our CEO is demanding we return to the office but people don’t want to — and I’m a manager stuck in the middle

by Alison Green on January 15, 2025

A reader writes:

In 2020, due to the pandemic, my entire company started to work from home. I enjoyed a much better work-life balance and know many others did too, especially because so many people moved further away for more space.

Sadly, we’ve been asked to come back into the office. At first it was a loose mandate, so people did it sparsely. I co-lead our department of 13 people with my boss, and at first we were pretty chill about it. Then the CEO started wanting people in three days a week, minimum. This caused backlash among the departments. We decided to try two days to try to be in the middle. We thought it was working well and had it going for a year, but with other departments doing their own thing too it became a problem. Some did the three days, while some did just one day. Recently, the CEO — upon hearing Amazon mandated everyone back in-office — sent an email: “Come in Tuesday – Thursday.”

So we’ve told everyone the time has come to really stick to it. And it’s been … not great. We had a meeting to say we understand this isn’t what people want, so in an attempt to be flexible — because some people have meetings with international regions, which make some days really bad to come in when they’re on calls from 8 am until noon — we’ll let people come in other days, as long as it’s three days.

Well, that hasn’t really happened. Local staff are rarely doing three days. Some reasons are understandable: they’re sick and don’t want others to get sick, children-related, pet emergencies, etc.

But it’s getting to a point where the CEO is going to feel we’re disrespecting his mandate, and boom it’ll be a mandate for five days.

Our HR head is checking our key entries. We got a list last week.

This is a constant hot topic in senior leadership. The old-school people think if we did five days a week in the office before, we should be able to do it again. Others, like me, feel it’s a step backwards to not see the benefits of flexibility or permanent WFH.

Our jobs are very hard. I’ve never worked as hard as I’ve had to this past year, due to layoffs and terrible clients. It’s so demoralizing working until 11 pm sometimes and still be expected to be cheery the next morning in-office for the benefit of an out-of-touch CEO. He’s one of those “if I don’t see you working, are you working?” people. Plus, when we’re in the office, we all seclude to rooms for non-stop meetings.

However, if I’m being honest, I do think some of our staff are too comfortable. Some don’t even show up in the office or give a reason.

We feel a bit stuck. If we bring it up again, people will again spit out the reasons for opposing it. I do think some of those reasons are reasonable! And I also think some people are taking some advantage.

I don’t want to care about this. Our team is built of highly functional workers. Many live so far that the commute is really bad (we do let people leave when they want so they can beat traffic). It’s really about tapping that key card for optics. And unfortunately there’s no “can you talk to people above again?” It’s been a discussion for three years now and in the end, what the CEO says goes.

The answer is in your last sentence: in the end, this is the CEO’s call. As part of the senior management team, you can try to convince him that it’s in the company’s best interest to allow more work from home, but ultimately it’s his call — and it’s your job to be forthright with your team about that reality.

I do think it’s worth coming to terms with what sound like some previous missteps. If the CEO wanted people in the office three days and your team compromised on two but even that wasn’t enforced and you’ve had employees not showing up at all and you thought some people were being too lax but you didn’t address it … well, it’s not surprising that your CEO is now responding with a firmer mandate.

That’s not to say the CEO is right. For all I know, he might be; I don’t know your business or how hybrid work has played out there. And it’s possible it’s working for your team but affecting other employees in ways you don’t see (in particular, junior employees who are missing out on the learning by osmosis that happens when they share space with more experienced employees). But he certainly wouldn’t be the first CEO to cling to an old way of operating because that’s what he’s comfortable with, without recognizing that the workforce has changed, or that what technology makes possible has changed, or that what top talent in your field will demand has changed.

And it makes sense to lay out for him  your understanding of how a return-to-office mandate will affect the company’s operations. If you believe you’ll lose good people, struggle to hire the candidates you want, and generally be less effective as a result, you absolutely should present that case. But it sounds like you’ve done that, he’s heard you, and he’s still making a different call. Which he gets to do.

If that’s the point you’re at, all you can do is to be very transparent with your team about the situation — about what’s being required, how much flexibility there is and isn’t, and the consequences if they flout that — and that it’s not about whether they’re right or not, but about what your company will and won’t allow.

However, in order to do that, you need management above you to be clear about what consequences they’re truly prepared to enforce. If that conversation hasn’t been had yet, it needs to happen soon, so that you’re not managing blind. And who knows, maybe it’ll turn out that the CEO isn’t prepared to fire people who won’t comply, in which case you can decide whether you’re willing to just keep existing in a state of tension with him over it indefinitely and what that would mean for you/your team. But it sounds like it’s time to call the question: he wants everyone back in the office, people aren’t willing to do it … so now what? He needs to make that call, and then the answers for how you proceed will stem from that.

You may also like:
{ 600 comments }

{ 600 comments… read them below }

  1. Former Lab Rat*

    Can we please have an update on this in six months to a year? I’m afraid the CEO will win and mandate back in the office for everyone. You will lose talented experienced workers and see a decline in productivity as you hire new less experienced replacements.

    FWIW: both my kids are WFH. They put in way more than 8 hours a day since the computer is right there and they keep working.

    1. L-squared*

      I know this comment section will hate to hear it, but here goes.

      I’ve been working for 20+ years professionally. I’ve been in my current role for 7 years (but have worked at different companies). I am currently fully remote. I think there are DEFINITELY benefits to being in the office. Whether it needs to be 5 days is debatable. 2-3 though, I think is a good sweet spot. The fact that people are just flat out refusing to do so is done basically out of stubbornness most times, especially if they are local.

      In many fields, there are PLENTY of people out of work who are fine taking an in person role. And maybe the needs of the company and the employees are just at different places. The fact that you are framing this as the CEO “winning” is the wrong way to look at it. It seemed he tried to be pretty flexible with the 2-3 days, and people just flouted that.

      I’m not one to just follow blindly anything a CEO says. But I do think they have the authority to make those rules, and people can do it or leave.

      1. Richard Hershberger*

        The benefits to being in the office depend on the details. This is where so many of these discussions fall apart, treating “work,” or at least white collar work, as if it were all the same.

        1. nnn*

          Yeah, that’s really the issue. So much of it depends on the nature of the work and the nature of the office.

          Long, long before the pandemic, my employer introduced a policy where you can work from home whenever you want, as long as you come into the office as and when needed.

          For people in my role, “as and when needed” ended up meaning 2 or 3 times a year, most often for just an hour or two.

          So yeah, automatically translating “sometimes it’s useful to be in the office” to “therefore everyone should be in the office 2-3 times a week” does not reflect reality. A good starting point is to look at what “as and when needed” actually looks like.

          1. Archi-detect*

            the other hard part is “useful” can mean be useful to you, useful for your position, or useful to the organization more broadly. my job could be 100% remote but that is terrible for some discussions or for new employees or interns to get their footing for example

            1. Falling Diphthong*

              The CEO is trying to define “Useful in that if I see someone at a desk (even if they are playing asteroids behind that spreadsheet screensaver) then I know they are working hard for my bottom line, but if I can’t see them they are probably goofing off: I have no other way to evaluate their work.” Which of course is unconvincing.

              Archivists, zoo keepers, plumbers, anyone who needs to physically intersect in space with another person: there are a lot of jobs that can’t be done remotely. But OP doesn’t seem to be in one of them, and so if management wants buy in, then it would help their case to not be declaring “But buggy whips! There was a time in this country our whole mission could have been making buggy whips, and we would make a profit, so why can’t we do that today?”

              1. Moira's Rose's Garden*

                Your formal notification that I will be stealing “But buggy whips!” as my shorthand for “lets cling to outdated technology and systems for as long as possible because I fear change”, henceforth.

                I am also calling Buggy Whips as the name when I start my all-women-steampunk-accordion-quartet.

              2. Princess Sparklepony*

                I read a few weeks ago that there is an expected pendulum swing of power back to managers. Not sure what that is going to encompass, but it might involve requiring more in office work and less WFH. People like WFH but bosses who are visually inclined feel slighted when there aren’t butts in seats.

          2. Elizabeth West*

            Yeah, when you have the majority of your people in-office but everyone is having meetings on Teams with people sitting right behind them, what are you even doing there?

            1. FishOutofWater*

              Or worse, I know people who are required go into the office to sit on Teams meetings with contractors doing work that has been outsourced to other countries. So you don’t even get the incidental benefit of running into your coworkers around the office. It’s especially demoralizing to realize the company is fine with people not being in person only when they’re outsourcing jobs.

        2. CeeDoo*

          That’s where my cynicism comes into play. Companies are paying for office space that is not being used, and they want to fill it back up. They don’t want to lose money on commercial real estate that is hard to unload right now (because of all the WFH). Aside from white collar work, I am seeing more and more small retail and restaurant businesses closing down. Entire shopping strips are empty.

          1. A Simple Narwhal*

            Yup that’s where I land too. They’re paying a ton for the office space, they want to see people using it. Even if it means they’re just taking zoom calls all day, aka working remotely from the office.

          2. Blue Pen*

            This is more or less where I land, too. I don’t think I would want a fully remote role, so I appreciate the flexibility of going in once or twice throughout the week; and if something comes up during one of those in-office days, it’s not a catastrophe to my manager if I need to WFH instead.

            What I would also add is that I resent the fact that local leaders (at least here) lay this at our feet, instead of enacting policies or legislation that supports small businesses in town. Although I understand that COVID threw everyone in disarray, and we’re still picking up the pieces, it’s not my responsibility to prop up the local economy with a trip to the sandwich shop every day.

            1. nnn*

              And added to that, (in my corner of the world, at least) local leaders talk about the importance of people spending money downtown only in the context of requiring people to work in offices whether they need to or not.

              They’re not considering wages that keep pace with inflation (not even the wages of their own employees, where they could enact this policy with the stroke of a pen). They’re not considering doing anything about housing affordability. They’re not considering boosting social assistance rates. They’re not considering relieving student debt. They’re not considering affordable childcare. They’re not considering robust pensions.

              Not one single thing except requiring people to work in offices needlessly.

              1. Tired*

                And all THOSE things mean people are less able to or likely to spend money on a sandwich from a local cafe – they’ll pack their own to try and save money

                1. Elizabeth West*

                  Yup. It’s not fun to pack food and haul a lunchbox back and forth. But you do what you gotta do.

                2. emmelemm*

                  And they need to save money on lunch because they had to spend more money on their commute, whether it’s by car or transit

          3. Richard Hershberger*

            This is the theory that this entire dreary argument is nothing more than a massive case of the sunk cost fallacy. There is a natural experiment already underway. Commercial office leases are long term, but they aren’t forever, and they don’t all end at once. Do companies’ attitude to WFH soften when their lease comes up for renewal and they have the opportunity to cuts costs? The extent that this happens tells us what was really going on, and also the extent to which the C-Suite does not understand logic.

            Of course this doesn’t apply to those big-name firms that built elaborate campuses back in the day. Those campuses will be an albatross for decades.

            1. Lily Rowan*

              My job just announced that we are letting go of some of our office space, presumably because our lease is up. This is great news for the majority of people who come in occasionally at best!

              1. Sometimes I Wonder*

                My office is doing that too! We’re still hiring (2 to 3 people a month), still expanding *the work* but the physical office is shrinking by 40%. We used to have 4 whole floors of the building, after the remodel we will have 2 and a bit of a third floor. And we had record profits last year, too.

              2. FunkyMunky*

                my husband’s job who went officially fully remote, let go of 1/3 of physical office space, so it’s all mostly hotel desking for anyone wishing to come in
                …and now they announced back to the office mandate! x2 week if within 50km of the office

            2. Stipes*

              Another conflating issue is that CEOs also often have investment in downtown real estate, and so stand to take a substantial loss if office culture truly dies for good. There’s some tangled incentives.

            3. Sleeve McQueen*

              My favourite is the companies that retooled their office space for a largely hybrid environment and are now demanding people come in even though there’s insufficient capacity to properly hotdesk. I know someone who was perched on a lunch table with no way to power their laptop

          4. Falling Diphthong*

            Which is going to seriously impact the tax base for a lot of cities, since the valuation for taxes is based on what the property last sold for.

            1. Aerin*

              I saw someone elsewhere theorize that cities are tying a certain amount of on-site presence to tax breaks in an attempt to drive traffic to downtown businesses.

              It’s the only argument I’ve seen that seems actually honest besides it just being CEOs all sharing the one brain cell. (So many of these businesses seem to be citing “everyone else is doing it” as their first and only reason.)

            2. Banana Pyjamas*

              In most places, property values are NOT based on the sale of an individual property, but on the median of a defined area over a statutory period. California is a notable exception.

              1. Leenie*

                I’m in commercial real estate finance, and it varies from state to state. Some states, like Texas, are nondisclosure states where sales price isn’t public record. So it wouldn’t even be possible to set property taxes based on sales price there. That’s why there’s an entire industry built around appealing property taxes in Texas. Some other states, beyond just California, do set taxes based on the individual sales price (and others base them on aggregated prices over a set period, as you indicate). Whenever we get a deal in a state that we don’t work in often, one of the first things we have to do is to figure out how to underwrite taxes.

                But in any event, lower sales prices, whether on individual properties or as a market trend, will impact the tax base in many places. And lower market values will still impact the tax base in places that don’t directly consider sales prices.

          5. some dude*

            I think the office space of it is a thing. I have also seen many, many companies use this as an alternative to layoffs – you don’t have to file the paperwork that you are laying off a bunch of folks if they decide working in the office is untenable.
            But I also think that it is easier to create a company culture, onboard people, and keep people on the same page when you work together in space. It seems like for OPs job this might not be as good because they aren’t collaborating as much and there are big time zone difference, but in general…

            1. Drago Cucina*

              Onboarding remotely is rough. I’ve done it twice in the past (almost) five years.

              Some cultural norms, people, procedures, policies, etc., took me much longer to learn because I wasn’t on site. That being said, once it was clear that I was doing my job well, my boss was the one who suggested that I 99.9% telework (different than remote working for us).

              I’m on site today because I needed to have a discussion that took 25 minutes face-to-face. We needed to sit down together with documents, calendars, maps, etc. As much as I prefer teleworking, it’s not always the best approach to collaboration.

            2. Aerin*

              We did one remote onboarding class and it didn’t go very well. So now our model is that you come onsite 100% for the first month of classroom, then follow the normal requirements beyond that. Shadowing used to be in-person only, but we figured out how to do that piece remotely and it’s been a definite positive!

              1. Sleeve McQueen*

                Yeah we make it that you need to be four days until you pass six-months probation and then you can make it three

          6. Jill Swinburne*

            An awful lot of those places also sprang up in suburban areas though, too, with everyone WFH.

          7. toolegittoresign*

            But not every company is locked into their office space. My company was leasing their office space. After it was decided that we were staying fully remote, they talked to the landlord and got a sublet for the remainder of the lease and then didn’t renew the lease. They took the $500k they save each year on the office space and pay to bring us all together for a summit once a year where we basically get a free vacation so that we can spend time with our coworkers, especially the ones we don’t always get to talk to on a regular basis.

        3. ferrina*

          Exactly this. There are days where it is to the benefit of my work that I be in the office; there are days where being in the office actively hinders my work. At my company, there are teams that all report in to one office and can collaborate in person; there are teams that have members spread throughout the country and collaborate through video calls. I’ve had team members who were caring for others and who needed to be flexible with their hours and put out amazing work from home; I’ve had teammates who struggled with this model and needed to come into the office.

          There is no one-size-fits-all. Appreciating the nuances is the way.

        4. Stuckinacrazyjob*

          Yes, our work can be done from a laptop and the really needed to be in person parts can be up to an hour from the office. It’s hard to schedule important business when we’re in the office for looks.

          When I started this job, working in the office was a punishment for a reason

        5. Rebelx*

          “The benefits to being in the office depend on the details. This is where so many of these discussions fall apart, treating “work,” or at least white collar work, as if it were all the same.”

          Seriously, even within the same company, it’s different for different departments and roles and individuals. It’s nuanced, and unfortunately, mandating X days in office is far easier than (a) identifying what is genuinely a business need that cannot be met with 100% WFH, and finding ways to achieve that while still affording people as much flexibility as possible; and (b) actually managing people as individuals who are either meeting or not meeting the particular requirements and expectations of their job, whether they are in-office every day or never.

          The thing that bugged me in my last job when back-to-office came up was: is anyone who wants to mandate in-office days actually going to do anything ensure these in-person days are worthwhile and accomplishing what you state are the goals of being in-office? I’m personally extremely pro-WFH, it works great for me, I’m more productive that way, etc. etc. BUT even I recognized that there were certain business needs at my previous job that were better served by in-person work. The problem was, no one was intentional about ensuring those in-person needs were being addressed on the days we went into the office. More often than not, in-office days felt identical to WFH days, the only difference being that we were all in the same room, and THAT is what is demoralizing about mandated in-office days to conscientious workers.

          1. Aerin*

            Our senior management has been so tone-deaf about it. They’re talking about things like tacos and running into people in the elevator and bringing in treats! As if that’s why people choose to come into the office or not, and not things like weather and childcare and health concerns.

          2. Joron Twiner*

            This!! I am ferociously pro-WFH, but I also acknowledge there are certain things done better in person (training, team building, brainstorming, etc.).

            But does anyone actually ensure those things are happening in the office?

            Do people who take extra time to answer newbie/intern questions get rewarded, or do they have to make up that time later to get their “real” work done? Does management identify which departments need to work closely together and schedule their in-office days together? Does the office seating arrangement allow people to sit with their whole team, or are their not enough desks to go around?

