During the pandemic, the glass high rises that struck terror into my young, impressionable heart stood empty, and for a while, people wondered whether offices were relics of the past. But over the past two years, companies have begun to call employees back into the office. Ontario public servants are expected to return to office full-time this month. Major banks, including the Royal Bank of Canada, Scotiabank, TD, and the Bank of Montreal, have asked employees to come in four days a week. These announcements followed on the tail of controversial RTO mandates at major companies in the United States, including Amazon, AT&T, and Goldman Sachs.
Unsurprisingly, employees are almost universally against RTO mandates. One 2024 study from the University of Pittsburgh found that 99 percent of companies that implemented them saw a drop in employee satisfaction. Part of the problem is that people are back to the commutes they avoided during the pandemic. In some cases, these commutes are longer than they used to be. As housing costs increased over the past few years, many people moved away from cities with the expectation that they could continue to work remotely.
Countless reports have also documented how RTO rules negatively impact women in particular. In places where day care is either unaffordable or unavailable, women typically shoulder the consequences. Many mothers choose lower-paying jobs that allow them to work from home so they can juggle child care at the same time. All this has likely contributed to another depressing fact: over the past two years, the gender pay gap has widened for the first time since the 1960s.
I was looking at salary ranges and discovered that I value being able to work from home at about 30k per year.
But the price of [using RTO to force downsize] is not negligible. For one, management can’t control who will quit, so it’s a rather risky way to reduce the size of a company. You could lose the guy who never does anything, but you could also lose your star player.
The Dead Sea Effect says you WILL lose your star player, usually first. Those you value most for versatility make the best candidates to someone ELSE as well.
But look on the bright side: the super star you lose to an opening at a competitor means someone else didn’t get that job, and you can hire the loser to replace your winner …usually for more. Yay for shareholder value!
Unsurprisingly, employees are almost universally against RTO mandates.
So we’re doing the thing disliked by almost everyone who actually makes the business do whatever it does, because some worthless leeches want the other thing. There are more of us than there are of them and unless it’s a startup the business is already paying for itself.
I don’t want to go back to the office, but I don’t know about wfh productivity. I’ve been waiting 2 weeks for some guy to get around to adding 4 columns to a database.
I’m far more productive working from home. I don’t have to deal with the daily drop ins from the office extroverts.
I don’t go in the office much, but when I do, I absolutely have to steel myself for the huge drop in what I’ll get done in a given day in the office vs. at home.
Mostly due to catching up with other co-workers in-person, the random drop-in from the extroverts, lunch, having to walk so far to the bathrooms and the kitchen, and so on. Some of these things have their own upsides, too, I guess, but none of them involve getting measurable things done, except for maybe the number of steps per day.
That is a huge benefit.
It’s what I fear the most about losing WFH. At least with teams I can ignore the call and ask what they’re calling about, if it’s nonsense I don’t have to talk to them.
Nonsense like when are you gonna get around to adjusting that table so I can make progress on my stuff? ;)
The only part I enjoy about going to the office is wasting time with other people lol
That’s the only thing I can’t do at home actually haha
Teams can help with that to some extent!
