Employees are feeling burned over broken work-from-home promises and corporate culture ‘BS’ as employers try to bring them back to the office

The Conversation ^ | May 19, 2021 | Kimberly Merriman, David Greenway, and Tamara Montag-Smit

[DoodleBob]

As vaccinations and relaxed health guidelines make returning to the office a reality for more companies, there seems to be a disconnect between managers and their workers over remote work.

A good example of this is a recent op-ed written by the CEO of a Washington, D.C., magazine that suggested workers could lose benefits like health care if they insist on continuing to work remotely as the COVID-19 pandemic recedes. The staff reacted by refusing to publish for a day.

While the CEO later apologized, she isn’t alone in appearing to bungle the transition back to the office after over a year in which tens of millions of employees were forced to work from home. A recent survey of full-time corporate or government employees found that two-thirds say their employers either have not communicated a post-pandemic office strategy or have only vaguely done so.

As workforce scholars, we are interested in teasing out how workers are dealing with this situation. Our recent research found that this failure to communicate clearly is hurting morale, culture and retention.

Workers relocating

We first began investigating workers’ pandemic experiences in July 2020 as shelter-in-place orders shuttered offices and remote work was widespread. At the time, we wanted to know how workers were using their newfound freedom to potentially work virtually from anywhere.

We analyzed a dataset that a business and technology newsletter attained from surveying its 585,000 active readers. It asked them whether they planned to relocate during the next six months and to share their story about why and where from and to.

After a review, we had just under 3,000 responses, including 1,361 people who were planning to relocate or had recently done so. We systematically coded these responses to understand their motives and, based on distances moved, the degree of ongoing remote-work policy they would likely need.

We found that a segment of these employees would require a full remote-work arrangement based on the distance moved from their office, and another portion would face a longer commute. Woven throughout this was the explicit or implicit expectation of some degree of ongoing remote work among many of the workers who moved during the pandemic.

In other words, many of these workers were moving on the assumption – or promise – that they’d be able to keep working remotely at least some of the time after the pandemic ended. Or they seemed willing to quit if their employer didn’t oblige.

We wanted to see how these expectations were being met as the pandemic started to wind down in March 2021. So we searched online communities in Reddit to see what workers were saying. One forum proved particularly useful. A member asked, “Has your employer made remote work permanent yet or is it still in the air?” and went on to share his own experience. This post generated 101 responses with a good amount of detail on what their respective individual companies were doing.

While this qualitative data is only a small sample that is not necessarily representative of the U.S. population at large, these posts allowed us to delve into a richer understanding of how workers feel, which a simple stat can’t provide.

We found a disconnect between workers and management that starts with but goes beyond the issue of the remote-work policy itself. Broadly speaking, we found three recurring themes in these anonymous posts.

1. Broken remote-work promises

Others have also found that people are taking advantage of pandemic-related remote work to relocate to a city at a distance large enough that it would require partial or full-time remote work after people return to the office.

A recent survey by consulting firm PwC found that almost a quarter of workers were considering or planning to move more than 50 miles from one of their employer’s main offices. The survey also found 12% have already made such a move during the pandemic without getting a new job.

Our early findings suggested some workers would quit their current job rather than give up their new location if required by their employer, and we saw this actually start to occur in March.

One worker planned a move from Phoenix to Tulsa with her fiancé to get a bigger place with cheaper rent after her company went remote. She later had to leave her job for the move, even though “they told me they would allow me to work from home, then said never mind about it.”

Another worker indicated the promise to work remotely was only implicit, but he still had his hopes up when leaders “gassed us up for months saying we’d likely be able to keep working from home and come in occasionally” and then changed their minds and demanded employees return to the office once vaccinated.

2. Confused remote-work policies

Another constant refrain we read in the worker comments was disappointment in their company’s remote-work policy – or lack thereof.

Whether workers said they were staying remote for now, returning to the office or still unsure, we found that nearly a quarter of the people in our sample said their leaders were not giving them meaningful explanations of what was driving the policy. Even worse, the explanations sometimes felt confusing or insulting.

One worker complained that the manager “wanted butts in seats because we couldn’t be trusted to [work from home] even though we’d been doing it since last March,” adding: “I’m giving my notice on Monday.”