            If I have to schlep to the office just to put on headphones and work on a computer, what is the point of being in the office? If the relationships I build over Slack are “good enough” and I’m not rewarded or recognized for doing more, why should I?

            Management needs to MANAGE, not just take away flexibility and assume things will follow suit. Can you imagine if they ran the rest of the business this way, they’d never make any money!

        6. JFC*

          +1. Our company has been dealing with something similar to LW for the last couple of years. We’re technically supposed to be in the office three days a week, but it’s never once been enforced and there are no consequences for people who choose to WFH almost exclusively. However, we have one team that is made up almost entirely of new graduates in their first jobs, and their managers do require them to be in office multiple times a week. It’s been great for them to learn from one another, take part in trainings, develop relationships with their managers and peers, etc. The teams with more experienced staff don’t have the same needs and thus less of a need to be in person as often.

        7. D*

          Its two ways as well – sure as an employee I enjoyed ditching the commute a couple of days a week and being able to focus on dep work at home but also the slackers on my team became far, far harder to manage. So as an enginer part of me is in camp ‘who cares where you do asynchronous work from’ but as a manager… ugh… can I just make the bottom 30% of performers come in? Per usual a few ruin it for everyone else.

          1. Moira's Rose's Garden*

            The thing is, you don’t have to be WFH to do bupkis – plenty of problem staff seem to be as adept at it whether butt in office or not! But for sure, WFH isn’t a great fit for everyone, even if “on paper” the job can be done just as well from a home rather than central office. Some people’s homes aren’t less distracting. Others may need the “organizational cues” or other external supports an office environment provides.

            It is certainly more than reasonable to make WFH contingent upon meeting whatever metrics of production, communication, and availability make sense for the position. I think that’s a tool managers really should have the resources and standing to use when needed. My employer makes it clear in the handbook they support hybrid and remote positions, but that under-performance is one of the grounds which a manager may use to reduce or eliminate remote hours. Same for flexing your hours.

          3. MassMatt*

            My old job started remote work years before the pandemic to save costs. One site was closed and everyone went remote or took severance. Our location moved to a smaller site and they wanted/needed to get roughly half the people to go remote or hybrid via desk sharing. One of the primary requirements was you could not be on a PIP, or responsible for child care/elder care, and had to be a good (or at least, above average) performer.

            Managing a team should definitely involve a lot more than checking to make sure people are there every day.

        8. CorporateDrone*

          OMG yes. Just because your job has benefits to RTO doesn’t make it universally true. I don’t mind going into the office. It’s a change of scenery, it’s comfortable and it forces me to exercise. Now that my work consolidated offices it’s less isolating as I actually see the odd person (previously I was going in once a week to hang out as one of a handful of staff in an office meant for two hundred)

          However, some weeks I do not have time to get my work done and go to the office. Literally none of my team is in my city. More than half aren’t even in the same time zone. We work together very effectively, but in office days cause project delays (because we have to wait for transit time), meetings are more frequently disrupted and quality of work is slightly less due to distractions.

          The mythical junior team member that would benefit from mentoring? Doesn’t exist. And anyway wouldn’t be in my city. There are other people in my building and maybe some are new to the workplace but I don’t know what they do or anything about their completely different projects. We don’t even work for the same client. Most folk in my city work for a variation of llama grooming while I’m painting teapots. Aside from our benefits plan and payroll being the same I’d have as much in common with a random person at a coffee shop.

          If this is what you want to pay me for, ok. But I find it enormously frustrating when the powers that be decree that we are doing RTO because it’s somehow “better” and are utterly unable to make any kind of coherent and relevant argument as to why.

          OP’s CEO sounds like could be mine, actually. My managers have been very much, this doesn’t make sense and we don’t see a strong reason to enforce except for CEO. Trying to be flexible makes staff feel like it’s not a completely serious ask. At my company many colleagues have said straight out that they don’t plan to comply until it’s strictly enforced. Some have plans to leave once enforced.

          I don’t get it. To me it’s like companies are struggling to adapt to our changing world.

      2. Eldritch Office Worker*

        Yeah data shows hybrid being best for the majority of offices. It also depends a TON on what the work is. Working in nonprofits, we tend to have work that is high touch, and real-time collaboration and the social support that comes with in-office work is demonstrably tied to both our retention and the learning and growth of our employees. People doing tech support likely feel differently. But one is not inherently better or more evil than the other.

        Still, if these people don’t want to work in person, they might leave. And they’ll be replaced with people who are fine working in person. Less than 10% of jobs in the US are fully remote, most workers are on a spectrum from “tolerating in-person to work” to “preferring in-person work”. It’s fine to decide a certain office set up isn’t working, and sometimes the transition is tough but it typically works out.

        1. Aggretsuko*

          Yeah, but what happens where there are no remote-only jobs left? Because that’s where the CEO’s are going.

          1. MassMatt*

            It’s where SOME of them are going. Remote work trends started many years before COVID, the pandemic only accelerated the trend. The toothpaste is not going back in the tube. Remote only jobs will never disappear, because it and hybrid work makes a lot of sense for many jobs. Not just for employee morale but also for lower costs, greater flexibility, and reduced costs.

          2. Philosophia*

            Right. I was watching for that pendulum to swing back sooner than it did, but the tight white-collar labor market lasted longer than expected. Now, however, there’s little to stop the one-size-fits-all stupidity from being imposed again. (I give thanks to the non-stupid employers!)

        2. Lexi*

          it also matters where the people are. My company is national and 90% of the people I work with are in another state.

          The only people local are a team that I’m a subject matter expert for so they get to interrupt higher value work and ask questions that can easily wait until end of day.

      3. Smithy*

        Yeah – I think this OP honestly is just tired with the job overall and this feature of it has made managing really unpleasant. Where they might ultimately be happier working somewhere that has a more rigid in office mandate, or even in office 5 days a week, if their overall workload reduces and this tension doesn’t exist.

        My supervisor recently took a new job that has mandatory in-office I believe 4 days a week? She basically hated how unsupported our overall remote work structure was, particularly for her as a manager and didn’t like working so removed from people. And now she has a new job where that won’t be an issue. I have a friend physically relocating to a new state so she can be in-office at her current job more often because it’s what she wants for her career. Her employer didn’t make her, but was happy to help her financially because they agreed it would help her growth in the company.

        I think we hear a lot about the pro WFH people – and even folks like my former supervisor isn’t looking for a completely inflexible structure – but I think it’s shrunk the view on how many people actually prefer in office/near team work at least part of the time. For those of us who can do our jobs WFH, no one I know wants it to go away entirely. But I think that’s very different from the people who want the ability for full time WFH.

        1. Myrin*

          Yeah, I’m very happy that my job literally can’t be done from home because I would absolutely hate it, both for productivity reasons (I’d be distracted by the countless stuff I could be doing at home) and for “psychological” reasons (I want my work and personal life to be as separated as possible which would be hard for me if my home were also my workspace). We exist!

          1. ursula*

            Totally. I run a relatively ‘young’ office (nobody over 45, and all staff but two of us are in their 20s-30s) and I am the only one who doesn’t prefer being mostly in office.

          2. SimonTheGreyWarden*

            This is me. My job has very little that can be done from home, but the job I was working at during the pandemic did (with some necessary alterations). I found out during the pandemic that I hated working from home and only connecting over Zoom. Even if my job could be done remotely, I would probably prefer coming in over not. I was probably the same amount of productive between WFH and in-office, I just hated not being able to “turn off” when it was time.

          3. flora_poste*

            My job (apart from a few months a year) could be done almost solely from home, but I come to the office almost every day, largely for the same reasons as you. As well as this, our office is in a space close to a lot of companies we collaborate with, and I like seeing people in person when the opportunity arises. Sometimes the meeting *can* be an email, but sometimes literally sitting with someone with a coffee and talking through a bunch of things is really good, and I’ve found that dynamic really hard to replicate remotely.

          1. Grizabella the Glamour Cat*

            Either that, ot the pro-wfm commenters here are just more outspoken about it than those who prefer working in-office. Hard to tell for sure!

        3. Aeryn Sun*

          Personally I think hybrid is a really great option. My workplace has us come in two days a week, usually the same days a week but with some flexibility for other reasons. I think it’s really helpful to be able to connect with coworkers in person while also having the benefit of flexibility if you need it.

          I don’t necessarily want to go back to a full in-person work environment but I don’t want to go back to fully remote either, I think hybrid is a really great balance.

          1. Smithy*

            This is me.

            Currently I live in the same city as a location of my employer, but the reality is that I’m the only person in my entire department who’s based in this city. So while I do go into the office occasionally – my work reality is that while my team has a lot of remote people – the city where there’s a concentrated group of colleagues isn’t where I am.

            I don’t always dislike the situation, but I also don’t love it. And while that alone wouldn’t be a reason to take or decline a new job – it’s not a situation I’d actively seek out. Going to a place with that set two or three days in the office sounds a lot more appealing to me, even if it would mean giving up some of the flexibility I currently have.

            1. Elizabeth West*

              I’m in the same boat (department in another city), and going in seems useless sometimes. Especially when it’s nasty outside like today. I’d just as soon stay home.

              It was the same with ExJob right after I moved, but then they switched me and the person who was doing the local stuff (she was remote), and it made a HUGE difference. When I started actually working with my in-person colleagues, I suddenly wanted to be in the office more often. I hope I get put on some things here, but I doubt that will happen since I’m only one of two people supporting the unit in the other city.

        4. MariposaEP*

          Hi there, I’m the OP! It’s quite true that I’m very tired with the job overall, that seems to have been easy for people to pick up (even though that wasn’t the reason for writing the letter, heh). Though, just wanted to mention your specific comment that nope, even if I went somewhere where I really liked the work, I can honestly say I wouldn’t want to be in-office 5 days a week.

          When we went WFH during COVID, the freedom to use my time more efficiently for myself (like during lunch hours) and hyper-concentrate without distraction was so wonderful. When they mandated going back into the office and I started going in the 2 days, it wasn’t my ideal situation but after a while I got used to it. I felt 2 days was a good balance because I didn’t have to reset too much from my established routines. At 3 days, it’s robbing more than I would like.

      4. WillowSunstar*

        I get lonely being alone at home, single no kids, and one bedroom apartment. Instant messaging doesn’t replace human connection, I’m sorry. I don’t think it should be all 5 days in office, even before COVID my job let us have one day at home. But there needs to be a balance somewhere. If I didn’t do Toastmasters outside of work, I’d be completely lonely.

        1. WillowSunstar*

          Also I’m being laid off soon and looking for a job that is hybrid or in-office because of the loneliness.

        2. Justme, The OG*

          I’m single, with a kid and pets, and I vastly prefer to be in office. My work-life balance suffered so much working from home during COVID.

          1. UKDancer*

            I would agree. I prefer to be in the office some of the time. Being at home all the time isn’t good for me and I don’t work as well that way. Also the flat is really small and I feel so confined if I work from home more than 1-2 days.

            Covid was really hard for my mental health because in addition to working remotely all my usual social outlets were shut, no dances, no spas, no recreation and minimal shopping.

            I was so glad to get back to the office 2 days per week.

            1. Catherine UK*

              I’m currently in a secondment role in the company I’ve been at for 7 years, and they offered to extend the secondment for another 9 months (been doing it nearly 2 years already, including a 1-year extension). I declined, partly because I’ve come to dislike the company’s setup of ‘work from home by default’. I’m normally in the office 3-4 days a week but the rest of my department are barely in once a month. Yes, I can talk to people in other departments, but only seeing my immediate colleagues 10 times a year isn’t great.

              Funnily enough, my original job at this company was literally impossible to do from home, which meant we were the only team in the company working in the office for about a year from March 2020, in an office which previously held about 300 people! As much as I’m not too keen on the work, the fact that I will see my colleagues every week (actually every day, but weekly would be fine) has tipped the balance in favour of going back to the original job when my secondment ends!

        3. Productivity Pigeon*

          I’m just the same!
          I haven’t had a kitchen table in five years because my computer and monitor is there.

          I’m currently looking for a job but the best part of my last job were my colleagues and working together with them.

          My ideal job would have flexibility to WFH a couple of times a week but I’d never want to be fully remote. It makes me miserable.

        4. Raven*

          The discussion about WFH vs Office isn’t about “balance”. It is about letting adults work in the environment that best fits the company’s needs and their needs. If the needs of the position don’t require being in office, then don’t force it.

          In your situation, it is about you finding a position in a company where the culture meets your needs. Wanting all employees to return to the office, even on a hybrid schedule, because it balances your need for socialization discounts all of the employees who are much more productive and effective WFH.

          1. DJ Abbott*

            People who need in-person socialization should not expect all those needs to be met at work. A person who needs that should find ways to get it outside of work.
            If not you’ll be a person like my boss, who puts her social needs first and is best friends with one of her direct reports. Not a good thing, for her or anyone else.

            1. Grumpy Elder Millennial*

              I couldn’t agree more. I totally see how it’s more pleasant for some people to come into the office because they get to interact with other people. If that’s you, then go in as much as you want. No objections from me. Where I take issue with it is when that translates into me having to spend 90 minutes commuting and losing an hour of sleep each day I have to come in. Especially when I had a job where the project teams my colleagues and I worked with were spread out all over, so there were a million conference calls. Which would have had to happen at our cubicles. The distractions would have driven me to drink (and harmed my productivity). Anyway, it’s incumbent on all of us to figure out the level of social interaction we need to be happy and come up with our own plan to make sure we get it.

            2. Aerin*

              I like the in-person socialization in the office! But it is utterly antithetical to the focused knowledge work that comprises my core duties. And I cannot switch between the two modes on the fly, not since long covid. I tried it for a year and it shredded my brain.

              Our org is pushing hard for 50% (which is hugely unpopular). The line I drew with my doctor is that I need a quiet, private environment in order to take calls, and my desk is… the exact opposite. Tomorrow is my meeting with HR to hash out the details and I am not looking forward to it.

              1. DJ Abbott*

                Good luck! I ended up getting a job where I have a lot more interaction with people, and that helped a lot.
                In the previous 25 years I had developed a social life outside of work, and that helps too. So I’m not like my boss. :)

          2. Smithy*

            I think the point I was looking to make about there being a group of people who enjoy being in the office/more of the hybrid model isn’t to take away anything from those who prefer fulltime WFH. Rather it was to pushback that CEO’s/employers who change from a completely flexible WFH schedule are going to lose lots of talent AND won’t be able to replace them.

            I think it’s a false premise that right now everyone fussing about WFH is coming from the same place of not wanting to come in at all. A lot of people who dislike coming into the office don’t like it because none or few of their teammates are there – whereas a more rigid requirement would make those people happier coming in. Similarly, if one team has a very rigid approach and a team they work with doesn’t – the implementation feels unfair and that inevitably causes displeasure.

            The other point, is that there are people where this hybrid policy sounds great – and would be happy to apply for the positions of those who do leave. At some point this CEO is either going to make a more concrete decision that will significantly upset some and not others or will continue to operate in this middle space which will largely irritate more people and keep them in limbo.

        5. Percy Weasley*

          It’s funny, I have a completely different perspective on this. I feel more cut off from people spending the day alone in a grey box in the office than working alone at home. A few good mornings or nice weather exchanges with random people in the elevator or hallway aren’t enough payoff for the effort of commuting.

          1. HungryLawyer*

            Same. When I work in an office, the quasi-social interactions all felt really draining. I never expected or wanted my social needs to be met at work, but something about the “work in the office to connect with others” felt fake, forced, and unnecessary.

        6. LL*

          Yeah, I spent the first 14 months of the pandemic living alone in a studio apartment. the loneliness was awful a lot of the time, especially in the winter when it was less pleasant to do things outdoors. Then I moved to a 1-bedroom apartment for a while, which helped because I wasn’t so cramped, but still wasn’t great. It wasn’t until I started dating my then-boyfriend that things started getting beter.

        7. MigraineMonth*

          Weirdly, I used to get lonely in my open-plan office. Everyone was trying to concentrate and there wasn’t any white noise, so 40 people could hear your whispered conversation or squeaky chair. It felt like everyone was looking at you but you couldn’t talk to anyone, all day, every day.

          The reason the extremely profitable company built the office open plan instead of with cubes or offices? “To encourage spontaneous collaboration.”

        8. Nightbringer*

          I’m sorry but this is very ableist. Online friendships are very fulfilling and are human connections. Especially in an ongoing pandemic. Online friendships saved me when I was bedridden for a year bc of injury. I admit, my emotions are pretty raw right now, my online friend of 5 years died yesterday. At the same time, just bc you consider IMing not human connection doesn’t mean it’s that way for everyone; especially those in the disability community. WFH has been immensely important for accessibility and to have it torn away has been detrimental especially bc others only think face to face is socialization. I’m sorry you’ve been lonely and I do hope things get better for you.

          1. Dahlia*

            It was essentially Among Us that saved my sanity when I was bedridden for months from a major injury. No joke.

          2. One Duck In A Row*

            The shift to online communications for work stuff during the earlier years of the pandemic is directly responsible for a work-friendship blossoming into my current closest friendship, period. (In fact, that person isn’t even a co-worker anymore, but the shift happened when they still were one.)

