News

I’d look for new work if my current job increased in-person requirements. Sorry commercial real estate bag holders, you’re in for a rough ride

Return to office is such a fucking joke. I'm not spending hours in the car to keep corporate leases and McDonald's afloat.

Unispace found that nearly half (42%) of companies with return-to-office mandates witnessed a higher level of employee attrition than they had anticipated.

One aspect these articles don't usually address beyond the attrition rate, is the quality of those leave is usually the highest. So its a double whammy. Not only are you losing workers, you're losing your best workers. Those best workers have mobility because they are in demand for their skills or ability to execute. So what an employer is left with is even worse, many of those remaining that are lower skilled or less ambitious so their can't leave or choose not to because they aren't interested in high achievement at work.

The company's most valuable asset is their workers. Return-to-office is a loud screaming message to all the company's workers that "butts in seats" or extraction of the worker's dollars for corporate tax cuts from municipalities are more important that the worker's comfort and preference. That leads to the death of companies.

My wife and I left our company when they clawed us back to the office. It’s been 3 years now and there is 0 chance we’ll go back at this point. For all the big companies complaining about their empty buildings there are medium size players happy to poach top talent and let them work remote

With around 15 years of experience working remote-only, I will never accept a job that mandates a day in the office.

If the role isn’t 100% remote, it is not considered.

Simple as that.

Then there's my employer, who is giving us WFH for the foreseeable future. They might even sell our office building and move our datacenter.

We do a monthly small-team in person, and the occasional all-staff in-person, but otherwise it's just "come in if you want, or don't, lol." Like, I technically have a desk. It's just got a couple monitors on it collecting dust, though. I'm only really ever there (aside from the infrequent in-persons) when my rabbit has to go to the vet, which is closer to the office.

We actually showed more productivity after moving to WFH, so they said 'let's just keep it.' So my only restriction is living in the state, since it's a publically-funded org.

As someone who contributed to the 'high level of attrition' during a forced return to office: it was my pleasure and I'll do it again.

I used to do 3 hours round trip commute. I was always exhausted. Can never do that again after i tried work from home.

Many companies, including my previous one, assume their position is stronger than it is. Then they complain and blame millennials' work ethic when people don't hang around for their torture like they used to.

Yep, you can't fight basic math.

With a half-hour commute, you're dropping at least $250/mo on gas (more if you use proper mileage calculations and include car insurance costs) and spending an additional 32 hours of your time in unpaid travel for work. If your hourly rate is $15/hr, that means another potential $380 in earnings a month out the door.

Since that $15/hr brings you in $2600 before taxes, that means in this scenario you're spending roughly 10% of your gross income on travel expenses, and losing out on a potential income increase of 14%.

This is why, despite the fact they were a great company I had thought about joining for years, last year I turned down an offer that was a 50% raise from my previously held position.

I got the same amount in an offer from a separate company that enabled work from home, and when I did the math, the value between the two was striking - it was the clear winner, despite the fact that the first company only wanted me to travel across town.

Oh it's been very damaging and a major reason for high staff turnover. Since COVID I have worked in transactional finance roles where the staff turnover rate has been has high as 95% - meaning that for every 20 hires, only one would stay with the company beyond twelve months.

A trend I noticed is that companies which refuse to embrace remote working will greatly struggle to hire staff.

It's more baffling how a lot of companies respond to these issues not by raising wages to market levels or improving working conditions/workloads, but by buying the team pizzas every month or two, pushing tighter RTO mandates and adding lengthier notice periods into new contracts.

COVID-19 had one saving grace and that was proving that many roles could be performed remotely. The pandemic has made remote working an expectation of today's workforce that corporations have either embraced or fought long and hard to reverse. It's the companies that embrace remote work which are going to thrive.

Who knows, that may be a good thing in the long run. We don't need ludicrously expensive luxury office space, which my city is full of. But you know what my city desperately needs? Homes. Bristol has the second-highest property prices in all of the UK behind London. Our rents are quickly approaching London levels because all the Londoners are fleeing the capital to clog up our housing market.

In the SHED survey, the gravity of this situation becomes more evident. The survey equates the displeasure of shifting from a flexible work model to a traditional one to that of experiencing a 2% to 3% pay cut.

Those number seem way too low to me. Just picking some semi-random numbers, let's assume a 40 hour work week and an average travel time to work and back of 1 hour per day, so 5 hours per week. Being forced to come to the office would then be equivalent to 12.5% more of your time spent to earn the same amount of money. Of course that scales depending on how far away from the workplace you live, but for 3% or 2% to be realistic you would basically have to live right next door.

The next battle: 4 day work week or Work from home. Your choice.

You wait, they'll try that shit.

My company has been WFH since March 2020 and they've so far shown no indication of making us return to the office. Could I make more working somewhere else? Easily, but I like being at home with my family. I'll trade a slightly better salary for that freedom and I suspect a lot of other people will, as well.

We were full staff in office before covid, then full remote office optional in 2020/21. In 2022 we went back to one in person all staff meeting and one small team meeting each month. These are scheduled far in advance and lunch is often catered. We also went from all private assigned offices and desks to about half. Now people can reserve unassigned spaces in half or full day increments as needed. On an average day anywhere from 1/4 to 1/2 of staff are in for some or all of the day.

I live fairly close and spend about half of my workweek at the office. I typically go in 3-4 days a week but start my day at home and go in mid morning after traffic dies down. I also leave mid afternoon before traffic picks up again. Remaining work can be done when I get home or later that evening. If I lost that flexibility I would probably be looking.

Can concur here.

My company, at first, decided to ask everyone to come back into the office.

They were also trying to hire more people, but almost every candidate dropped out once they heard they would be expected to go in.

They've now reversed course and let people work from anywhere.

I work for the Rainforest company.

I genuinely believe that they are hoping, if not praying that RTO results in a huge chunk of people leaving. Alongside forcing people back to the office, they're now pushing people to relocate to main offices, and limiting teams from hiring internally.

I'd say the same is for many big companies. They're absolutely desperate for people to leave in order to cut costs and look lean to investors while they take in record profits.

Well like they say, all the workers need is a nice little recession to return to the office. They're getting too uppity!