Ordered back to office, top tech talent left instead, study finds
In months following #returntooffice mandates, an increased number of senior employees departed Apple, Microsoft and SpaceX, often to work for competitors.
"Our findings suggest that #RTO mandates cost the company more than previously thought," said David Van Dijcke, Univ of Michigan researcher on the study. "These attrition rates aren't just something that can be managed away." https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/05/12/rto-microsoft-apple-spacex/ https://archive.ph/RGar1
There’s a commercial real estate crisis happening right now. And it’s affecting the bond market big time.
$700 billion of non-agency CMBS is outstanding and another $3 trillion of commercial mortgages on bank balance sheets. Even AAA-rated bonds are affected.
The last time we saw a real estate crisis like this was during 2008. Most analysts say this won’t be as big as the Great Recession, but I don’t know. Interest rates being what they are, and so many office buildings being empty, it’s only a matter of time that the domino effect gets in full swing.
Where the bond market goes, the stock market tends to follow.
It doesn't seem like a coincidence that there's a commercial real estate crisis AND so many people I know are being forced to #RTO even in situations where there's no practical necessity.
"Return-to-office mandates at some of the most powerful #tech companies — #Apple, #Microsoft and #SpaceX — were followed by a spike in departures among the most senior, tough-to-replace talent...
"“Our findings suggest that #RTO mandates cost the company more than previously thought... These attrition rates aren’t just something that can be managed away.”...
A spike in departures of senior employees... could reflect the “double-pinch” they inflict on managers, who have to deal with the policy’s effects on the teams they lead & in their own lives...
it’s also just a hit to morale...
Maybe managers leave shortly after mandates... “because it’s easier to manage a team that’s happy.”
"Return-to-office mandates at some of the most powerful tech companies — Apple, Microsoft and SpaceX — were followed by a spike in departures among the most senior, tough-to-replace talent."
And regarding managers, one person posits: "Maybe managers leave shortly after mandates ... 'because it’s easier to manage a team that’s happy.'"
Study on return-to-office mandates gets international attention | University Times | University of Pittsburgh
"The results showed that while many of the companies said they were bringing employees back to the office to improve the bottom line, there were no significant changes in financial performance or firm values after the mandates were implemented. But there was a sharp decrease in employees’ job satisfaction."
It’s so frustrating to hear a boss say “we want to make #RTO fun and desirable” but when you ask for furniture that is actually comfortable “upgraded furniture isn’t in the budget at this time”.
🙄 it costs you nothing to let me work from home with my own furniture
With the « news » that 3 days back in the office is looming, I’m pleased to report that in the 455 days since our mandated return to office, I have spent $0.00 supporting businesses on office days and riding my bike is free.
This rate of spending will continue no matter how many days they force us to return.
I can keep this up until I retire.
And probably will because I couldn’t afford it even if I wanted to now. Thanks, #GalenWeston.
As a 10-year veteran of #remote#collaboration, when COVID-19 struck and everybody went remote, I thought that this would invalidate my USP, my key differentiator.
Boy was I wrong.
After three years of remote work my assumption was that everyone would have learned to excel remotely. I was wrong. So so wrong.
I think a part of the exec's hard push for #RTO is the understanding that many organisations' 'remote culture' was just lipstick on the pig of their in-office culture.
We have a "two days in office" rule - they check how often we are logged into Wifi. Some now, just jogging by offices once a day with their Hardware connecting to the Wifi. Others had already ideas like small mobile device (Raspberry) put to the locker in the office and connecting once in a while to the Wifi. Just needs a proper powerbank and then go to offices is only once in a month to charge the battery.
Desperate to hold onto their ever-shrinking workforce, but still unwilling to walk back their ignorance and lose face, Dell management thinks, “hey, let's screw our healthiest, most productive employees using whatever leverage we have left,” is the way?
Study after study shows remote workers are at least as productive as in-office ones. Many show remote workers are more productive.
So why do so many employers want to drag people back to the office? It's almost like there's something that's even more important to them than productivity. cough control cough
"In other words: Forcing employees to work in an office doesn’t benefit companies, but does harm the lives of employees — at least in the short term.
More to the point: Most companies cannot show actual monetary benefits from RTO mandates. But most employees can show actual and significant monetary costs from RTO mandates.
In essence, these kinds of mandates represent a transfer of wealth from employees that their employers don’t even benefit from."
Rockstar Games has asked its staff to return to the office five days a week, starting in April. The Edinburgh-based company says this relates to completing development on GTA 6 “at the level of quality and polish we know it requires,” and to mitigate security breaches. GTA 6, which is not due to ship until 2025, experienced leaks in September 2022 and December 2023. IGN reports that Rockstar developers are accusing the company of "broken promises," and are concerned about crunch as well as overall impacts to health and wellbeing.
#RTO doesn’t improve company value, but does make #employees miserable: Study
Data is consistent with bosses using RTO to reassert control and #scapegoat#workers.
The Boss’s New Secret Weapon: Pumping Perfume Into the Office.
#Employers are using scent to boost moods and get workers to come in. Just be careful about the combo of lavender and pumpkin pie.
"For the millions of #workers who find going into the office stinks, some real-estate executives say they have a remedy: Make the #office smell better."
#Work#RemoteWork#RTO#Productivity#OfficeWork: "For a clearer look at the effect of RTO policies after the pandemic, two business researchers at the University of Pittsburgh examined a sample of firms on the S&P 500 list—137 of which had RTO mandates and 320 that clearly did not between June 2019 and January 2023. The researchers collected publicly available data on each company, including financial data and employee reviews. They then looked at what factors were linked to whether a firm implemented an RTO policy—such as the company's size, financial constraints, and CEO characteristics—as well as the consequences of the RTO mandates—employee satisfaction and financial metrics of the firms.
Overall, the analysis, released as a pre-print, found that RTO mandates did not improve a firm's financial metrics, but they did decrease employee satisfaction.
Drilling down, the data indicated that RTO mandates were linked to firms with male CEOs who had greater power in the company. Here, power is measured as the CEO’s total compensation divided by the average total compensation paid to the four highest-paid executives in the firm.
Before the analysis, the researchers hypothesized that RTO mandates may be used to blame employees for poor firm performance. But, companies that have institutional ownership—such as hedge funds or endowments—would not fall for such a "blame game" and would thus would be less likely to implement an RTO mandate. The data supported those hypotheses. Firms with weaker stock performance before employees were able to return to the office were more likely to enforce RTO mandates. However, institutional ownership decreased the probability of RTO mandates.
Although CEOs often justified RTO mandates by arguing it will improve the company's performance, "Results of our determinant analyses are consistent with managers using RTO mandates to reassert control over"
Daily reminder that #RTO is about commercial real estate and pointless managers justifying their jobs, it is not about productivity or efficiency #WFH#RemoteWork