            Feedback I’ve given to my employer on surveys, etc., about work culture, hybrid/remote work, and related stuff has included reminding them that because of life circumstance, health, neurotype, and many other factors, the assumption that face-to-face interactions are the most effective and impactful is outdated and was probably never accurate in the first place. Folks who rise to leadership positions in companies tend to be those who are good at the face-to-face schmoozing stuff. Of course they tend to value that more, and assume that it is the superior way to connect to people, and that it is some objective truth of the world for everybody and every situation. I’ve noticed that many of those people are often lacking when it comes to written communication – they miss important details in emails sent to them, they have trouble asking and answering direct questions, and don’t know how to and/or want to use the tools available to them to refer to information they have already been provided in writing. And this is something that I’ve noticed starting well before I ever did any WFH work — I think a lot of it comes down to folks in leadership/management positions not really getting what the day to day work is like, and overly-relying on generalities and glossing over the details. That’s easier to do in a model where it’s talk talk talk, and harder to get away with when there is the possibility of detailed communications in writing that one can take their time to compose and refer back to indefinitely. For many of us, the divide became a lot more apparent when, for a time, there was a shift to more written communication for everyone.

        9. Jane*

          With all due respect, work is not your social life. It can be a part of it, sure, but wanting everyone to come into an office if it isn’t warranted for work just because you’re lonely is the wrong solution to your problem.

        10. FunkyMunky*

          right but if the rest of your department is just fine WFH, should they come in just to hang out with you? or maybe you need to build social circles outside of work and not use that as a crutch?

        11. All The Tired Horses*

          ?!? have you tried hobbies? Community? Friends? Working at a coffee shop? It’s not healthy to rely solely on work for all of your social emotional needs.

      5. Winters tale*

        This is where I’m at TBH. And I’m kind of agreeing with this part too: “The old-school people think if we did five days a week in the office before, we should be able to do it again.”

        In the sense that like, yeah they’re not wrong? Not every job can be done remotely (at least not fully remotely) and people for the most part took those jobs knowing full well they were in-person roles with in-person expectations, and dealt with it. For years and years.

        So to be all “well how can we ever be expected to leave our houses????” now is a bit disingenuous, to me. And ultimately this is the CEO’s call so the OP and colleagues have to decide if this is a huge deal breaker

        1. Bitte Meddler*

          I did 5 days in the office for 2.5 decades.

          Except it stretched me so thin that I was perpetually sick and would eventually have to take FMLA leave just to let my body recover.

          I have taken FMLA four different times at three different companies, and the medical reasons were all due to lack of sleep and lack of time to fully decompress from a stressfully hazardous commute (up to an hour each way) and 9-11 hours a day in an office building where I had to be “on” for every single one of those hours.

          Since COVID and WFH for the job I had at the time, and then taking a job that is remote, I haven’t had to take more than 2 or 3 sick days in almost 5 years, and I sure as heck haven’t taken any FMLA time off.

          So, yeah, some of us did it because it was the only way to get a paycheck, but it was highly detrimental to our physical and mental health.

          1. WindmillArms*

            Exactly. I worked from an office for about fifteen years because that was the only option. Now that there are companies with other options, I take them! I’ve been fully remote for five years and I could not imagine having a commute and being “on” at an office all day ever again.

          2. DJ Abbott*

            I’m home sick right now. For the third time in two years, I’ve gotten a secondary infection after a cold.
            I’m sure I would be healthier if I didn’t have to commute to the office five days a week. Even though I like my job, I’m starting to wonder if I should look for something that’s remote or hybrid or at least has a better commute.

          3. JoAnna*

            Agreed. I had a similar schedule for 8 years (while having babies!) and it was exhausting. WFH has been a lifesaver.

          4. Baunilha*

            Same here. I took my first ever sick day at my current job (100% remote) after over two years working here, whilst at other jobs, I was out three or four times a year.

          5. MigraineMonth*

            One of my coworkers has a disability that our office building is not just not adapted for and which my employer refuses to update. (A years-long argument over whether a button-open door was necessary for our department door was only resolved when he was trapped inside the room during an unscheduled fire drill.) He still cannot use the elevator or reach the “handicap accessible” soap dispenser. Still, up until the COVID pandemic forced us all remote, he was never allowed to WFH as a reasonable accommodation.

            I’m concerned that these “return to office” pushes are going to screw over my coworker and others with less visible disabilities who have been able to work much more efficiently because they have the accommodations they need at home and don’t have to make a stressful commute (often dependent on an unreliable paratransit system or painful).

            1. DisabilityDisregarded*

              This is me. I’m at a point where I need to WAH 99.9999% of the time if I’m going to work thanks to the confluence of several different disabilities. I was working effectively 100% remotely for several years before the pandemic and I am concerned about any future job search in this now hostile environment.

        2. Carly*

          As someone who works a job that is impossible to do from home, the way WFH people talk about it is a little grating lol.

          1. appo*

            Agreed. Unless you’re at a specific exec level/positions – there’s no WFH for my industry. Which is fine as I chose this as my career and I like my work but the tantrums some people are throwing about a hybrid schedule are getting old.

            1. I Have RBF*

              That sounds like “My job requires me to wade in raw sewage, so everyone should have to take a dip in sewage too.”

              If a job does not require you to be physically hands on, it should be open to hybrid or remote.

              This “Since my job is impossible to do from home no one should be allowed to work from home” crap is really petty and bucket crab-ish.

              If you don’t want to have to work on-site, but your field is one that requires it, then it is on you to change fields. It is NOT on others to take on wasteful commutes just to sit in an open-plan noise pit on Zoom all day just to make sure that they have it as bad as you do.

              1. DisgruntledPelican*

                Where did you get “My job requires me to wade in raw sewage” from “I chose this as my career and I like my work”?

                I can be silly and hyperbolic too. All of you complaining about not being able to work from home sound like you’re being asked to walk barefoot through broken glass every day. Get a grip.

            2. Bast*

              I’m not sure what people were promised when they started the jobs mentioned above, but a big issue is that if you sign up for a job expecting to be solely WFH or hybrid, and the rug gets pulled out from under you after years, it’s pretty normal to be upset. I’m not sure your industry or schedule, but imagine being hired and told you won’t work weekends/holidays/insert something else, until several years down the road and suddenly you’re told, “Eh, well actually, you need to work holidays/weekends/whatever after all.” Wouldn’t you feel at least a little upset, since that had not been the agreement when hired and you now have to give up something that you thought had been agreed upon when hired? That’s what’s happening with a lot of people.

              Also, as someone who currently works an industry where working from home is possible and fairly common, but at one point worked in an industry where it was not possible, I get not being able to work from home and having to drag yourself to a job when scheduled. On the other hand, my career was full of choices. I chose to make a shift in both industry and company specifically for the flexibility. I will also self-select out of jobs that never allow WFH (or where the pay is too low, or the PTO is awful) etc., etc. I could choose to work in an office that requires me to be in office 5 days a week, or an office with a higher pay but poor work life balance, but I choose not to. What I’m getting at is that ultimately, it’s all choices. If I still worked retail, or had chosen to be a police officer, ER physician, paramedic, whatever, it’s known that a position like that comes with crazy hours. It would be wild of me to complain about office workers for choosing to work a 9 to 5 when I had chosen a job with known crazy hours.

              1. Joron Twiner*

                Yes, this is a worker’s rights issue. It’s like starting a job and finding out you are expected to work longer hours or weekends with no extra pay. You’re just doing that commuting instead.

          2. Fred*

            “Impossible” work from home role was your choice. Funny how many people are being told “you must be present in the office” are also expected to also “and you must respond immediately at 3am to an emergency call and address the issue remotely”.

            Roles that “cannot” WFH have no part in this conversation.

            1. Bella Ridley*

              This is exactly why people who can’t WFH roll their eyes at these conversations. Comments like this. Also, it’s funny you assume that people who can’t work from home also must automatically work in an office and are never called at 3am to address issues.

              1. Fred*

                I made no such assumption, I pointed out that if we can work remotely when needed, then there’s no valid argument for must work in the office. If an ER Surgeon complain that he can’t work from home? Sorry dude, this isn’t your conversation. “I chose a must be in person role” people do not belong in this conversation.

              1. Fred*

                So what? That was your/their choice. Doesn’t mean you get to complain that those that can work from home are being told not to. And it’s also not my problem or role to go to an office just so your retail stand or restaurant can get more custom.

                1. Exhausted at all times*

                  Go on about how taking a retail job to pay my rent and then finding myself stuck here 5 years later, at least partially because of the pandemic, is a choice please.

                  I actually really do feel for people who were originally promised remote/WFH when they began their jobs to now have that benefit being taken away from them, as I feel for every worker who loses benefits that they accepted in good faith when they took a job or when their job went remote. I also feel like sometimes people forget that there are still positions that can never be WFH/remote – and here’s the kicker – don’t respect them. As someone further down in this thread said, it does sometimes feel like this commentariat has lost sight of what kind of privilege they have, and it can sometimes make this difficult reading as someone who comes here (every day!) for advice on how to be a better leader in this field I may not have chosen but I still have an obligation to myself and my team to succeed in.

            3. FunkyMunky*

              you’re not wrong!
              I think people with jobs that are not suited or never were WFH should butt out of this chat.

          3. Justin*

            I don’t know what your job is but what if I told you that because most people have to work on their feet all day that you should stand all day even if your job didn’t require it and that you should stop complaining about having to stand?

            Or if they suddenly made you start traveling to other cities just to do your job for no reason?

            1. Katara's side braids*

              Thank you. I’m also in a job that can’t be done from home and don’t understand this perspective at all.

              1. Fred*

                You have your skill set and we have ours. Anyone that “can’t” work from home is out of their lane commenting on the thoughts or feelings of those that can.

            1. Fred*

              So? That’s the point – people that are affected by it are talking about it. If we could only ever talk at the level of the least privileged, nothing would ever be discussed.

              1. Zap R.*

                I’m not saying not to talk about it – I’m just saying that that’s often the only lens people are bringing to the conversation and it can sometimes make discussions very myopic.

        3. LunaLena*

          Personally I prefer to work in-office (I dislike working from home; I need to have separate spaces for work and home or I feel anxious that I should be working when I’m at home), but I disagree with “if we did it before, we should be able to do it again.” Just because a thing was always done doesn’t mean it should always be done that way. I entered the workforce over 20 years ago, and the Internet was definitely not set up for people in lots of fields to work from home back then. But now it is, and if we had any doubts, the pandemic proved that quite a lot of people can work successfully from home. It’s silly to not take advantage of those tools if it makes people’s quality of life better and productivity is not being lost, just because that’s how we did it before.

          That is, after all, how society progresses. If we all just did things the same way because tradition, we’d still be living in caves. Why bother moving out? Caves were good enough for our ancestors, after all.

          1. Carys, Lady of Weeds*

            To be fair, I’d take a well-lit cave over the new construction apartment I currently live in (the windows don’t open).

            To your actual points, though, I agree completely. WFH makes me personally anxious and I’m glad to be back in an office (at least for now), but just because it’s been the norm doesn’t mean it can’t and shouldn’t ever change.

          2. MigraineMonth*

            In my field, WFH has proven to be much more efficient than in office work, which makes the return-to-office push seem particularly irrational. (My field also has a high percentage of open office workplaces. I do not think those are unrelated.)

            I’d be fine going back to the office if I had my own or a two-person office. I would start job searching if they wanted me to return to an open office. I hope to never work in one again.

        4. Yorick*

          It’s weird to me that people chose to move far away during the temporary WFH we had due to the pandemic and then use that as a reason they can’t come to work in the office.

        5. Festively Dressed Earl*

          The “we did without it before” argument is thin. Offices did without computers in the past too; doesn’t mean going back to typewriters is a good idea.

          2. MigraineMonth*

            Given the productivity *gains* my field has seen from remote work, this is particularly apt.

        6. Grumpy Elder Millennial*

          There’s a difference between being able to do something and it being a good idea, though. Like, people used to do research and fact-checking with library card catalogues and microfiche. I acknowledge there can be benefits to being in the office, but there are also drawbacks. As someone who is not a morning person, getting to sleep in makes a real difference to my quality of life. Sure, I was able to get to the office on time when I had to, but things are much nicer now that I don’t.

          I also have to take issue with your characterization of people expecting they should never have to leave their homes. I imagine you’re using hyperbole here on purpose, but I don’t think that kind of thing helps us to have this conversation. I’m very much against mandating X days a week in the office for my job and similar jobs. But I will go in when there’s a good reason for it, and I have done so, even when it wasn’t technically mandatory.

        7. Lenora Rose*

          If you do a thing for decades, then circumstances force you to discover that actually, there is another way to do things after all, going back to “We did it before, we should be able to do it again” isn’t automatically right; what it IS, is refusing to take new data into consideration.

          Some jobs absolutely are better in offices (I think a lot of parts of mine are, for example; for one, the unexpected phone calls are usually some of the most time and person critical bits). But not all (my husband likes to go in several times a week but can work from home, which helps when we have sick children, or he’s feeling a bit off but can work). One would hope those who have to decide will use discernment and actual data, not tradition.

        8. I'm still eating*

          We *can* go back to 5 days a week in the office. Obviously it’s possible for many people. But why, if remote work makes for a better work experience? I can wash my clothes by hand, but the washing machine makes it a better experience.

          Having worked in person for the majority of my 30 years working, yes, I can go back to commuting every day. I’m all for providing office space for those who prefer it. I prefer business on top, party on bottom outfits and my bedroom-to-office commute.

        9. Falling Diphthong*

          The old-school people think if we did five days a week in the office before, we should be able to do it again.

          The difference isn’t that it became physically impossible, though. The difference is that whether it could be done was tested, and based on the results different assumptions about what is possible have now taken root. People who correctly believe that they have options and want more work from home than is offered will go somewhere that offers them that.

      6. Snow Globe*

        I’m kind of a hypocrite when it comes WFH – I’ve been remote sine 2016, and with about a year until I retire, I’m not going back. But I look back to the earliest days of my career and I agree with how much I benefited from learning through osmosis. I learned so, so much about how the company functions, what different departments do, where to find answers to process/procedural questions, and on and on. I really don’t think I would have been as successful in my career if I’d been working from home all along. I would have been completely lost and unaware of anything beyond my specific job.

        1. I Have RBF*

          See, my previous career was very in-person and hands on – environmental chemistry. When I was working in a lab, I had to be there to run the machines. When I changed careers, I changed to one that wasn’t hands-on physical, because of my disability. If I were still doing lab work, of course I’d be going in to the lab. But now, all of the equipment I work with is in data centers around the world, and I don’t need to sit at an office desk to log in and issue commands, so I can work remotely.

          Why people insist that “if they do a thing, you have to do the same thing to make it ‘fair’ or some such BS” I really don’t know.

          Taking cars off the road by having remote capable jobs actually be remote is a good thing, IMO. For disabled folks like me, remote work means that I have spoons available for caregiving too.

          1. Nightbringer*

            I just wanted to say that I’ve enjoyed reading your comments on this. I’m glad others are bringing up disability. It’s an important aspect in wfh discussions that often gets forgotten about except by those of us who it affects.

      7. The details are the devil*

        It’s funny how I see this play out personally.
        I am a professor – I work in office, commute time of 1 hr one way, any day I have class (all 5 weekdays this semester) plus occasional weekend duties.
        I have family members who are:
        1) hybrid, engineer, can be super flexible as long as he’s working, and regularly travels while working
        2) hybrid, engineer, who works out of the office because home is terrible
        3) in person, scientist, needs to do lab work, but will write from home
        4) fully remote, data scientist, who quit a previous job due to bad boss + RTO mandate. Works with people all across the nation, but has a flexible schedule. In person meetings 2-3 times a year, paid for by the company
        5) hybrid, tech support, who drives to an office to sit on the phone/computer without actually seeing anyone who are all also on phone/computer
        6) there are more, but that’s enough
        Some of these make sense, some don’t, based on the type of work they’re doing. (5) could definitely work from home, but the building must be used. (4) didn’t even have an office to go back to despite the RTO push that was turning into a mess, and that was a hard deal-breaker, because they were so much more productive without chatty coworkers around. I could teach from home, but in-person classes are so much more effective with my community. There’s so much variation in workplace, work subject, and workers, that a blanket “one is better than the other” is just not possible.

        Although, I’d appreciate it if more people worked from home so they didn’t clog up my commute, just saying.

        1. The details are the devil*

          Even if you’re only going to the office to be on the phone? Or if you teach classes 5 days a week? Or if there never was an office to begin with and the top experts are scattered across the country? I think it still varies depending on what you’re doing.

        2. Grumpy Elder Millennial*

          Why?
          I mean, my immediate team is spread out over 3 cities that are each 4+ hours away from each other.

        3. Falling Diphthong*

          There was a past letter from someone who worked remotely supporting the Wichita team, but the new mandate was that she couldn’t do that from home, but must come in and sit alone in an office in Connecticut, supporting them remotely from there. Where she didn’t actually talk to anyone, but if you checked the key fobs then her butt was in a seat in a specific building in Connecticut.

        4. Grenelda Thurber*

          My team is spread across the planet. The engineers and test teams are in Taiwan, the program manager is in Bangalore. My management is all in a city three hours from where I live. I’ve never met anyone on my team in person. Not one person. We do almost all our communication via electronic means that didn’t exist 15 years ago: Teams, Slack, occasional Zoom meeting, and good old-fashioned email (a notable exception). Even the phone calls are though our computers. I am great at my job, and working from home suits my personality and work habits really well. Even if I had an office to go to, I’d be getting up every morning, making myself presentable, and driving a car to another place where I’d sit all day doing *exactly* what I do in my home office wearing my flannel PJ’s. My company gets a lot more work out of me by keeping me a remote worker. There just isn’t much that applies to every situation these days.

