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80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans

cnbc.com

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Re: 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans

#21

Post by suprjami »

itronitron wrote: post #14

>> The sunk cost of unused office space has been a major factor in companies’ decisions to change their RTO approach, says Kacher. I'm not sure that the author, or the company executives, know what a sunk cost is. Just to clarify, since there is a younger generation on HN now, 'sunk cost' is something you have spent money on that you can't get back. The 'sunk cost fallacy' is the mistaken belief that you have to use…

The sunk cost fallacy is that you should continue spending money on something you've already spent money on.

Make a bad expensive investment but give it up and move on? That's fine.

Make a bad expensive investment then keep pouring money into it because you've already spent so much and can't throw away all this money now? That's the sunk cost fallacy.

Re: 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans

#22

Post by ahi »

lnsru wrote: post #13

My brilliant manager still has his home office day during team meeting. So the whole team sits with headsets on their desks and talks to the manager who’s sitting at home. That’s how return to the office plan works for the peasants. Good that I am leaving soon.

The passive aggressive fix for this is to meet in the conference room and put him on the big screen. In the before times I worked on teams with just 1 or 2 remote and this practice was (unintentionally) awful for them.

Re: 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans

#23

Post by throwaway14356 »

karaterobot wrote: post #10

> 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 produc…

if people quit you have the evidence

Re: 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans

#24

Post by justrealist »

ahi wrote: post #22
lnsru wrote: post #13

My brilliant manager still has his home office day during team meeting. So the whole team sits with headsets on their desks and talks to the manager who’s sitting at home. That’s how return to the office plan works for the peasants. Good that I am leaving soon.

The passive aggressive fix for this is to meet in the conference room and put him on the big screen. In the before times I worked on teams with just 1 or 2 remote and this practice was (unintentionally) awful for them.

Make sure to mutter whenever possible, and make all decisions via 1-1 asides.

If possible, have a whiteboard way at the back of the room where it's visible but incomprehensible.

And order food! Have some cookies, croissants, pizza delivered right as the meeting starts.

Re: 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans

#25

Post by mschuster91 »

itronitron wrote: post #14

>> The sunk cost of unused office space has been a major factor in companies’ decisions to change their RTO approach, says Kacher. I'm not sure that the author, or the company executives, know what a sunk cost is. Just to clarify, since there is a younger generation on HN now, 'sunk cost' is something you have spent money on that you can't get back. The 'sunk cost fallacy' is the mistaken belief that you have to use…

> I'm not sure that the author, or the company executives, know what a sunk cost is. Just to clarify, since there is a younger generation on HN now, 'sunk cost' is something you have spent money on that you can't get back.

Depending on how long your office lease runs - and many run 5-10 years - it effectively is sunk cost because, short of a bankruptcy, you can't get out of that super expensive office space that's now sitting 80%+ empty if you don't find some other sucker willing to sublet from you. Best case is you find someone with a sublease, but with a heavy discount so all you're getting from that is a bit lower running cost.

Re: 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans

#26

Post by adamkf »

Here's the quote from the [actual whitepaper](https://envoy.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Workplace_Data_...) from Envoy that this article references:

> 80% of executives say they would have approached their company’s return-to-office strategy differently if they had access to workplace data to inform their decision-making.

Envoy's not exactly an unbiased source here, since they sell software to collect this data.

Re: 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans

#28

Post by hackitup7 »

The problem that I've observed is that far too many bosses made their decisions about remote based on emotion, despite the fact that it is incredibly obviously a decision that should be made based on logic.

Not saying that one answer was right or wrong. Just that it has shocked me to hear otherwise smart people using subjective emotional decision making on this topic, when it's so clearly just an economic / incentive decision.

Re: 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans

#29

Post by curo »

Fyi, CNBC (a news site) is citing a figure in a white paper by Envoy, an employee analytics platform, that leaders regret not having more employee analytics.

> "73% workplace leaders believe that easier access to data would enable them to drive smarter decisions about their space, programs, and policies... "

> "80% of executives say they would have approached their company’s return-to-office strategy differently if they had access to workplace data to inform their decision-making.

Here's the source:

https://envoy.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Workplace_Data_...

Re: 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans

#30

Post by ilc »

karaterobot wrote: post #10

> 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 produc…

What they say in an anon survey, and what they say to their employees may be very different things.
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