Another, whose company issued a two-week timeline for all to return to the office, griped: “Our leadership felt people weren’t as productive at home. While as a company we’ve hit most of our goals for the year. … Makes no sense.”

After a long period of office shutterings, it stands to reason workers would need time to readjust to office life, a point expressed in recent survey results. Employers that quickly flip the switch in calling workers back and do so with poor clarifying rationale risk appearing tone-deaf.

It suggests a lack of trust in productivity at a time when many workers report putting in more effort than ever and being strained by the increased digital intensity of their job – that is, the growing number of online meetings and chats.

And even when companies said they wouldn’t require a return to the office, workers still faulted them for their motives, which many employees described as financially motivated.

“We are going hybrid,” one worker wrote. “I personally don’t think the company is doing it for us. … I think they realized how efficient and how much money they are saving.”

Only a small minority of workers in our sample said their company asked for input on what employees actually want from a future remote work policy. Given that leaders are rightly concerned about company culture, we believe they are missing a key opportunity to engage with workers on the issue and show their policy rationales aren’t only about dollars and cents.

3. Corporate culture ‘BS’

Management gurus such as Peter Drucker and other scholars have found that corporate culture is very important to binding together workers in an organization, especially in times of stress.

A company’s culture is essentially its values and beliefs shared among its members. That’s harder to foster when everyone is working remotely.

That’s likely why corporate human resource executives rank maintaining organizational culture as their top workforce priority for 2021.

But many of the forum posts we reviewed suggested that employer efforts to do that during the pandemic by orchestrating team outings and other get-togethers were actually pushing workers away, and that this type of “culture building” was not welcome.

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One worker’s company “had everyone come into the office for an outdoor luncheon a week ago,” according to a post, adding: “Idiots.”

Surveys have found that what workers want most from management, on the issue of corporate culture, are more remote-work resources, updated policies on flexibility and more communication from leadership.

As another worker put it, “I can tell you, most people really don’t give 2 flips about ‘company culture’ and think it’s BS.”

[DoodleBob]

I get your point. Fair enough.

But to my point, it's one thing to read online that EVERYONE is getting vaxxed and it's only a matter of time before we'll be forced to take this thing (this was months ago). It's an entirely different thing to drive by testing and vaccine centers, and see EMPTY parking lots, with FULL lots in shopping centers just a few blocks away.

[SamAdams76]

Frankly, the only major employers of which I've heard forcing employees to vaxx up are governmental or health care.

That's what I see too. My company has repeated stated that they respect the wishes of their employees to vaccinate or not to vaccinate. They are not taking a position either way.

The wild card is that my company does business with the military and other government agencies as well as many private hospitals. I'm thinking at some point our employees serving those clients directly may be required to vaccinate. So if that comes to pass, we might need to re-assign some employees to other accounts if they don't want to vaccinate as we will always try to accommodate the wishes of our clients.

My gut tells me though that by summer's end, this big push for "vaccinations" will dissipate like morning fog. Once everybody gets back to work and the masks come off, they will begin to realize how silly this whole thing was.

[Albion Wilde]

During the 1990s, many multinationals were already hooked up with realtime teleconferencing from one nation to another, although all the participants had to be in their respective conference rooms where the hookup was located. Now, being able to “zoom” is a logical progression.

The best-equipped companies will now be able to monitor their employee’s screen time and specific activities online, so no goldbricking. The main drawbacks are that face-to-face offers the most complex levels of human communication, especially when creativity or problem-solving with a lot of unknowns is the challenge at hand. However, the bonding that can happen between coworkers and teams is harder to achieve online.

I think if companies go mainly online, workers will try to assemble “outside” of work for team spirit, grapevine, griping and organizing, but BigBrotherTech will rat them out or silence them. That totally sucks.

[NobleFree]

“The best-equipped companies will now be able to monitor their employee’s screen time and specific activities online, so no goldbricking.”

The best-managed companies will track outcomes not activities.

[Albion Wilde]

it is very hard to keep track of hours spent working when at home.

If you are not disciplined, yes. Working from home means you have to make a schedule, keep a timesheet or log in to a timekeeping program, and not let home distract you. I worked from home in publishing production for years before having children, and after motherhood began, was shocked to discover that I would need a full-time babysitter from age 2 until they started school.