        5. Parakeet*

          Our office is 400 miles away from where I live (and this was true when I was hired; I didn’t move away from commuting distance). Every member of my team lives in a different state.

      9. Yorick*

        Yeah, right now people are supposed to be in the office three days a week due to the CEO’s decision and THEY JUST AREN’T GOING AND AREN’T EVEN GIVING A REASON WHY. I can’t fathom that these people don’t expect to lose their jobs any minute.

        2. Lenora Rose*

          My advice would have been for the manager to manage, and address those people directly, and point out why this is a way to lose all WFH privileges. The employees are not a monolith, they are individuals, and she can speak to the individuals causing the problems.

        3. Falling Diphthong*

          I think they expect to not lose their jobs because they didn’t lose their jobs any of the other times the CEO announced that.

          Possibly they are right.

          Possibly the people doing this are concentrated amongst the difficult you’d just as soon see remove themselves. Possibly the people doing this are concentrated amongst the ones who correctly believe they are too valuable to casually lose, and ignoring the rule will continue to work.

          It’s not like “Yeah, that’s the rule on paper, and we all just ignore it and follow the rule in practice” is a new thing for people dealing with bureaucracy.

        4. MigraineMonth*

          It sounds like the potential consequences haven’t been outlined; if there’s usually a progressive discipline process (warnings, PIP, etc) then people probably think that will come before being fired. It also sounds like consequences haven’t been enforced in the past, so it’s hard to tell how much this issue actually matters to management.

          It’s also possible that some of those people are ready to leave over the return to office requirement and prefer to be let go rather than quit.

      10. HotSauce*

        The benefits of being in the office depends heavily on the type of work you do. Additionally, while there could be some benefits to being in the office, there are also benefits to working remotely as well. If you think being in office is so crucial I am curious as to why you haven’t sought out that type of job and leave the remote positions to people who prefer it more?

      11. Radioactive Cyborg Llama*

        You are really conflating your own experience with the One Right Way. Most people want telework “out of stubbornness”? How about most people want telework to save themselves 5-10 hours of commuting every week and be better able to deal with family emergencies, just to name a couple. Try on some other people’s shoes. I’m going to have to go back in probably 5 days a week starting soon, and it’s going to cost me a couple hundred dollars a month for parking.

        1. DisgruntledPelican*

          I don’t think most people want telework out of stubbornness, but I do think many people who want telework stubbornly believe any choice a company makes outside of allowing 100% remote work is a bad choice made by incompetent people.

        2. Zombeyonce*

          Removing WFH for people when in-office work isn’t a clear requirement to successfully do the job is the equivalent of giving them a pay cut where none of that money goes back to the employer. If my company made me return, I’d have to pay for parking, gas, more car maintenance, and childcare after school (my kids are old enough to manage themselves after school while I work but too young to be left home alone).

          I’d also lose 2 hours of sleep a day and a bunch of time with family and have to rearrange my entire life. I can take 20 minutes off to pick kids up after school, but if I were in the office, I’d have to leave work for 1.5 hours to get them because of the commute. Not to mention trying to figure out how to get the kids to school on time and not be late for work.

          I’ve seen a lot of reasons here why forcing people to change a schedule they’ve been doing for years is unfair, but none about how it affects millions of working parents, especially working mothers. The back-to-office trend is bad for women.

      12. GoodNPlenty*

        I hear you. I hit retirement age at the end of pandemic related work from home. It was the only 2 years on my 50+ working years I’d ever been remote. I *loved* working from home, and was able to retire without ever having to go back.

        But….I was a senior level consultant and when in the office, I was a resource for 60+ people informally in addition to the specific teams I serviced. All that day to day information sharing was lost. So from a corporate POV, having me WFH was a loss to their educational process. It showed me that people won’t pick up the phone or email as much as they will lean over a cube wall for a quick question.

        So the push me-pull you of this will be corporate needs vs the desire of staff to avoid commuting and being able to get their laundry done.

      14. Ollie*

        In my last job we worked two days a week in office. Then my husband was tranferred 800 miles away and I worked from home for 7 years. I was very grateful that I didn’t have to find another job but there is a downside. I missed out on a lot of knowledge and social interaction.

      15. Nicole Maria*

        I agree with you, I enjoyed my time working from home, but like Allison said, there are benefits to working around other people — it makes collaboration and cross-training significantly easier (like Allison said, the “learning osmosis”). And I do think in-person conversation can lead to insights that Zoom/Teams ones just don’t.

        My team and I each work 1 day/week from home, which I think is fine 2-3 days/week in office and at home seems perfect actually.

      16. Project Manaic-ger*

        The research agrees that for most people and most jobs 2-4 days in the office results in the most happiness and productivity BUT that’s a broad stroke. The optimum balance for individuals and businesses is going to vary widely depending on age, job, position, etc.

    2. It's the CEO*

      Of course he will win. He is the CEO.

      We have a similar discussion at the moment and had I known the strict rules for office days they want to implement now, I would not have chosen this employer two years ago. And I am definitely in favour of working in the office.
      But I am under no illusion that the CEO cares about that.

      1. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

        Of course he will win. He is the CEO.

        Well, TBD. We had six (that I know of) businesses fold in my hometown of ~35M (35,000) people over the past 4 years, explicitly citing “not able to get enough good/dependable/reliable/productive workers onsite.” If enough people vote with their feet, the CEO could well end up with no one to give orders to (or less than the quorum needed to conduct business).

        1. PurpleShark*

          How is this a win for anyone exactly? Your town had 6 businesses close which means what, they moved elsewhere or shut down entirely? That is not great for the town revenue nor is it good in the long haul. Finding a happy medium would be good for everyone.

          1. FrivYeti*

            One of the little secrets of remote work is that the business doesn’t have to be in the town for the town to thrive. Corporate taxes aren’t generally municipal, and if the *workers* are still in town, they’re still frequenting local businesses and paying taxes, probably more than if they had to drive to the next town over. Less driving means less damage to roads and less congestion.

            If businesses are shutting down because all the local workers are both happy to and able to work remote, it’s not a problem for the town at all.

            1. PurpleShark*

              My point is that the businesses themselves have to pay taxes and those revenues are much higher than what residents pay. Things that benefit everyone. This is why cities and towns want to bring in a business.

          2. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

            I just claimed the CEO may be playing a losing move, and cited recent experience of examples where it (may have) played out that way. Just because the CEO loses doesn’t mean someone else necessarily wins.

            One of the businesses was a bakery, but the other 5 were white collar/knowledge work.

          3. Grumpy Elder Millennial*

            Nobody said this is a win for anyone. Just that it wasn’t a win for the CEO.

            It’s wild to me that these leaders decided to keep pushing forward with requiring people to be on-site and shut down (or move) than just be more flexible on that requirement. Seems like more evidence that this strong preference some leaders have isn’t based on data or logic.

      2. anon4this*

        This happened at my partners company. They mandated 3 days/week gave people 6 month notice and then made it 4 days about 6 months later. Why? People were not following 3 days and their managers didnt do anything about it. IT went into the system and used the data and showed people weren’t working/being productive at home and not working when they said they were.

        To OP, they can see a lot more than your card swipes! I always eye roll when people say this. If your system or laptop is owned by your company they can access that. They can tell if you use a mouse mover, etc. Also more and more companies are checking to see if you’re unavailable certain times of the day. Kid emergencies, occasionally, fine, but if you pick your kid up and send a couple emails from 3-5 and call it a day that isn’t okay to do.

        If your employees aren’t listening to the mandates then how do you even know if they are doing their work? I had one team member tell me they worked 8 hours and did X work. Well, they didn’t work 8 hours, but what they got done in that time period pre-covid someone got done in 1-2 hours max.

        More and more companies are RTO and those who let people work remote are monitoring their employees more.

        Honestly, I work with clients and the ones who are remote are usually the harder ones to get in contact/get a response from. I don’t want to generalize, but that is usually the issue.

        1. Texan In Exile*

          “how do you even know if they are doing their work?”

          I dunno. Are they meeting their goals or not?

            1. Richard Hershberger*

              Yup. So many of these discussions come down to management having no clue how to measure productivity, and using face time as a proxy.

              2. I Have RBF*

                Exactly. Too many managers (and CEOs) are lazy and incapable of managing by results, so they just manage by presence. Their employees, and ultimately their companies, pay the price.

                I am perfectly capable of being a flake in the office if I’m mentally checked out. I also used to have a coworker who would come and yak at several of us, screwing up our ability to get anything done

            2. Rayray*

              Exactly. When I worked full-time in office you could still browse the internet, stare at your desk, go for long walks, chat with coworkers and other things that weren’t productive. You don’t always have a babysitter in the office who keeps a watch over everyone. Usually managers have actual work to do and can’t observe everyone all day.

              2. JFC*

                This is why I’m way more productive at home. I do like the interaction in our office, but it’s really easy to get bogged down in conversations with coworkers on a daily basis. I probably lose at least an hour every time I’m in the office because we’re a chatty bunch. If I have a heavy workload and/or tight deadlines (which happens more often than not), buckling down at home without any distractions is the only way I’m making progress.

        2. Spreadsheet Queen*

          I think if you had IT look at everyone’s computer usage when they are in the office too, that they’ll also see a lot of gaps, too much internet time, etc. If they didn’t look at that before, I don’t know that looking at the home use is a good comparison. Also, we all have productivity dips and spikes, and there are sometimes slower periods where your job is mainly to be “available”. You’re still plenty available if you take 10 minutes here and there to check the laundry.

          Personally, I think my productivity is similar either way. I waste more time “people-ing” in the office vs. fitting in some chores at home. I probably have more energy at home, because I get an extra half hour of sleep because no commute, and because it’s easier to walk out the door for a 2 minute sunshine break when I need a pick-me-up vs. taking the elevator down multiple floors at the office. Also, my bathroom is closer at home, lol. And at home, I’m more willing to ride a high productivity spike as far as it goes, even if that takes me past bedtime. I’m not always comfortable staying at an office that late.

          A lot of companies can really make remote or hybrid work, but every company is subject to the desires of leadership, so that kind of is what it is. If OP wants to retain any WFH flexibility at all for their team, they are going to HAVE to enforce in office days.

          1. Venus*

            I’m physically at work and just had to escape my coworker who likes to drop by and talk at me for as long as possible. He complains that management wants him to come to work when he’s perfectly fine working at home, yet doesn’t seem to clue in that we can all notice that he isn’t doing work when he’s here (I also have the impression he’s on a PIP, so he’s really clueless).

            1. Justin*

              I’m at the office today and the hourly trainers are just chatting. Us salaried workers are heads down.

          2. Ansteve*

            This is why my boss’s go to responses when someone comes to IT to find out productivity is to tell them to be a manager and set goals. Way too often we have managers ask for teams status logs, which we don’t have because in our organization that would be way too much data. Sometimes we have managers ask for something to prove their employees aren’t working but already have more than enough evidence. Like Susan, your employee has multiple complaints of being unresponsive, the work output is nonexistent, you told us the employee sounds asleep when you call him. Be a freaking manager and go to HR to start the term process instead of being mad we don’t have a webcam tracker system.

        3. Tired*

          Many people’s work is NOT just sit at computer move mouse – even on days when I don’t have classes, I have calls (no mouse movement usually), conversations with other people, walking to the printer, doing stuff on paper (I plan and sometimes edit on paper), walking to other parts of the campus, in the library, in a meeting room… at least half of an in office day is NOT on a computer at all, and a good chunk of wfh days are still not moving mouse clicking keyboard type work. Thinking for a start does not always involve clicking anything (unless I am playing solitaire whilst thinking…)

          1. kalli*

            My job is literally ‘open email, write down email subject, make sure email has been filed, move email to ‘done’ folder, rinse and repeat’ and I still have to interact with people.

          2. Falling Diphthong*

            Staring at the computer screen trying to figure out how to solve the problem it is displaying, without moving the mouse.

        4. Lenora Rose*

          In this case, too, the LW IS the manager, who could do the managing to make sure they don’t get a stricter mandate — by calling out the people who aren’t working or aren’t giving any reason for not showing up. By checking in, and collecting productivity data herself. If she can prove Joaquin and Anya are successful wherever they work, and Chris’s productivity numbers are actually lower In Office, but Wakeen’s numbers are noticeably lower at home, and Izzy rarely comes to the office and is impossible to reach after 3 PM, she can address the real problem.

        5. Falling Diphthong*

          If your employees aren’t listening to the mandates then how do you even know if they are doing their work?

          I’ve freelanced remotely since the 90s, and it is just wild to me that some earnestly believe that there is no way a boss could tell whether or not I was doing the work project they had contracted with me for other than by checking how often my mouse moved.

          2. MassMatt*

            I think the point was that this LW does not seem to be managing well, whether in-office or not. They’ve thrown up their hands about RTO, is it likely they have established goals and metrics to measure production? Maybe, but it’s worth asking.

            1. MariposaEP*

              LW here! Yeah my concerns are nothing about, “Is our staff being productive?” They’re all doing exactly what they need to be doing! It’s literally just about appearing in the office because we’re concerned 3 days turning into 5 days. I also forgot to mention half the team is local, half the team is remote (in large part because either people were hired during COVID or people moved during COVID to other states). So there’s that pickle too.

    3. fingers xed*

      I feel that “lose talented experienced workers” is a wonderful fantasy, but won’t happen. My company is 3 days in office (not respected by all people), and will probably be 5 days in-office by the end of the year. I’d be surprised if as many as 10% of people left. We’re a niche industry (certain type of engineering), and …. there just aren’t that many places to pivot to.

      I also agree with L-squared that 2-3 days in office is good for actually meeting people in person, and as Alison pointed out, for training junior people, or people new to the company. Slack/teams doesn’t fill the same role.

      1. Bitte Meddler*

        When the CEO at my last job changed the definition of hybrid from “2-3 days a week, based on the needs of your department” to “Mon-Thu, no exceptions; if you have to be home for even a few hours during those days (to let a repair person in, for instance), then you have to use PTO because we also aren’t doing flextime anymore,” my department of 15 people lost 5 of those people. I was one of the five.

        In the 1.5 years since, another 3 of the original 15 left. Yes, the department has been able to replace them with people who are fine with 4 rigid days in the office, but the 8 they lost were the senior-most people with the most knowledge.

        So they lost half of an entire department because of the RTO mandate, which cost the company money to recruit, money to pay the new people (always at least a little bit higher than the ones who left), and productivity lost while the new people gain the knowledge and skills that the ones who left had (which takes years).

        And that was just *my* department. The same thing unfolded companywide.

        1. Jules the 3rd*

          If they replaced senior people with junior people, they did not pay higher. That may have been the plan.

          My last employer had over a decade of ‘WF Anywhere’. I started WFH in 2007 (my ‘team’ was in Europe and Mexico, I am in the US, so where I worked didn’t matter), and the ‘back to the office’ edict came in 2017. Everyone had 12 months to arrange to work at a local hub, and they were closing smaller locations. So, for example, people who had been working in Charlotte NC had to go to RTP (2hrs away) to work at least 3 days / week. People who’d moved to FL or coastal regions preparing for retirement were expected to be back in one of the central offices. This impacted older employees much more than younger ones.

          The company planned it to gain cover for firing older workers. The class action lawsuits are still playing out, but it’s now mostly about whether separation agreements can really be used to stop people from suing when companies break the law, not about whether the company broke the law.

          I saw the company use this and other tools to force early retirements. Why pay a supply chain team lead $150K when you could hire a new one for $110K? Programmers / engineers / sales were a little cushioned from this by demand and relationships, but for back office functions, new people were much less expensive.

          (yes, the company is probably obvious to people who pay attention, but I may be legally required to not mention the name. I got laid off 10 months ago due to closing down manufacturing, but I’m in a position that I like better and they were at least reasonably generous, so no hard feelings on my behalf. On behalf of that $150K team lead tho – he was the best manager I *ever* had, in 30 years working for multiple companies, and the replacement… was not. Salty about that one.)

        2. Bast*

          This was my biggest fear in applying for jobs posted as “hybrid.” Other than the fact that some were not actually hybrid at all, I had heard tell of many companies offering a position as hybrid and then pulling the rug out from the employees and mandating RTO. At the very least, if this had happened to me, I’d be looking. If it were a discipline/work productivity issue where someone said, “Okay, we can see you aren’t actually doing anything at home and are disappearing all day, so we need you to RTO” that’s one thing. If the CEO developed a butts in seats attitude suddenly and switched gears for no real reason rooted in logic, I’d be less than pleased, particularly if it were in certain areas. There are certain jobs I wouldn’t mind commuting to for 2-3 days a week, but not a full 5.

      2. ferrina*

        My friend’s company recently announced RTO. They had a 300% increase in resignations within the first month (before the RTO even took effect).

      3. Monkey*

        HAHA. I’ve been working from home for more than a decade. I’m a pretty valuable employee and highly compensated for it. ilIf there was ever a return to office mandate I’d be out within a week working for our competitors. Studies Joe that it returned to office mandate typically results in 15 to 20% turnover but that turnover is skewed highly towards the best performers leaving the company.

      4. Busy Middle Manager*

        Random data point: was on the JP Morgan Chase earnings call today. When someone asked about efficiency/cost cutting, they mentioned having clearly overhired during covid and needing to seek “efficiency” there. They also made waves about RTO.

