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Damaging results of mandated return to the office: it’s worse than we thought

finance.yahoo.com

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Re: Damaging results of mandated return to the office: it’s worse than we thought

#41

Post by pc86 »

stuckinhell wrote: post #25
warning26 wrote: post #5

> “staggering 76% of employees stand ready to jump ship if their companies decide to pull the plug on flexible work schedules” People always say this, but I’d bet that the vast majority of those 76% would begrudgingly go in if it was demanded. Talk is cheap, as they say.

The younger generations would sabotage us from within if we tried this. We've already had a couple "silent" rebellions from "zoomers" and even "millenials". It's astounding not worth the risk for my firm except for certain teams.

I'm not sure what "'silent' rebellions" you're referring to. The only one I can think of is "silent quitting" which isn't quitting so much as it is not being willingly taken advantage of by working unpaid hours or doing unpaid work.

Re: Damaging results of mandated return to the office: it’s worse than we thought

#42

Post by blahyawnblah »

I kind of prefer going in to the office. I like talking to people around the water cooler and whatnot. BUT, remote work has definitely allowed me more opportunity than I would have otherwise based on where I live.

I can see how the choice thing would sway people. Maybe if going into the office, you still had the flexibility to go run errands or whatever.

Re: Damaging results of mandated return to the office: it’s worse than we thought

#44

Post by thanatropism »

pc86 wrote: post #27
cwkoss wrote: post #2

Commercial real estate value is a bubble that's gonna pop soon. There's just way more office space than anyone needs.

Is there a way to short CRE other than investing in non-commercial RE? I'd think you can probably directly short CRE-focused REITs but I'd be worried about them rebalancing or diversifying even as CRE starts to pop.

If you can find intelligence about which CRE will crater to zero and which will just be half of what it's now, you can arrange some in-kind swaps. But the ethics of this feels wrong.

Re: Damaging results of mandated return to the office: it’s worse than we thought

#45

Post by giraffe_lady »

DiggyJohnson wrote: post #30
obnauticus wrote: post #9

It is unclear who wants RTO, at least within tech and other leaders whom I know within tech.

I prefer RTO and being in the office with the entire team. That doesn't make me crazy, and I know several others on my team feel the same way.

I don't think anyone is trying to prevent people who prefer that from forming teams and even companies around the practice.

We're trying to prevent reverting to that being the mandatory norm for all workers though.

Re: Damaging results of mandated return to the office: it’s worse than we thought

#47

Post by xyzzy_plugh »

kindatrue wrote: post #31

"Unispace found that nearly half (42%) of companies with return-to-office mandates witnessed a higher level of employee attrition than they had anticipated" No severance payouts. No bumps to your unemployment insurance payments. Everything is working to plan.

Yep! This is it. Managers associate willingness to RTO with loyalty, so the idea is very much to induce voluntary, mostly non-regrettable attrition.

They're playing with fire.

Re: Damaging results of mandated return to the office: it’s worse than we thought

#48

Post by rybosworld »

gottorf wrote: post #3

Of course it's too early to tell with lots of confounding variables, but labor productivity has been taking a steep dive[0]. So perhaps in the aggregate, WFH is resulting in less work being done. I say this as someone who's been full-time WFH for over a decade; I'm not taking a position one way or another. [0]: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MPU4910063

> So perhaps in the aggregate, WFH is resulting in less work being done

That's a pretty big leap.

Manufacturing and Durable Manufacturing had the biggest decreases and WFH isn't a thing in those sectors. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/prod2.nr0.htm

Re: Damaging results of mandated return to the office: it’s worse than we thought

#49

Post by pc86 »

LatteLazy wrote: post #29
warning26 wrote: post #5

> “staggering 76% of employees stand ready to jump ship if their companies decide to pull the plug on flexible work schedules” People always say this, but I’d bet that the vast majority of those 76% would begrudgingly go in if it was demanded. Talk is cheap, as they say.

It's not the same thing but... We've had 2 of 3 engineering role candidates we recently made offers to decline citing our 3 days a week in office policy...

Are you not advertising that it's 60% in-office? It seems surprising that multiple people would see that and go the whole way to an offer without self-selecting out.

Re: Damaging results of mandated return to the office: it’s worse than we thought

#50

Post by wredue »

I reclaim 1.5 hours a day from work from home, so a mandated back to work would actually represent a 6 point pay cut on the day assuming I thought that through properly.

I don’t even have an egregious commute compared to others.

Never mind that all of a sudden I no longer need before and after daycare. I have a home gym and can acceptably exercise at lunch. I don’t have peer pressures to go out for lunch all the time to eat. Etc.

The amount of money changes just from working from home is huge.

Never mind that I get more done, and have way fewer interruptions. This whole “get back to the office” is transparently a middle management “I’m still relevant!” Move.

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