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> Some leaders lamented the challenge of measuring the success of in-office policies, while others said it’s been hard to make long-term real estate investments
by karaterobot 3y ago
> Some leaders lamented the challenge of measuring the success of in-office policies, while others said it’s been hard to make long-term real estate investments without knowing how employees might feel about being in the office weeks, or even months, from now.
In other words, the two most obvious objections to RTO turned out to be correct. That is, that when the leadership says that being in the office is more productive, they are speaking from desire rather than evidence, and that the sunk cost of a commercial lease had more weight in the decision than the employees' opinions did. Two things they could have avoided with one minute of reflection.
On the other hand, I'm pleasantly surprised that 80% of executives were willing to admit they could have done a better job. I'd expect most of them to say it went flawlessly, in a voice which echoed off the cubicle walls of a nearly empty office.
- throwaway14356 3y agoif people quit you have the evidence
- judge2020 3y agoMost employers instituting hybrid or RTO will have a way to apply for an exception, which is just a filter to keep high value employees (by approving their fully remote requests) while cutting employees without needing to write severance checks - a "soft layoff" if you will.
- marcosdumay 3y agoYou are assuming the employees will just accept their exceptional situation instead of using it to gain some time and jumping ship. You are also assuming the managers know beforehand who are high-value employees. I doubt either of those are true.
- ilc 3y agoYou are assuming managers want to keep high performing employees.
- marcosdumay 3y agoYeah, I am. To be fair, I inherited that assumption from the GP. Anyway, you are right, mature business that have no further space to grow may not want to keep them at all. Even when they aren't a differential, they are still worth more than they cost on maintenance, but there are plenty of companies that just skip maintenance and it's not obvious at all if they are any worse for it.
- gorbachev 3y agoMaybe. Or the employer interprets higher than average turnover on other things, like greedy, disgruntled workers leaving for better pay, or some other completely unrelated thing to RTO policy changes.
- ilc 3y agoWhat they say in an anon survey, and what they say to their employees may be very different things.
- dehrmann 3y ago> the sunk cost of a commercial lease had more weight in the decision than the employees' opinions did That's not what they're saying. They're saying they don't know how to plan their commercial real estate footprint when they don't know if and when people will be in the office.
- ryanmcbride 3y agoWhich could easily be solved by doing what the company I work for did, just don't renew the office lease and go 100% remote
- tekknik 3y agoOr they could also ask