        People are framing the JPM RTO as a nefarious control tactic and lazy way to do a layoff. In reality, it’s more a case where the “spreadsheet” and “backoffice” work that is easy to do from anywhere is getting streamlined and automated, and the company now needs/prioritizes (mid level and senior) people who can solve their more urgent problems, such as how to deploy all of their capital. Those things usually require meetings/brainstorming sessions

        1. Radioactive Cyborg Llama*

          I’ve been working from home since 2020 with 1 day onsite since 2023, and I’ve had meetings and brainstorming sessions this whole time.

    4. Our of office, out of mind*

      You assume that “talented, experienced workers” want to work from home and would oppose more office work. This is certainly untrue in many cases.

      I am not opposed to 1-2 days of work from home per week, but the idea that you’re going to permanently atomize your workforce and never interact with another human is an AAM fetish, bit reality.

      2. Raven*

        Working from home and “never interacting with another human” are two completely different things. I WFH and interact with my coworkers all day long. Interacting via Teams rather than in-person has no effect on the work I do, other than I get much more done because I don’t have to commute and I’m not interrupted constantly by idle chatter.

        1. Richard Hershberger*

          As the father of two teens, my observation is that they are perfectly happy with their social lives being largely, or even entirely, virtual. It’s not for me, but I’m an old.

          1. Yawnley*

            They are — and data is increasingly showing that this is a big concern, socially and educationally! You might want to read up on that.

            1. MigraineMonth*

              I haven’t dug too far into this, but it looks like the data is a lot more nuanced than just “online-only interaction bad for teens”. The *type* of interaction seems to matter a great deal. Scrolling through social media seems to be particularly problematic; texting or video chatting with friends, commenting in online communities and similar tend to be much better for teens.

          2. I Have RBF*

            Since my stroke in 1995, a large part of my social interaction has been virtual, often by text only, without cameras or voice. The concept that you can’t have a social life without being physically colocated does not match with my reality at all.

            1. Nightbringer*

              Same. Not stroke but injury that caused disability. I’ve had online friendships that are still going strong 15 years later.

        2. Tired*

          I’ve preferred to deal with people virtually (good old email!) for nearly all aspects of work whenever it is possible, because I can listen and understand better, am less distracted, and just more comfortable and feel more competent all round. Found out last year, aged 55, that I’m AuDHD which probably explains a lot of it, but I’m also an introvert.

          Nuance is really important – people have different needs, and both companies and roles have different needs, expectations and mores around whether it is acceptable, expected or a problem to chat, have music on, drop in on people, take long coffee breaks which have a little work in them and call them a meeting, expect people to spend substantial chunks of time travelling around buildings or a campus for different meetings regardless of their role etc.

        3. Yawnley*

          It is absolutely true that WFH is not the same as being in the same physical environment. We operate differently online vs in person, and we learn about each other and our work differently. It is infuriating when the AAM commentariat pretend that they’re equivalent — it does this topic a huge disservice! Why can’t we be truthful about the differences without espousing a judgment about which one is better?

          I am fully remote (my entire org is), but we have a healthy budget for team retreats and an org-wide retreat. I could not be successful working from home if I didn’t have that 5x/year in-person time. You might deny that, but I would genuinely have trouble believing you.

          1. I Have RBF*

            I’ve been in my current, 100% remote role for two years. I have never met any of my coworkers in person. I haven’t had a problem getting to know people.

          3. MigraineMonth*

            I have worked fully remote for 5 years. In that time, I have met some of my coworkers in person and others I haven’t. I have the closest working relationships with the coworkers who I work with frequently, engage in some non-work conversation with, and I either see often in person *or* turn on their cameras.

            Honestly, the only major difference for me between a video conversation and an in-person conversation is finding out how tall the other person is.

      3. Justin*

        My coworkers are in other cities being forced to go to offices there while I’m forced to go to the one in my city. I have never met any of them in person and likely never will.

      4. Jules the 3rd*

        Studies are showing that RTO mandates are driving higher turnover, usually of better performing employees (and no, I’m not monkey, I’ve just seen the same studies). It’s not universal, but the true best way is to be as flexible as you can within the needs of the business.

      5. I'm still eating*

        A lot of commenters make it clear that they are in contact with their coworkers whether in person or remote, through Zoom/Teams. Might your job be creating a specific bias in your head about what remote work looks like?

      6. Bast*

        I am of the same opinion as you — I would not like a job where it was 100% WFH, however, if I had applied for a job that offered 1-2 days a week of WFH and suddenly that was rescinded, I’d be pretty peeved and probably looking for a new job.

    6. Drought*

      I doubt he’ll lose talent. The job market is terrible and especially for remote roles.

      I applied to an internal job and was rejected without interview a month later. Since it was internal they gave me feedback when I asked. The feedback was “You are great and I would have hired you if I had seen your resume… but we got over 2,000 applications on the first day. HR sent me a hundred qualified applicants by the end of day 2 and I only looked at about 30 resumes before having a good slate to hire from. I made an offer to one of those candidates.”

      I had applied on day 3 and was never even seen by HR or the HM. It’s just that competitive for remote right now.

    7. Another Kristin*

      “FWIW: both my kids are WFH. They put in way more than 8 hours a day since the computer is right there and they keep working.”

      This is not the selling point you think it is, at least not from the worker’s point of view. There is something to be said for being able to get up from your desk, leave, and not think about work until tomorrow. If your kids are working extra hours because hey, the computer’s right there and they don’t have anything else to do, that means they need to learn how to unplug and get a life, not that they’re model WFH employees.

      1. Lenora Rose*

        Most successful long term WFH people have said they are so because they have some kind of barrier between work and leisure spots in the house; usually an office, but in one case it’s literally a different computer on the opposite side of his home office desk; “Get up, walk around the table, have different wall decor in view” is still enough to do a mental reset.

    8. Aggretsuko*

      That’s what’s going on in all the industries everywhere: everyone is being mandated back to office full time. I think we’re all stuck.

    9. Alan*

      Exactly. This was me during covid. I’d roll out of bed at 6:30 or 7, check my e-mail and then just never leave my chair until a short lunch break or dinner, after which I would often be back in my chair. My grandboss had the nerve to complain that we were all just on a long “vacation” and it was time to get back to work (in person). As we met incredible schedules and did amazing work. Later I found out that he was projecting. *He* was taking time off at home to do (important) things. And he figured we were all doing that.

      1. Grenelda Thurber*

        Hmm, that could explain a lot of of the unnecessary RTO pressure, now that you mention it.

    10. Hey There It's Me*

      The situation in the letter sounds like terrible management all around. A mandate without any reasoning behind it besides “I want it so/other companies are doing it” won’t be well received, and ignoring said mandate by changing it and then letting people be wishy/washy about it is asking for trouble given that you know that it’s something that the CEO actually cares about, whatever the reason. I agree with Alison: get clear guidance from up top, be very clear in communicating the expectations and consequences of not following them, and let the chips fall where they may.

      Some thoughts (that pertain to jobs that can actually be remote):

      Management is a set of skills on its own; the skills for managing a fully in office team are different from those for a local hybrid team are different for those for a fully remote team that’s potentially spread across states and/or timezones. A lot of orgs/departments/managers don’t bother to put the time in to figure out what makes sense for their particular business needs and are trying to apply a one-size-fits-all strategy.

      I was on a team that stayed fully remote after things opened up, both because of the nature of the work and the personalities of the people. The more casual and/or social interactions were done via non work-related chats about various topics and (actually) optional virtual events that weren’t so often as to a be nuisance, were organized by different people so it didn’t become part of one person’s job, and were scheduled during the work day before closing so as not to interfere with personal time.

      Several people have mentioned loneliness/boundaries between work and home and while I don’t feel the same, I get it. My issue is if your office is already hybrid, what’s stopping you from going in all you want? Presumably everyone who feels the same would also be going in regularly/frequently so a mandate wouldn’t be needed. If you are going in and finding you’re the only one there (i.e., it doesn’t solve the loneliness problem), that might indicate that the company’s culture isn’t a good fit and it’s worth considering whether moving on wouldn’t be better. That element of socialization used to be a given for office work, so people like me for whom it is very draining would to have to factor that in and keep it pushing. The difference now is that those who really thrive with it can’t take for granted that it will be a part of their work day.

      Lastly – one thing I didn’t see mentioned before I started typing is that some orgs are doing RTO mandates with the express purpose of pushing people out and avoid layoffs. They know how many people have moved or are still local but rely on the time saved from commuting/the flexibility to get chores done or run an errand during a break, and are betting that enough of them aren’t willing to give that up and will quit. I don’t think that’s the case in OP’s company (it doesn’t seem like that CEO has thought it through that thoroughly, tbh) but since a lot of comments are addressing the RTO vs. hybrid vs. WFH question more generally, I thought it pertinent.

      1. MariposaEP*

        I’m the LW! I can definitely take the feedback that in terms of this RTO mandate, my boss and I haven’t been the best. Our original thinking was that we wanted to be flexible and understanding because other than myself and one other person, the others’ commutes are like 1 to 1.5 hours. Plus, so many other departments were also in a huff over it that we felt we were following the mandate the closest and got by a year without complaints for the 2 days! So it’s just a bummer to be here now.

        I will say while the RTO thing is something to address head on per Allison’s guidance, we’ve been able to set a pretty good structure for our hybrid team. Because half the team is remote permanently as they live in different states and timezones. So during COVID, which is when things started shifting, we adjusted over time and do pretty well. Always places to learn, but better than we were before for sure (not just for work but for culture as well).

        So yes to your notes on that being considerations people need to take for hybrid and/or remote situations.

        The team is great. The real issue is just the appearing IRL.

        (I don’t know but my original comment didn’t post so this may show up twice?)

    11. Ellie*

      I think there’s at least a 50% chance that the CEO doesn’t have the stones to fire anyone and things stay as they are. An update would be brilliant.

    12. Nicole Maria*

      “You will lose talented experienced workers and see a decline in productivity…” Do you have a source for that?

  2. Meemur*

    this post reminded me of another letter where an employee was coming in to work, clocking in, then clocking out again and going home. Did we ever get an update to that?

    1. Sloanicota*

      That was common enough that there was a whole term for it, although it escapes me at the moment! And I think OP is saying-not-saying that it’s an okay solution as far as she’s concerned!

      2. Heffalump*

        Aside from coffee badging being wrong in principle, it would seem that when you head home after badging in, your employer is paying you for travel time.

        1. Sloanicota*

          I guess presumably you could add that time back onto the end of the day, which is what I do when I run errands at lunch or something. But in the letter we had here about it, I admit it was Not A Great Look haha. I suppose if the whole reason for RTO is the passionate love of spontaneous hallway conversations, leadership really might be satisfied with mornings / a couple hours a day of that (but in the letter I got the impression the guy turned 180 degrees after badging in and left, so probably not even *one* spontaneous hallway convo in that time period …

      3. And They Ruined it for Everyone*

        At my husband’s office, someone didn’t even coffee badge. They reportedly were caught on camera pulling up, swiping and returning to their car. And thus significant rumors started that IT would track internet pings and if you were under 4hrs, you’d have issues/it wouldn’t count to the 60% monthly in office requirement (which is already an obnoxious calculation because you inevitably need to be more in more than 3 days a week given partial weeks at the end/beg of each month.)

    2. Hlao-roo*

      The letter Meemur is referring to is “I’m in trouble for badging in, then going back home” (first letter on the short answer post from November 14, 2023).

      As of right now, there’s no update for that letter.

      1. Tio*

        That LW didn’t seem to think there was any problem with what they were doing, so good odds it didn’t end great for them

      3. SnackAttack*

        I’m not 100% sure, but it sounds like that LW worked for the same place I do (it’s the exact same set-up and the mandate she was describing sounded word-for-word like my company’s). If I’m right, then LW’s only options were to get fired, quit, or suck it up and go to the office, unfortunately. Managers receive a regular report on their employees’ badge-in and badge-out times, and they do get dinged for chronically absent staff.

  3. Boss Scaggs*

    Layoffs, terrible clients, working ’til 11pm.. This job doesn’t sound so great even if it was completely remote! Maybe this new mandate is the kick you need to look elsewhere?

    1. Sloanicota*

      Yeah OP I hope you’re looking yourself so you can “be the change” – “we told you workers didn’t want to come back to the office, you insisted which is your right, now 25% of our workforce is giving notice, oh and I am also, my last day is in two weeks.” This is very satisfying!

      1. Our of office, out of mind*

        A question for Sloanicota. If you’re so convinced that 25% of your workforce will resign if asked to work in an office, what is to stop a company from laying off that 25% and replacing them with cheaper employees in India or another emerging market?

        After all, “work can be done anywhere” and you’re “just as productive” with permanent remote work, so why not go whole hog and get people who can work remotely from India?

        1. Boss Scaggs*

          Well if the company wants to get people back into the office, hiring people thousands of miles away doesn’t seem to achieve that goal

        2. Tio*

          Well, you’d have to figure out the laws and schedules and payroll for an entire other country, or pay someone to handle it for you, which would eat away at the discount you receive from buying cheap outsourced labor. You also have to either pay them to work overnight or accept that you won’t have your employees available during standard business hours.

          1. Out of office, out of mind*

            1. The transaction cost of handling payroll processing in India is trivial compared to what can be saved in salaries. If it weren’t, outsourcing would not be a thing.

            2. The “follow the sun” model is a thing, and many businesses find it a feature, rather than a bug.

            3. Even if you find time zones a showstopper, then substitute “Argentina” for “India.” Not quite as cheap, but still cheaper than the US.

            1. Zyzzx*

              My company is one of these – we have workers literally around the globe. Teams working together regularly span 8, 12, or even 16 hours worth of time zones. If you’re not used to it, it sounds impossible but it does work in the end. A lot of people work unusual hours (being on the US West Coast I work start work at 7am but then I have a ton of flexibility later in the day when everyone else is offline. On the other hand a lot of people in India work more like noon-8pm local time). But our workload is such that you don’t need to be working long hours, just weird ones sometimes. Biggest downside is that with very little working-hours overlap most questions and requests don’t get answered until the next day. Which slows things down but people accept that.

              I do assume at some point my job could be outsourced (they’re already no longer hiring in my region, new hires for my role are all in Spain now), but I’ll deal with that if it happens (thus far they’re just moving things via attrition, not layoffs).

        3. FrivYeti*

          For a start, time zones. Even if work can be done anywhere, you have to be awake to be answering emails and logging into remote meetings. As someone currently doing a bunch of work with people in Europe, this is a huge deal.

          For a second, language barrier.

          For a third, it’s not necessarily the case that work that can be generally done remote doesn’t still need people in the office 1-2 days a month, for major meetings with clients, picking up and dropping off equipment, etc.

          For a fourth, there’s tax implications that most businesses are not able to meet to using a foreign workforce while claiming to be a domestic company.

          1. Out of office, out of mind*

            “For a second, language barrier.“

            Shockingly, English is widely spoken at a native level in India.

            Setting that aside, I have invested in tech companies that hire programmers in Ukraine and other countries. For mechanical work like programming it works just fine. Grammar Ly is a great example of a company that does software development in Ukraine, and yet English proficiency is its core mission.

            The case for keeping employees in the US rests on collaboration and willingness to interact in person. If you’re insisting on full time work from home, someone in India or another offshore market can do y the same thing much more cheaply. Be careful what you wish for.

            1. Wingo Staww*

              In my experience, Indian English is generally VERY different from American or British English. Language barrier doesn’t always mean “we speak different languages,” it can also mean, “we technically speak the same language but our grammar and cultural norms are so different that it is hard to communicate.”

            2. HungryLawyer*

              And yet there are plenty of companies across the US that don’t outsource as a punishment for workers who would prefer to WFH. Instead, these businesses provide their domestic employees with flexible remote or hybrid work options because it makes good business sense for them to do so. And for what it’s worth, there are scores of us who can successfully WFH while still successfully collaborating and interacting with colleagues.

              1. I Have RBF*

                Plus companies that can, by the nature of their work, be “Remote Only” and don’t need much of an office footprint save a bunch of money. IIRC, the two biggest expenses for a company are salaries and real estate related costs.

            4. I Have RBF*

              LOL. Inglish is not Anglish (Indian English is not the same as American English.) I’ve worked for companies with a “follow the sun” model for operations. Handoffs are still a PITA.

        5. Jules the 3rd*

          Short answer:
          It’s going to be automation, the grand wave of US outsourcing is pretty much over.

          Long answer:
          As someone who has done the work assessing where to put new offices for a global manufacturing company, while you *could* get people to work from anywhere, there’s a lot of factors to consider when looking at where to hire:
          1. The emerging market must have a certain level of technically literate people, so that you have a decent applicant pool. Many of those markets have been exploited to the point that the salary levels + mgmt costs have risen significantly over the last 20 years. We considered MX, CN, IN, Brazil, and Hungary, as we already had operations in those countries. Only China still had slack in the labor market; BR, HU, and MX salaries + mgmt costs were on par with US, and we still had a lot of turnover for higher paying jobs. I forget whether IN was on par, but the turnover was high there too, much higher than in the US for the same functions (accounting / audit / order placing / cust service).
          2. Political issues and stability matter. European countries have fewer political concerns, but no salary savings there.
          3. The importance of office / tech costs surprised me. We ended up not going w Hungary because there was no space in the Hungary office for more people, and a new office space was VERY expensive. People could not wfh in most of the emerging markets, the electricity and connectivity just weren’t there. HU / MX people often had to come in to the office to load the work they’d done.

          We looked at some other costs that I forget, but those three were the critical factors. In 2014, my employer put the team in an existing Chinese office, but the employer closed down that team in 2022 as part of reducing their Chinese footprint. I think they just did away with the function, but I know they brought a couple other functions back from CN / EU to the US, where they’d suddenly regained a lot of office space due to WFH and owning the buildings.