[DoodleBob]

Starcitizen and I discussed colleges and universities as well. The story is a bit mixed; about 300+ have announced mandatory vaxxing but some have excluded faculty and staff from the mandate. Further most colleges are retaining the medical and religious exemption (though the great state of CT just removed the requirement to offer it). Nonetheless, some colleges are having none of that "freedom of choice" stuff.

As I wrote to AppyPappy, there should be great noise made that forced student vaxxing effectively is an Administration (that is unoubtedly whiter than the driven snow and more liberal than MSNBC) saying to the vaxx-skeptic minorities "we are all for diversity and that stuff for virtue-signaling blah blah blah...but your piddly concerns as a black or whatever you identify as, are subordinate to getting vaxxed. We got your support for Bidet now STFU and take this RNA elixir distributed under Emergency Use Authorization already."

And there it is...the "evil" private sector respecting the will of the people and the "pure" govt and education complexes championing forced immunization.

[SamAdams76]

And despite what people who've never set foot in Manhattan say, Manhattan is actually pretty awesome and will rebound (maybe not immediately, but it'll come back).

I started working in Manhattan seven years ago and absolutely love it there.

Prior to that, I was one of those who rarely set foot in Manhattan. Therefore, my images of it came from dystopian movies like "The Warriors" and "Taxi Driver" and what you saw on the TV news with all the riots, homeless and whatnot.

Yeah, it's not really like that at all. Sure, there are bad neighborhoods you want to avoid just like in any big city. But other than the aggressive panhandlers and the scam artists that work the tourist trap areas like Times Square, you are pretty safe walking around most of Manhattan.

I also get a kick out of the fact that whenever something bad happens in NYC, like a helicopter crash, an explosion or big fire or something, I immediately start getting calls from my family because they think I'm always in the middle of whatever it is that just happened there just because I'm in New York City!

Usually though I'm working hard in my 20th floor office and totally oblivious to what they are yapping about. The most exciting thing I ever saw for myself in NYC was Trump's motorcades that would often go by my building because Trump tower is just a few blocks away.

About a year ago at this time, I was starting to wonder myself if the city was ever going to come back. Grand Central was close to empty, the restaurants and even most coffee shops were closed. But each week I go back there, there is more and more traffic, many more people and pretty much everything is back open again. Office buildings are still nowhere near capacity but based on the work orders coming from my clients, we will be probably 80-90% back to normal come September. That is also when the remote-work option for my company is scheduled to come to an end.

[plain talk]

“Yeah one can survive on $2000/ month adjunct pay in the Bay Area. Not.”

Bay area? LOL. Good luck with that! Why would someone want three jobs? Better to have one decent job.

[plain talk]

“But if the boss comes back to the office and you don’t, you will likely hit a career wall.

Let’s face it...while a lot can get done remotely, when you’re face-to-face things are quite productive in a political and issue-clearing manner.”

Definitely. Performing tasks can be done remotely. But careers and promotions are made through interaction with upper management on a face-to-face basis.

[SamAdams76]

Is that silly and infantile and immature? Maybe...but it is the stuff that often leads to a lucrative career.

Not at all. My fondest memories are when we were working on a major RFP. I'm talking millions of dollars on the line for the company and my job was helping to put together an Executive summary for our response as well as helping to put together the Powerpoint for our final presentation. Stakes were high and so we burned the midnight oil and worked weekends to get the best possible presentation put together. If you ever saw the show "Mad Men" - think of the Jaguar presentation as an example. We basically lived and breathed that RFP for weeks.

The victory of winning one of these is especially sweet and my career (and those of my teammates) were greatly enhanced when my team won the RFP for a major bank that resulted in over $5 million in annual revenue for a 5 year period. Since then, we have renewed that contract twice and that account now pulls in close to $10 million a year in revenues.

One top of that, we got a first class trip to a tropical resort out of it with the CEO and some very nice dinners!

[T.B. Yoits]

However, the bonding that can happen between coworkers and teams is harder to achieve online. I think if companies go mainly online, workers will try to assemble “outside” of work for team spirit, grapevine, griping and organizing, but BigBrotherTech will rat them out or silence them.

The trend I see is going the other way. Because the risks for breaking one of the many "woke" rules are job ending if not career-ending, the corporate workplace has gone mercenary - do your work, keep your mouth shut, and keep your personal life and work life separate.

