according to a leaked e-mail thread. If workers refused, Musk would consider it a resignation. Again the news today is that the NY Times can't get people back to work. However, I won't post the link.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams met with 100 chief executive officers, in an effort to cajole them “to get their workers back into the office to stimulate the city’s economy.” He told the business leaders it was time to get their workers back in offices, stating that the lack of people commuting into the Big Apple hurts the city’s economy. The mayor said, “We can’t send mixed messages,” by delaying the return to work dates. “We can’t keep kicking the can down the road.” "Let's start out with a three-day workweek, to let people see how safe it is...