          Right now, CN would probably welcome the jobs back, but with Russia / Ukraine and CN / Taiwan, plus tariffs…. it’s a hard sell for outsourcers.

        6. Falling Diphthong*

          … But the company wouldn’t take this awesome cost saving measure anyhow, laying off the more expensive stateside people?

        7. I Have RBF*

          Having worked with teams from India, for some reason that doesn’t work very well. There are cultural and time zone communication issues, for one. The management style and resulting work ethics and habits are different. You end up spendsing a lot of time making sure everyone is on the same page, and even then, it sometimes goes very much sideways.

        8. MigraineMonth*

          Honestly, jobs that can be successfully outsourced will be regardless. Jobs that can be successfully automated will be. It’s been happening for decades now.

          It seems unlikely that resistance to RTO mandates without any reasoning behind them will be the thing that causes a whole bunch of previously domestic jobs to be outsourced, if the COVID-times demonstration of how many jobs could be done remotely didn’t.

        9. All The Tired Horses*

          So your argument is we should never advocate for better working conditions in case our employers fire us anyway and outsource?

    2. Pastor Petty Labelle*

      That’s what stood out to me not what the CEO says goes.

      OP I think part of the reason you are so stressed about this mandate is you are really burned out on this job. You work late then still have to show up the next morning because your CEO has a butts in seats mentality. On top of which you have to act like you are happy.

      Not only are you going to lose good people over this, since as you say you are isolated in online meetings anyway so why are people in the office? But they are going to lose you, either a breakdown or you leave for saner pastures. I would opt for looking for a job while you still have the energy to do it.

    3. Elsewise*

      That stood out to me too! LW, you sound exhausted. Are there better options out there for you? Even if you’re personally okay with the RTO, it sounds like it wouldn’t hurt to look around. I know that’s hard when you have so little free time, but it can absolutely be worth it.

      FWIW, it feels like there’s another big wave of RTO mandates coming down, just from my anecdotal experience. Most of my friends who work for companies with new RTO orders are looking for other work. If they were hired for remote jobs, it now feels like part of their compensation package to not have to commute, buy new office clothes, wear makeup every day, and be constantly watched. Getting that taken away without any additional perks to make up for it (and often with a fair amount of condescension and implications that they’re not doing their jobs) is enough to drive good employees away.

      1. MariposaEP*

        Haha, I really wasn’t expecting comments to point this out to me, but I guess on re-read of my letter it makes sense why. LW here. Thank you for your concern, and you’re all right, I am quite exhausted. I won’t mention the hours I worked this week answering a proposal from an international client who gave us barely 5 business days to respond when we normally need 3 weeks for a project of that size.

        I’ve been at this company going on 7.5 years now. My friends and ex-coworkers have all asked me the same thing: look elsewhere! There’s a million excuses I gave before. I will say despite this lame job, one thing I do have here is that I do have a lot of flexibility thanks to my boss. He runs our department in its own little pocket (hence part of the reason for this RTO mandate situation) and it’s saved me from a lot of the political garbage that goes on around here. But the higher I’ve gone, the more I see it, and it’s adding to my stress + on top of the regular work. The terrible clients are paying us less. I do want to escape. But my industry the last 2-3 years has been hit HARD. The avg before of people being out of work was 3 – 6 months. Lately it’s been 1 – 1.5 years. That’s so scary to me. But I applied for graduate school to change careers so crossing my fingers!

        Though given my working hours the past year and a half, I don’t think my goal of doing both at the same time is going to be feasible. I will probably vaporize into nothing!

    4. AndersonDarling*

      That’s what happened to me! I started a remote job during Covid and eventually it was time to return to in-office work. I realized that I didn’t want to see these jerks in person, the only way I tolerated the job was because I didn’t have to sit next to them all day. The job itself was pretty crappy and the return to office notice was my kick to look for a new job.

    7. JMC*

      Someone seriously needs to speak up and tell the CEO what the truth is. That forcing people into an office is antiquated and not necessary. We are in the 21st century now and we have proven for the last 5 years we can work from home and be MORE productive. It’s also cheaper. It also allows disabled people to work. It allows people who are chronically ill to work, because commuting is the hardest part of any job. If everyone either quit or refused to work until he sees the light of day maybe that will convince him.

  4. FormerLibrarian*

    Also, you don’t have to remain as in the middle as you have been. If this is a settled situation in your CEO’s mind, don’t feel obligated to allow your team to rehash the reasons they’re against it over and over. It’s completely fine to start saying “the CEO has made his decision” and decline to provide a sounding board for an additional round of argument.

    1. L-squared*

      Agreed.

      I’ve had managers who did that, and I actually respected them. They basically said “this isnt my call. I can’t change it, this is what has come down from above. If you choose not to do this, then we can figure out the best way to move forward.”

      1. ferrina*

        I think it’s the clarity and consistency that is key.

        I disagree with the take that “CEO’s word stands,” but you need to be strategic on what battles you pick and how you pick those battles (in other words, politics). And you need to be willing to accept the consequences of your path. I’ve had some kooky CEOs who did some kooky policies (looking at you, tech start-up). Sometimes I flat out told them that I would not enforce those policies because they were illegal/violated our client agreement/unethical and would have us laughed out the door by any decent client. Sometimes I nodded and said I would need to “evaluate the application of that policy”, then changed absolutely nothing and waited for the CEO to get distracted by the next shiny idea (some well placed bureaucracy can work wonders). Sometimes I would enforce part or all of it, especially if it was something that didn’t really impact my team at all (if it barely impacts you, no reason not to apply it). No matter what I chose to do, I was always very clear with my team about what I expected of them, and that if anyone got in trouble, it would be me. And if I said we would do X, then I enforced that (usually just through gentle reminders, but sometimes through a serious sit-down and “hey, this is part of your job and you need to do it”).

    2. Hastily Blessed Fritos*

      Yeah. You’re just the messenger here. Not your decision, and not your responsibility to try to argue it. You can make it clear you think it’s not a good situation, if that’s what you think, and still make it clear that it’s not one you can change.

      1. Alice*

        I agree that clarity and then drawing a line under the discussion will help.
        From the employee side — I feel uncomfortable when middle managers come across as asking for reassurance that I’m not upset about the changes. My responsibility is to be pleasant and professional, and to take or leave the working conditions that leaders have decided we’re going to have. So I’m looking, and in the meantime, I’m doing my job well, showing up when you want me to (whether it makes sense to me or not), and being pleasant and professional. But I wish my grandboss would stop pressing, “I know you prefer more flexibility, how are you REALLY feeling about policy X?”

        1. Brandon*

          Short answer: I wish I could upvote!

          Long answer: There are many things I am unhappy about at my job. Yes, I am evaluating and planning my future. Meanwhile, do not ask me to perform the emotional labor of assuring anyone about how I am REALLY feeling about policy X. I feel like I should do my job. Please and thank you.

      2. MsM*

        Yep. If people end up leaving over that, then they leave, and you communicate to the higher-ups what you can feasibly accomplish while you’re searching for and training their replacements. If the higher-ups don’t care what’s feasible, or you get tired of having to replace people over this, then you start thinking about your next move, too.

      3. Guacamole Bob*

        The problem is, you have to make a lot of in-the-moment judgment calls about what to do about people not complying. How many days a month can someone work from home for a seemingly reasonable reason (sick kid, plumber coming, etc.) before you have to speak to them? How quickly do you escalate the discipline? Does the CEO really want you to fire people over this? Just if they come in less than once a week? less than three times a week? Over what period? What if they’re a high performer with a hard-to-find skill set? What if it’s because their kid is going through a medical issue?

        When the rubber meets the road, OP has to decide what to do, and it sounds like their leadership isn’t giving them the guidance they need to implement this new policy.

    3. Katie*

      Way before 2020 I had a battle with my boss and bosses boss about my employees working from home. I lost. While it still irks me I knew it wasn’t something I was going to win if I pushed more than I already had so I made my employees come in when needed and defended them rightly when it made sense (I got a full WFH accommodation for one employee).

    4. Falling Diphthong*

      I suspect that there’s an aspect of “… or else what?”

      And the answer isn’t “Or else everyone not doing 5 days in office will be immediately fired, and we’ll just hire someone else to do your job.” It’s more “As the mid-level manager, you should be able to cajole cheerful workers back into the office full-time with the power of your personality.”

    5. EventPlannerGal*

      If anything, I think OP would be doing both themselves and their team a big favour by taking a firmer stance on this. At present, it sounds like the team has no good reason to believe that the rules they’re being asked to follow actually mean anything. They’ve been given directives from the CEO, but then middle management bends the rules and basically render those directives meaningless. But they’re not meaningless: the CEO clearly does care about this issue and is getting increasingly unhappy, to the point that HR is pulling key records, and may well implement an even stricter policy. It feels a bit like the middle management has been trying to be Cool Boss and creating further confusion.

  5. ThisIsNotADuplicateComment*

    Unfortunately, the time to speak up was when the CEO first said people should be in three days a week. Instead all the teams basically just ignored him to do their own thing which is going to make bargaining with him now a lot more difficult. LW, when you guys decided to try two days in the office instead of three did you even tell your CEO you were doing that? Or did you just sneak around him?

    1. Strive to Excel*

      Ultimately WFH works on a trust-based system that employees are actually doing work while at home, and not spending time doing other things. LW would have had a lot more leverage if everyone had come back into the office 3 days a week and productivity dropped. Instead, they did not enforce the CEO’s direct order. Now trust has been lowered and the opportunity to clearly show the decline is gone.

      I get that the order might be for something unnecessary and possibly with bad effects on productivity. I do. But unless it’s something actively illegal or seriously unethical, disobeying a direct order is a really bad way to start a negotiation over something a CEO doesn’t want to do in the first place.

      1. Dottie*

        I would argue that WFH doesn’t really rely on trust. Most jobs involve tasks that can be checked. Are emails and phone calls getting answered in a timely matter? Are projects getting done? Are clients and co-workers getting what they need? If so, then clearly the person is actually doing work while at home.

    2. MariposaEP*

      LW here!

      For the first part of your message: That’s not true, when the CEO first gave the mandate, even higher senior people than I did tell the CEO it wasn’t a good idea. There were weeks of ongoing discussions that my boos would fill me in on. And from there is the waterfall affect of different departments doing their own.

      For your second question: I don’t speak to the CEO! Thankfully, he’s terrible. My boss who regularly does didn’t outright say this is what we’re doing to put a spotlight on us. He used his magic to tell him yes we’re in office the majority of the mandate (my boss is a very skilled people person. Whereas my feelings are easily read on my face, hence the no CEO interaction by design of mine).

      (Hoping this comment goes through but it might not!)

  6. Someone Else's Boss*

    My organization has been navigating layoffs over the last two years. We haven’t been able to give ample raises or bonuses, and our staff is exhausted. Instead of asking them to start commuting again, we let them stay home. Return to office is like getting a pay cut – do you really want to give your employees a pay cut when they’re working harder than ever with fewer colleagues? I think the CEO needs a reality check.

    1. Yup*

      Yes! It is like getting a paycut. Paying for gas, parking, public transportation, lunches, coffee, extra childcare, you name it. We don’t talk about that enough. Nor the fact that our lives have a better balance.

      1. Tradd*

        Yet weren’t they paying for those same things when they were in office before the pandemic? They’ve gotten a pay raise for the few years they’ve been working from home with not having those expenses.

        1. Nomic*

          Exactly. It’s a pay raise they got, and now they are losing that pay raise. People get upset when a pay raise is clawed back. (in this case substitute “benefit” for “pay raise” if necessary).

          1. Zombeyonce*

            Except that pay raise was immediately eaten up by inflation that wages didn’t keep up with.

          1. ferrina*

            Yep.
            Bonus points if they haven’t gotten a raise in their paycheck or a raise that didn’t keep up with inflation (which has been huge in the last few years).

            1. I Have RBF*

              Which has been my situation for over a decade. The biggest “pay increase” that I got was being able to work remotely. Just the savings in fuel and car insurance are a noticeable change.

              RTO is essentially a blatant pay cut.

        4. MistOrMister*

          Since the commenter said their company has been dealing with layoffs for 2 years, that makes me think their employees have not had a raise or bonus in those two years. Which means they are behind where money is concerned even if they are remote. If you go remote and it is seen as, you are saving money so technically this is a raise, fine. For the first year that is true. At year 2 it is no longer a raise, it is where your compensation falls. So at that point, if you are asked to come back in AND given no raise, you are losing money. Same for anyone hired as a remote worker. If all I have known with a company is being remote and they turn around and tell me I have to come in, I am going to feel like I am losing compensation that I bargained for, because now I have potentially thousands extra in costs a year that were not there when I started the job. It is absolutely a pay cut to go from being remote to in office.

        5. Coffee Protein Drink*

          Most COL are about 3%. While rents dipped for a time, they have risen with a vengeance. Utilities, and food have risen in price much more than that since 2020.

          1. PokemonGoToThePolls*

            My rent has gone up by 50% since 2020, for example.
            (and before anybody suggests moving, what I’m paying is simply what a similar, few-frills apartment costs in my area, there simply is no place to move that is cheaper without giving up things like closets, being able to fit my sofa into the living room, being able to see a tree)

        1. Lenora Rose*

          If your commute means you take another hour to pick up your kid, that’s one more hour of childcare every day that’s needed. Possibly two if you also need to drop them off earlier in the morning.

        2. PokemonGoToThePolls*

          Or if you have older children that don’t need constant supervision and you can easily work with them home, but they are not old enough to be home alone (I’m not a parent, but I’m thinking about 10ish-year-olds)

          1. Zombeyonce*

            This is my situation. My kids are old enough to take care of themselves while I finish work after they get out of school, but not old enough to stay home alone. If I had to return to the office, I’d have to pay for 5 days of afterschool childcare a week (if I could even find it, programs fill up as soon as registration opens around here), while also paying for extra gas and exorbitant parking costs.

          2. MariaLaDelBarrio*

            Correct! This is exactly my case, my kids are 9 and 12, old enough to entertain themselves for 3 hours, but not old enough to be left alone for that same period of time. We use our lunch hour to pick them up from school, and then we continue working for a few more hours with them on their tablets or tv or whatnot. If we had to go back to office full time, we would have to pay for someone or someplace for them to be taken care of, and in California that means several hundred dollars more a month for just 3 hours a day.

    2. Cthulhu’s Librarian*

      The CEO has had a reality check already – his reality is that the people who work for him aren’t paying attention to instructions.

    3. bye*

      And it sounds like the LW and other people in senior leadership have attempted to give him that reality check but it hasn’t worked – so now what do they do?

  7. Richard Hershberger*

    Two points jump out at me: The discussion about why to mandate RTO makes not even a nod to getting the work done; and the LW believes (likely correctly) that the CEO is a petulant child.

    Some jobs can be done just fine remotely, while others cannot. If the job works fine done remotely, insisting on RTO will put the company at a competitive disadvantage. Some other company in the same business but without the RTO hang-up will be at a huge advantage in recruitment and retention. And if your CEO actually makes critical business decisions based on his fee-fees being hurt, this is a huge problem even apart from RTO.

    1. Sloanicota*

      I’d love to chart this out somehow. I’d say some percent of jobs – rarely whole fields – are significantly more effective to do at home as long as you have the right employee in place. Some of course can’t be remote or even flexibly at all – shift coverage on-site jobs. But maybe there’s 10% of jobs that are basically solitary and require a lot of deep uninterrupted thinking time and experience a significant boost. Then there’s the vast category in the middle (speaking only of white collar office fields) where there’s maybe a measurable markdown of value to the employer – but to the employee it’s such a coveted benefit that it could be worth it in retention/attracting talent. Seventy-five percent of a truly excellent employee is worth 100% of a mediocre one in most roles, not all.

      1. bamcheeks*

        I have read reports and seen figures for this in the UK, and without looking them up I think it’s about 1/3 of jobs went fully remote during Covid, and the vast majority of those have gone to hybrid, with full-time employees expected to spend 2-3 days a week in the office and part-time employees pro-rata’d to 40-60%. There are a few employers who have either gone fully remote (usually smaller organisations who were renting office space and have realised they don’t actually need it), or who have mandated full-time in-office work, but these are both rare and not indicative of larger trends.

        I have seen one commentator say that the UK is diverging from the US on this issue — which I think may be because our distances just aren’t as great and our population is more concentrated, so hybrid actually works for the vast majority of people. Working 2 days a week in office means people can tolerate somewhat longer commutes than working 5 days in the office, and for most people the benefits don’t aggregate significantly if you go to fully remote. Like, yes, technically you could move to the the Highlands if you were fully remote, but the number of people who want to do that is pretty small. Whereas the number of people who can now take jobs up to 2 hours away has significantly increased. And actually a lot of us do appreciate 1-3 days in the office even if we don’t want to do it every day.

        1. Sloanicota*

          I actually like hybrid as an employee, but from the organization’s standpoint it’s the least efficient for cost savings, because they still have to have office space to fit everybody (especially if they want in-office days to be the same for most staff like “everyone on Mondays” – and if they *don’t* do that, they get the “why did I have to drive in just to have all-remote meetings with other people who aren’t in the office” issue) – and they mean most employees have to have a fully kitted out home office as well.