These are coworkers, not friends. Some of those coworkers are mentally ill with an agenda and can accuse anyone of anything and you're a target especially if you're a white Christian male. Don't dare let them know you support President Trump, the Second Amendment, and Free Republic. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a fool or doesn't work in corporate America and has no intention of doing so (because one accusation of something that may or may not have happened now can end your corporate career decades in the future).

[Albion Wilde]

They are the ones who successfully ease out despicable deplorable employees. They perform due diligence on prospects and find out (somehow) that the guy you want to hire is actually a Trump voter, so no.

Fixed it.

[SamAdams76]

There is also great value in seeing the world. Sometimes reading the headlines on conservative media, you'd think we are a tiny minority on the verge of being rounded up by a phalanx of Bidet followers. Then you go to the office and see zillions of people getting coffee, having lunch, holding meetings, and realize that yes there is a collection of statists but most people simply want to love their job, make money, and not have their home torched or workplace looted.

I could have written this myself.

I mentioned that all during this pandemic, I've been commuting to my Manhattan office once or twice a week even though I'm free to work from home every day if I want to.

Reason I go into the city is for the exact reasons you state. To connect with the people I work with, even if it's just to get some coffee (and we drink a lot of coffee) and solve problems and put together plans of action in person instead of a ZOOM session with the barking dogs, crying babies and lawn mowers in the background.

I've come to look forward to my weekly trips to the city as my managers join me there (I'm at VP level so they report to me) and we come out of those in-person meetings with a real sense of accomplishment and all problems are solved (or being acted on).

That said, I have gotten used to my Fridays working at home because let's face it, in most corporations, not much is happening on Friday afternoon and it's a nice to be home to start the weekend when it's still daylight outside. My wife and I now have a weekly routine where we get something nice to eat at a local restaurant around 4PM - before the big dinner rush.

So at least speaking for myself, when we get back to normal, I'll be working remotely on Fridays on a permanent basis.

[Albion Wilde]

I remember MANY things that were supposed to "change forever" with the pandemic...offices, Uber, restaurants and bars and gyms were goners. New York City was also never coming back. I think people have short memories about resiliency, the desire for human contact, and face time.

Sometimes the drek lasts a long time; but new waves of incoming consumers want traditional goods, services and habits. I remember the horrible wave of modernist and brutalist architecture from the 50s ruining many neighborhoods, where a lone house would go "modern" in the midst of a bunch of bungalows. But the market for new homes soon went back to colonials, cape cods, "farmhouses", or McMansions that harmonize with traditional forms. The wealthy may still purchase architects to create "moderne" housing, but they do it mainly at the beach these days.

The way we live has changed, so you do see hybrid accommodations for garages or recreation spaces:

Workspaces and working will continue to find virtual efficiencies, and at the same time evolve improved shared spaces. It will sort itself out in new ways.

[Albion Wilde]

Less gas being consumed, less tires and brakes wearing

Cleaner air and quieter environment. Large employers should do public service ads taking credit for that.

[Albion Wilde]

(I’m a shepard)

What is a shepard, in terms of office work?

[Albion Wilde]

your piddly concerns as a black or whatever you identify as, are subordinate to getting vaxxed. We got your support for Bidet now STFU and take this RNA elixir distributed under Emergency Use Authorization..."

Wait until someone starts inquiring whether the fetal cell line was from a white fetus...

[ConjunctionJunction]

“Maybe it’s my industry (I’m a shepard)”

How are you a shepherd in in office environment?

[Albion Wilde]

“The best-equipped companies will now be able to monitor their employee’s screen time and specific activities online, so no goldbricking.”

The best-managed companies will track outcomes not activities.

I think some of both; and of course, different work products will attract different levels of cyber monitoring.

One of my first jobs as a teenager involved telephoning customers, and we were trained that the company could listen in on the calls at random without our being able to detect it. Between algorithms and spot checks, online work isn't much different.

[Albion Wilde]

I hear and understand what you are saying, and have had it happen to me in both a consulting gig and two community organizations.

One of the things that got me branded “racist” was in a scenario-development exercise envisioning how people from other cultures would acclimatize to technology when they arrive in the U.S. marketplace, and UNTHINKINGLY, I took the position that most people come here to avail themselves of work opportunities! POC s**tstorm came down!

What is the solution to not being able to employ common sense, even about mundane matters? The pendulum must swing back eventually.