          1. bamcheeks*

            I done manage office space but I’ve been in meetings about it and I think the discussion was that at 3 days in-office you need so close to 100% office space,l that it makes no difference, but at 2 days a week there’s a substantial saving — you’re looking at 60-80% of the full time equivalent, as long as it’s well-designed for hot desking and you’ve got a mixture of other spaces for confidential meetings, casual meetings, etc.

        2. UKDancer*

          I think the other reason we’re diverging is the cost of accommodation in London especially. If you are living in a tiny flat or a house share where you have a rota for the use of the table, it’s a lot less appealing to work remotely. Also you have to heat it and pay for WiFi and electricity costs are going up. I think the excessive cost of property either rental or owned in London is a factor.

          Almost all my younger and more junior colleagues in London want to be in more often because they have a better working environment that way.

          1. Sloanicota*

            It was definitely true for me when I was early-career; I was sharing a house with four people, so I would not have wanted to work from home at all (although even then I would have coveted flexible hours at least).

          2. JB (not in Houston)*

            That’s just London, though, right? I have multiple friends in the UK, and they (and the other people at their companies) work almost exclusively from home, which is their preference. Only one of them is in London, though.

            1. Tired*

              Yup! Outside of London, the option is often smallish place close to work or plenty of space with a bit of a longer commute, but one which is perfectly doable for most for 2-3 days a week, and allows a home office and a lot more nice house stuff (a garden, or a walkable life when not at work, or whatever).

        3. ferrina*

          Another key difference between UK and US is the PTO. UK has much better PTO practices and protections than the US. And that’s without factoring in that the UK parental leave is waaaaaaaaaaaaay better.

          I’m curious about the UK childcare practices. That’s a big issue for anyone with kids in the US (childcare is expensive and can be hard to find in some areas). Is the UK the same or different?

          1. bamcheeks*

            Really not much better, as far as I can tell. It’s not too hard to find childcare where I am (some parts of the country it is), but in 2020 when my youngest started school we were paying £926 a month for Mon-Fri 8am-6pm, which was the government subsidised rate for 3-4 year olds. For unsubsidised 0-2 year olds back then it was £1400 a month for one child full-time. We’re in a medium CoL area, and there’s been significant inflation since then, plus increases to the minimum wage, both of which childcare is very exposed to, so it’lll be a lot more now.

            The thing that does make a big difference is that flexible working and part-time work is much more common, so it’s not all or nothing. I’ve work 60%, 80% and 90% of full time hours over the last ten years, and that’s been totally ok with 5 different employers, 4 of which were advertising full-time jobs but were fine with me asking for 0.8 or 0.9 contracts. So we haven’t actually full-time childcare since 2017, when my second child was born.

            1. ferrina*

              That second paragraph is really interesting. I haven’t really seen any U.S. employer that was okay with a FT role becoming 80% or 90%. And it’s pretty rare for the U.S. to do contracts.

              1. bamcheeks*

                We have the right to request flexible working (which includes part-time), and can’t be penalised for it (obviously that’s the theory, and a bad manager can retaliate just like they can for any other protected characteristic or act.) The bar for saying no is legally pretty low— if you’ve advertised a job as full-time, it’s pretty straightforward to say,”no, we need someone full-time”. But culturally, especially in most large organisations and the public sector, there’s a strong trend towards saying yes if you can make it work. Especially if you’re talking about someone working a 4 day werk or a 9 day fortnight, it’s quite widely assumed that the workload won’t be that much lower, the impact on morale is high, and it’s cheaper for the employer. And any large employer will have an HR and payroll system which very easily copes with pro-rata-ing pay, pension, benefits, annual leave etc.

                1. londonedit*

                  Yep – I don’t have kids but the majority of my friends who had children went back to work on a part-time basis after their maternity leave. We’re in our mid-forties now so the kids are older, and some of my friends have gone back up to five days a week, but some of them have stuck with three or four days. My sister does four days a week now.

                  In my industry (book publishing) it’s very, very common for women who have children to negotiate to come back part-time or four days a week after their maternity leave. I’d say it’s so common that I’d almost expect it. And even before Covid, plenty of women negotiated a hybrid working pattern – say they’d be in the office Monday/Tuesday, work from home Wednesday/Thursday, and that would be their four days a week. And of course now we’re all hybrid – and we have flexible hours so if you have kids you can start later so you can do the school run in the morning and whatnot. I think publishing has always been very open to more flexible working (possibly because there are a lot of women in publishing). As you say, everything’s pro-rated and that’s also very normal, so it’s not a problem for a company to deal with pro-rated holiday, salary etc etc.

      2. samwise*

        Or there are jobs which can be done equally as well either in office or remote — remote doesn’t have to be either more effective or less effective to be a benefit a lot of workers want.

        During lockdown, we discovered that some parts of our jobs were better in person (but we lived with the online/remote version because we had to), some parts were just as effective (different, but same value and outcome), and some parts were better remote/online.

        After the lockdown we were told we had to come back in office fulltime. We lost several very good employees that way. Upper management was convinced eventually to allow hybrid — 3 days in office, 2 days remote. We could actually be just as effective with one or two days in office, but most of us are reconciled to the schedule we have.

      3. Guacamole Bob*

        I think there are also jobs where there’s positive value to hybrid. People on my team need to be able to collaborate, work together informally, have in-depth discussions in office, have spontaneous chats when they run into each other, etc.

        But many of them also need to write, or code, or otherwise concentrate for some stretch of time, and that’s harder to do in open cubes. Hybrid gives people some flexibility to benefit from in-person interaction but also have some time with fewer distractions for more focused work.

        There’s also the fact that since we went remote and then came back hybrid, my work/life boundaries have blurred in ways that are beneficial to my employer. If I have a medical appointment I take much less time off if I’m in the routine of easily logging on from home afterwards, compared to when we were fully in-office and I didn’t even have a work laptop, just a desktop. I’m also way more likely to check Teams and email from the waiting room at that appointment, which isn’t good for me but is good for my employer.

        1. Sloanicota*

          I would probably be less grouchy about RTO as a trend if I hadn’t spend the last five years before I went to remote watching office quality descend hellishly lower and lower. I’m sorry, but if you’ve implemented squished open benches into echoey high-ceiling warehouses that you’re calling “hot desking” – you can’t be surprised that workers don’t want to be there. I couldn’t even concentrate for five minutes at my last job before I went remote.

          1. Guacamole Bob*

            Our office is decent by current standards – people have assigned cubes, it’s a newly remodeled building, we all have sit/stand desks, the kitchen facilities are well-maintained, conference room tech mostly work well, pretty much everyone gets a bit of sunlight, etc. The cubes are a reasonable size and have above-desk-height dividers and another foot or so of frosted glass above that, coming to maybe chest height?

            But still, people can hear others on the phone, see and hear them walking by, and the exact same informal collaboration or question from a neighbor that provides some of the benefits of in-person work also creates distractions.

          2. ferrina*

            Yes! My office does hotdesking, and if all the people who could go in, went in, we would run out of desks.
            The biggest issue is for HR and Finance, who don’t have their own office. They regularly deal with sensitive information and don’t have a place in the office where they can handle it.
            Second biggest issue is the people who work with team members and clients remotely. I’ve had days where I went to the office, then spent the majority of the day in a closet on calls to people in other timezones.

          3. MigraineMonth*

            Yeah, I would be willing to do hybrid or maybe full RTO if I had a semi-private workspace. I would immediately be searching for another job if they wanted me to return to open-office hell.

      4. Nightengale*

        Yup

        I can do some of my work as a physician from home (paperwork, patient calls, telehealth visits)
        I know a psychiatrist who works now entirely from home doing telehealth
        A surgeon can do almost none of their work from home

        Even within our office
        Our scheduler cannot do any of her work from home as she checks patients in and out from live appointments
        Our health coach, who also does some scheduling, can do some of her work from home

        The best professional relationship I have right now at work is with someone at another site I have met once in person but we chat online all the time about shared patients and resources.

    2. Shiara*

      The complicating factor is that what is more effective for an individual job isn’t necessarily more effective for the department, or company, as a whole.

      I worked at a software company that mostly had a really annoying butts in seats mentality. But they allowed work from home when an ice storm shut things down. The senior programmer was much more productive on work from home days. They spent a not insignificant amount of time in office answering questions and brainstorming with other developers. But their loss in productivity was more than offset by the benefits of their mentorship to other people, to the company (and also to their own job satisfaction.)

      1. Sloanicota*

        Right. Sometimes it’s a win-win, sometimes it’s more of a tradeoff between the org’s benefits and the employee’s benefits. But most of us aren’t rewarded on the job for the work we help others accomplish – we have our own productivity metrics that we’re being evaluated on.

        1. Justin*

          Many managers tend to see it as a waste of the senior person’s time! The senior person is working on important, super challenging stuff. They’re super productive. They don’t have time to be interrupted by the junior person’s 100 questions on something unimportant. So I take “developing juniors” to be sort of BS.

      2. moql*

        Strong agree! My company lost 100% of the people who were hired during our covid WFH within 3 years of their coming on board, compared to most people staying 5-10 years and people retiring after 30 not being unusual. The new folks were not getting the kind of informal support and mentoring that naturally occurs when you can pop your head into someone else’s office for a quick question. Normally we hire junior engineers straight out of college and groom them for management. Last year we had to hire someone into a management position from outside the company for the first time in over a decade because we don’t have the pipeline of talent ready.

        I think the AAM commentariat in general is way too focused on it being better for them to finish their individual work and unwilling to acknowledge how their individual deliverables are not the end all be all.

    3. Festively Dressed Earl*

      This jumped out at me too: are the remote workers getting their work done? That’s the dispositive question in this whole argument. LW mentions that their team is high-functioning; is that true of the company in general? If it is, and the CEO is swayed by news reports or studies, someone should show him the Pew research study about remote workers. (I’ll drop the link in a reply.) Not only is a return-to-office mandate a resume generating event, but the likelihood that employees will leave instead of giving up remote work is tied to their overall job satisfaction. If LW’s weariness, late hours, crappy clients and low morale are shared by other high-performing employees, the business may lose more people than it can afford.

    4. I Have RBF*

      Some other company in the same business but without the RTO hang-up will be at a huge advantage in recruitment and retention.

      This, plus the cost savings from not requiring a large office footprint and the associated real estate and utility costs.

      If commercial real estate costs $0.50/sqft/month, and each employee requires as little as 150 sqft, remote work saves them at least $75/month per employee, plus electric expenses. Call it $1000/employee per year. Downtown San Jose is around $3/sqft/mo, or $36/sqft/year. Multiply that by 150 sqft/per employee, and in-office costs a minimum of $5,400/employee/year. Not chump change.

      This will become a competitive advantage for the companies that manage for it.

  8. CindyLouHoo*

    We’re supposedly back in the office full time, too, supposedly with no exceptions.

    It’ll be interesting to see what happens in February. Will we get talked to if we worked from home? I decided to not ask permission and just do it. I’m going to let the chips fall where they may.

    1. CindyLouHoo*

      I should clarify that I come in most of the time.

      However, I will work from home around doctor appointments so I don’t have to take a full day off. Those are the chips that will fall, if any.

      I also asked for a raise. They need to understand that this decision has consequences.

      1. bye*

        Okay but what do you do if they just decide to fire you? Are you at least telling your manager that you’re working from home on those days or just fully going rogue?

        1. CindyLouHoo*

          Well, they could always decide to terminate my contract and try to replace me. That’ll cost them a lot and maybe even force them to hire more than one person to replace me.

          I will tell my managers, though. They know why I’m doing it, too, so I hope that helps my case.

    2. ferrina*

      This makes sense to me. I have seen so many “policies” get enforced for a month then quietly die. Or be unenforceable to a ridiculous degree. Or get quietly ignored by some people but not others. It’s always interesting how it actually plays out.

      I’ve also quietly “forgotten” about certain policies that had no practical value and were simply in place at a senior leader’s whims. Usually they end up falling by the wayside.

  9. Sloanicota*

    Unpopular opinion but I don’t have a lot of sympathy for the “junior employees need an in-person experience” line of argument, TBH. Is it probably true? Yes, maybe, although if the future of office work is trending towards being increasingly remote (at least in some fields) then maybe we should all be cultivating a generation with those skills, I don’t know. But more importantly as someone who’s not in management and isn’t paid to be in management, as an individual contributor, this is not a cromulent reason for me personally to waste time and resources on a commute to sit in a cube farm on hybrid zoom meetings all a day.

    1. Texan In Exile*

      Exactly. If management wants experienced employees to mentor junior employees, then put it in their goals and pay them for it.

      1. Strive to Excel*

        “Model appropriate office behavior” is something that is in the basic code of conduct most people sign to be hired. This isn’t formal mentoring or training. It would be easier to quantify if it was. Helping your coworkers when they have questions, modeling what they’re supposed to do, and continuously improving your own skills are basic assumptions of any job.

        Note – by continuously improving your own skills, I don’t mean “go out and get specific education in X”. I mean that when most people start there are some things at a company they are not as good at, from specific tech things to company procedures. A baseline unspoken expectation is that after some period of time, you should be able to perform those skills without needing support.

      2. I Have RBF*

        This. I used to get dinged on my performance reviews for spending too much time helping junior team members and not doing my baloney projects.

    2. Pastor Petty Labelle*

      Thank you. What experience are junior employees getting anyway if everyone is stuck away in zoom meetings all day anyway? The lunchroom, water cooler talk isn’t really enough to justify taking morale completely. Oh and junior employees can pick up on bad morale just fine in person.

      1. bye*

        Why is it that these discussions always seem to default to, “oh if we’re full-time in the office, everyone’s just sitting on Zoom”? Obviously SOME offices are like that, but I’m willing to bet that most aren’t!

      2. PokemonGoToThePolls*

        Even in-person meetings, the modeled in-office behavior I saw was my manager picking at his toenails while talking to us or the owner of the company having a screaming match with the head developer in our mostly-open office.
        Unless they mean the strangled smile you give to your coworkers as you walk to and from the bathroom or learning how to handle 40 hours a week of 3 people loudly talking about Gisele’s ex-husband Tom Brady.

    3. londonedit*

      I tend to agree. I get it, I really do – we’ve had a few new people start since 2020 and I can see how much more difficult it is for them to get to grips with everything when it’s 90% Teams chat and video calls. It’s so much trickier than just being able to turn to someone sitting next to you and say ‘Can you show me how this bit of the database works?’ or whatever. And I agree that for junior members of staff, there isn’t that same immersion in people chatting about projects, hearing people taking phone calls, seeing how they interact, etc etc.

      But at the same time…I’m an experienced individual contributor, I’m not in management, and I don’t really buy the ‘we want people to have some office time because it’s better for collaboration’ stuff. I don’t *mind* going in – and luckily we’re only in two days a week – but I really wouldn’t want to do any more than two days a week. If I could do just one, I would, because honestly it would make my work-life balance so much better. I’m more productive at home than I am in the office, because there are fewer distractions, and I can do my job just as well from home as I can from the office. I realise that’s not the situation for everyone, and I particularly feel for young people trying to WFH in houseshares etc – I can see why being in the office would be beneficial for them. But personally, in my role, there’s no need for me to be dragging myself into the office twice a week just for the sake of physically sitting in the same room as my co-workers.

      1. Grumpy Elder Millennial*

        And I think there are other solutions to the problem of it being more difficult for new employees. Like everyone new gets a “buddy” who is friendly and approachable and is their acknowledged go-to for questions they’d prefer not to ask their manager.

        1. Tired*

          and bonus if that person is one of the extroverts who chooses to regularly work from the office, or people who finds they work better with a commute to a different place, or someone who craves more person time and enjoys that work – match up the work to suit the needs of the people. I love mentoring, but not if I have to do it all in person, so I need to be careful about who I mentor (nearly all my mentoring has ended up being for people using similar skillsets but at different sites so even if we’re both in office we’re not in the same place, which means it’s easy and logical to build online ways of connecting most of the time).

    4. Hell in a Handbasket*

      I’m not sure that’s the right way to look at it, though. Your employer is allowed to ask you to do all kind of things that you don’t personally find worthwhile. IF there is a real benefit to the employer of having people in the office to mentor junior staff (I realize that is a big “if”), then they are allowed to decide that in-person attendance is a required part of the job, regardless if you personally feel that it’s a good use of your time — just like being on call off hours, or extensive travel, or whatever other demands any job may make. Then you are allowed to choose to keep or leave that job.

    5. CJ*

      I’ve also found that a lot – a _lot_ – of that “mentoring” look a lot like “benign neglect” (if not “hazing”). Shockingly, training people is hard, even through skills emulation, and very few people are really aware of what behaviors they’re modeling. At best, it becomes a social “do as I say, not as I do” (capstoned by all these RTO CEOs zooming in from their beach house).

      It also takes time to do this, in the form of the new employee asking questions and interrupting workflows and the mentor having to figure out the answer and how to contextualize the answer.

      Double all of this for any new employee who’s neurodivergent and is thrown into a neurotypical office, quad it for all of the pits of vipers I’ve seen in so many offices.

    6. Caramel & Cheddar*

      Thank you. If something is important enough to learn by osmosis, it’s important enough to be formally trained on! But employers don’t want to invest time in training new staff or further developing older staff, so rather than build workloads that can accommodate taking time for peer-to-peer professional development or whatever, we just hope someone overhears Fergus handling a client really well on the phone and decides to put that into practice themselves.

      I feel similarly about “hallway conversations” that in-office proponents feel are somehow the bedrock of workplace collaboration. I appreciate that seeing someone randomly in the hall might trigger a reminder that you needed to talk to Arya about XYZ, but this isn’t collaboration! This is what happens when you don’t have formalized processes or clear communication trees, etc. And even when you have those things, stuff can go wrong because we’re human. The solution isn’t “make sure you’re in the office to accidentally overhear/run into people,” and my colleagues forget to loop me into things just as often when I’m physically present as they do when I’m at home.

      1. Out of office, out of mind*

        If something is important enough to learn by osmosis, it’s important enough to be formally trained on!

        This is 100% wrong. Tribal knowledge and informal learning are, in fact, things.

          1. Out of office, out of mind*

            Segars, Creating a Tribal Approach for Innovation in Organizations, Harvar led Business Review 2019

            Plenty of other literature out there on the subject too

        2. ferrina*

          Hi, professional here! I am literally paid to help offices decide what to train on (consultant).

          “Learning by osmosis” isn’t actually a thing. It’s actually learning by observing and applying, often with a side of applying under guidance. It can have an important role in training, and I often include it as part of a formal training program.

          “Formal training” doesn’t mean “be lectured at”. It means having a dedicated structure of learning. Experiential learning is often a key part of that, and it often benefits from a formal structure! If experiential learning is left to the whim of the team, often there are elements that get overlooked. Even having a simple required checklist of activities that the person should experience under guidance is a huge benefit and improves both learning and morale.

          1. Caramel & Cheddar*

            Thank you! I have a training component in my job, and as far as I’m concerned “formal training” means “we made a decision that staff need to know XYZ and someone will be delivering that content in a manner appropriate to the task and the staff.”

          2. Out of office, out of mind*

            “Learning by osmosis” isn’t actually a thing. It’s actually learning by observing and applying, often with a side of applying under guidance.

            You’re taking the term “osmosis” very literally. It’s shorthand for exactly what you describe, and WFH impedes what you describe, no mate what moniker you put on it.

            1. ferrina*

              Having worked with a lot of teams to improve their L&D practices, plenty of people do interpret “learning by osmosis” literally. I’ve seen soooo many managers assume that just because someone is working next to an expert, they are learning from the expert. Meanwhile the expert ignores the (supposed) trainee and the trainee is having to learn in isolation (despite being physically next to someone).

              WFH does not impede learning by observation, but it is a different practice than what you might do in an office. There needs to be a lot more explicit communication. For example, we use a mandated checklist in observational learning and guided practice (i.e., watching someone do the thing, then having someone watch you do the thing) because otherwise people inevitably forget 1 thing out of 20 (especially because training isn’t their day job!). Remote people need to explicitly communicate- “hey, I’m going to be working on llama braids today, do you want to watch me?” rather than the trainee being able to say “hey, it looks like you might be working on llama braids- can I watch you?”

              Of course, different individuals have different communication styles, and some have a much tougher time training online rather than in-person. So results may vary if you just pick an expert on your team and say “teach someone”. Teaching is its own skill, and remote teaching is it’s own specialization within that.

            2. I Have RBF*

              I trained people half a world away through only an IRC client, not even screen sharing, with a partial language barrier and a time zone barrier. The impedance is psychological.

      2. Salsa Verde*

        OMG, thank you for your last paragraph!! My last boss bragged that he managed by walking around, he was one of the first people to go back to the office after covid restrictions were lifted, and he complained often that the other offices were empty when he walked around. This isn’t collaboration!!! If you have to depend on just ‘running into’ people for collaboration, it might never happen. Why not just set a meeting or time to talk?
        And he also refused/seemed to hate formalized processes and clear communication trees.
        Your comment encapsulated all my feelings about this lol

        1. Wilbur*

          I don’t mind coming into the office, but it’s so much better when there’s some intentionality behind it. There is a benefit to in office work but it doesn’t happen unless you make it happen. If junior staff members need training and support, schedule “office hours”. If you’re wanting innovation, lay out what your key issues are and schedule workshops focusing on that.

      3. Resentful Oreos*

        I agree with you; even if some soft skills and adjustments to work culture can be learned by observation, employers cheaping out on training, and leaving it to colleges and unpaid internships, I think is a disaster. This is how you get mismatches on both sides with “no one is hiring” on the one hand and “we can’t find the right people” on the other.

        Employers need to step up and do SOME training. 2008 really messed with a lot of minds.

        1. Caramel & Cheddar*

          Absolutely. Lots of things are learned by observation, but you can formalize that observation process instead of just hoping a learning opportunity presents itself. Like my phone call example: instead of just hoping to be around when Fergus makes a call and discovering on your own that he’s good at it, a manager who knows Fergus is an ace on the phone can easily say “Okay, Arya, you’re going to shadow Fergus on his sales calls for the next couple of days so you can see how he does it. Make sure to pay close attention to the way he re-directs conversation if XYZ happens so that he doesn’t lose the sale.”

      4. I Have RBF*

        One place I worked was famous for impromptu hallway meetings that were actually very effective. But at that place everyone was in offices, sometimes two to an office, and the custom was to close your door when you were heads down on something. So hallway convos were not disturbing to the people in their offices, it made the meetings very short (we didn’t have enough conference rooms anyway) and effective. This was a job that had a large field work (plus prep and post) component, so it made sense to have everyone there.

      5. Oona*

        My previous job was hybrid before the pandemic and went 100% remote during the pandemic. We would frequently hire entry-level employees – actual entry-level, often straight out of college with little to no work experience.

        We trained them extensively. Multiple presentations and many practice exercises and then when they were released to work they were paired with a more experienced person to answer questions and review their work for the first few months. Almost every experienced employee on the team took on a different leg of training so new hires could get to know their team members. We were a cameras on culture so new staff could put a face to the name. Experienced staff were expected to be kind, open, and available to help less experienced people. If they were not that would have been considered a problem.

        Newbies we hired during the pandemic learned their jobs just as quickly as those we hired before the pandemic. There were performance issues for some, sure, but they were issues those people would have had regardless of if they were in person or remote.

        Based on what I saw here I do not think learning by osmosis is a good enough reason to require in-person work, generally speaking. New employees, especially entry-level, need a ton of support and things spelled out for them no matter where they are working.

    7. EStein*

      I work for a remote-only company, and this is such an issue that we no longer hire entry-level people and just do entry-level work at the middle level. I’m a strong proponent of remote work, but every recent grad we have hired has struggled to the point of needing to be fired (after a long PIP and lots of coaching.) I strongly believe there are some workplace skills that most entry-level people cannot pick up in a fully-remote environment. I would include myself in that category, and my decade in an office did me well.

      1. Tradd*

        When I was interviewing people last year for an in office job, we got lots of people wanting remote. Even if we did do remote, people with no experience in my industry (customs brokerage/international transportation) would massively struggle to learn what we do remote. You have to be sitting next to the person training you. I’ve seen people with no experience really struggle even being trained in person. Someone with experience going remote at a new job is a totally different hing.

        1. Out of office, out of mind*

          Recently seen on Twitter

          Three people interview for a job. Two of them want remote work. One says “I want to be in office so that I can learn the business.” Which one do you think the company (ceteris parabus) will pick?

          1. Bast*

            This really depends. I worked in many companies where this would be the case. After working two jobs that treated WFH as a “necessary evil” and a “drain on the company” I applied for a job that required only 2 days physically in the office, and a lot of independent tasks visiting sites for a day and then returning home to write reports and briefs. They wanted someone who was capable of independent work and didn’t need to be baby sat in an office all day. My mention of not being bothered by coming into the office and only WFH in emergencies was actually NOT viewed as a positive.

    8. OldHat*

      Front line manager here, I agree that the world has changed and we should find ways to support new staff and integrate them into the team. It takes less effort in person, but I see that as something to deal with rather than a reason to be more in person. Seems like a bad manager problem.

      And if most everyone is teleworking, they are not going to be there for new staff anyway. Maybe the supervisor and a buddy will for the first few months, but not the whole team. If people have staggered schedules, it’s likely that people will be in virtual meetings and/or rarely or never being in the office the same days. Having someone come in to a largely empty office hurts their experience and integration.

      1. Caramel & Cheddar*

        There was a letter last week that had this very problem, where the LW’s potential new workplace wanted them to be 100% in office for the first six months of the job, after which they’d be allowed to WFH parrt-time. Except everyone else was part-time since they weren’t new hires, so I couldn’t figure out what having the LW in 100% of the time was going to accomplish.

    9. Busy Middle Manager*

      Vehemently disagree, from experience. In fact this is one of the reasons I left a management job in 2023.

      Absolutely everyone claims to work greatly at home, but so many problems would fester, and yes, younger people fell behind and did not learn by osmosis. I was constantly trying to force trainings and interactions remotely, but it’s only partially effective. People online make it sound very robotic as if I just schedule a training and suddenly everyone is a perfect employee. It’s not like that IRL. IRL it’s junior person watching someone else (even subconsciously by sitting near them) and learning everything from a dozen keyboard shortcuts to listening to someone put a customer in their place so they know how far they can push boundaries.

      It also became a problem replacing myself. I’d keep end up putting out fires alone and no one learned what I was doing. I’d try recapping stuff later on and could tell people were only half listening

      And these were otherwise good people, the type you’d screen 500 resumes for a position before covid for.

      So I’ve gotten very skeptical of people claiming WFH is 100% perfect in every situation

      1. I Have RBF*

        Yes, for a lot of people it’s harder to train someone remotely. I’ve done it over IRC, not even screen sharing, but it takes three times as long. With Zoom and screen sharing, it is easier, but not the same as in-person.

        I just don’t think the solution is to give up and require lengthy commutes and butts in seats.

    10. JB (not in Houston)*

      I would love to work from home full time, but I disagree that it’s not a good reason to work in-office. Those of us who came up working in the office full time picked up a lot just by being there, seeing other people work, seeing how people reacted to things/handled stuff, hearing conversations. There’s a *lot* you learn without formal training. We got the benefit of that, and so should younger people. Plus, it is to our benefit to have younger coworkers who gain that knowledge, so we don’t have to deal with them 5-10 years down the line when they are behind where they should be.

      I still wish I could be full time wfh, but I do see a benefit

    11. ferrina*

      This is why companies need to invest in L&D (learning and development). A lot of companies over-rely on modeling to train junior employees. When the junior employees are remote or their team is remote, there are less opportunities to observe others and therefor model what they do. (side note- modeling wasn’t the most successful version to begin with. It worked great if you had someone who was dedicated to the training, but if your trainer checked out, you were just SOL)

      The over-reliance on modeling can definitely be replaced through other learning mediums. Formalized shadowing practices are often extremely helpful, and it means that things are less likely to fall through the cracks. Having a designated point of contact for questions and regular check-ins on progress is essential. A scheduled discussion about cultural elements, expectations, and what questions to ask your manager about team culture can troubleshoot sooo many potential issues! And these things can be designed to have a very low lift- for most teams that are good at training junior staff, it’s just a formalized version of what they already do. And a good L&D can design the process to support what’s already going right while filling in the gaps of what’s going wrong.

    12. Justin*

      When I was a junior employee I don’t remember my development being a priority for senior employees at all. I could ask my direct coworkers who maybe had a year or two under their belt but that’s about it.

      1. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

        I’ve done two on-site onboardings, two pure-remote onboardings, and one hybrid (onsite for 6 of the first 8 weeks, then offsite 100%). I can’t make generalizations between which ones went better based on where I was physically, but I can make them based on whether or not the employer had an agenda of work for me to do and a plan to get me up to speed.

        1. Justin D*

          My remote on-boarding went pretty smoothly! Because we have a ton of resources and procedures and etc to use and a strong culture of working remotely. unfortunately they make us all commute to offices to work remotely from each other.

        2. I Have RBF*

          Agreed. I’ve done lots of on-site onboardings, and three remote onboardings. In both cases, if they didn’t have a list of everything, it took much, much longer. The on-site wasn’t generally any better because without a good checklist, you didn’t know what you didn’t know.

          There is nothing that makes your first month at a company more miserable than sitting in an office unable to do any work because no one has set up your access to things or even pointed you at any documentation. I have endured this on a couple occasions on-site.

          Remote onboarding does require both a checklist and a “shepherd” – a person to help you get access and to help troubleshoot issues.

      2. Joron Twiner*

        Same, I quit a job after a year because I was never trained or taught. After the first week they said “figure it out”, and I never did, despite being in the office 5 days a week. The company culture struggled massively with learning and development and they knew it–even pre-COVID!

        So this can’t be the main reason to force people to sit in an office all day. The answer has to be more nuanced and more case-by-case.

    13. Yawnley*

      Personal and professional development isn’t a compelling enough reason for you? (genuinely asking)

    14. TheBunny*

      I have a junior employee who asked me for a list of all active employees in the company and their location for a project. This employee doesn’t have the access to pull all the employees including senior level in each area so I sent it.

      I sent an Excel spreadsheet.

      The reply? “I thought you were going to send me separate lists for each department.”

      Um. I sent you the most filterable list format on the planet. But getting this employee to THINK instead of expecting others to do it for them is… not fun.

      This employee fully WFH? Oh goodness.

  10. MassMatt*

    I am to put it mildly skeptical of RTO requirements and question whether a rigid/blanket policy makes sense for most businesses, but it’s odd that the CEO has made this clear and it isn’t happening.

    It’s no surprise the staff is not returning to work when it seems the LW as a senior leader is making their dislike of the policy clear, and there seem to be no consequences for people simply refusing to come in.

    Alison is right, LW needs to make their case about this policy clear in discussion with the CEO, but once the CEO makes the decision that is it, it’s part of LW’s job to implement the policy and it’s apparent they are not doing that at all.

    I don’t buy these excuses from the staff, they simply don’t want to commute (incidentally maybe the fact that they have “nonstop meetings” to look forward to on arrival is a factor?). Multiple sick pets is up there with “the dog ate my homework” for juvenile excuses. If this has to happen, make it happen. Refusal to come in means warnings, repeat offense means ineligibility for raises and/or dismissal.

    At this point it seems you are saying “we tried nothing, and THAT didn’t work. What else can we possibly do!?”.

  11. In or out*

    The point that’s interesting to me in this letter is less about which format we each like and more about the ability for the leadership of private companies to choose their strategy. Doesn’t the CEO get to pick how he wants to run his business in this case? If it doesn’t work for a lot of the staff and they leave, and the company has a hard time finding new staff, that will be the business outcome of the CEO’s decision. A competing company might be going the other direction. When front-line staff and mid-level management deliberately oppose the corporate mandate, I think it causes trouble.

    1. Ask a Manager* Post author

      I completely agree and that’s why I end up at “just call the question already!” Get on the table what’s going to happen and how it’s going to be enforced and let it play out however it’s going to play out; staying in this tense limbo is just prolonging things.

    2. Hell in a Handbasket*

      I think this is a great point. I totally get why people might prefer to work from home, why it would be upsetting to be told you have to come in when you’d rather not, or even why someone might refuse to stay in a job that requires in-office work. But I’m always puzzled by the levels of extreme outrage!!! that we see anytime a company requires workers to come in. Company owners/management are allowed to make these decisions, even if they’re bad decisions, and workers are allowed to find a new job if they think it’s unreasonable.

      1. ragazza*

        Unfortunately it’s not so easy to find a new job these days. Sorry, but if your workers overwhelmingly prefer one work mode over the other, it makes more sense for the CEO to compromise. Corporations and executives already have so much power over workers’ lives–this is one area where they should be willing to give. But of course I was so fed up with this kind of thing that I decided to work for myself.

        1. Out of office, out of mind*

          The CEO DoD “compromise” on three days in office per week. Having been given an inch, LW decided to take a mile. She “compromised” further by unilaterally deciding that two days was sufficient.

          The CEO’s decision to end it altogether would be a natural consequence of this “gimme an inch, I’ll take a mile” attitude.

          1. ragazza*

            Unfortunately, many good employees don’t care for an organizational culture that treats them like wayward children.

            1. Lexi Vipond*

              And many bosses don’t care for a workforce who’re behaving like wayward children. Your point?

      2. bamcheeks*

        A lot of people are very inertia-driven when it comes to changing jobs, and will invest a ton of energy into trying to change a bad job rather than looking for a new one. For some people it’s for very good reasons — like there not being a lot of opportunities in their field or in this location, or having a salary / benefits / lifestyle factors that would be really hard to meet elsewhere — but sometimes it really is just an irrational belief that you Can’t Leave because [quitting is bad / I owe them something / job seeking is scary]. Personally I have never stayed in a job longer than 3 years and am very comfortable job-seeking, so it’s a mindset I don’t really get! But it is absolutely a real thing, and there are often some quite strong responses when people suggest that LWs start jobsearching.

      3. Emily (not a bot)*

        But workers are also allowed to complain and try to change the minds of managers. And sometimes that works. I was at an org at one point that was talking about moving my team to a less-convenient location. There was a resounding response of “if you do this, we will leave.” They did not do it. And that was better for everyone then if they’d done it and the team had quit.

        1. Strive to Excel*

          The problem is that’s not what the employees did. If they actually did get together and say “we’re not doing this for X reasons [list of reasons that are beneficial for the company]”, they would have had some power. “We have to take international calls – these are just as easily done from home as from the office, and results in X% fewer calls having issues because someone got caught in traffic” is a business case.

          Instead they just…didn’t come in.

    3. Ms. Murchison*

      But if people have moved further away during the WFH period, you at least need to give them lead time to consider/try to moving back closer to the office (and to try to negotiate for whatever raise is now needed to make it feasible to live close enough to commute). Sounds like the CEO just tried to yank everyone back into the office without sufficient time to adapt, and everyone dug in in response, resulting in this battle. And like others have said, the CEO needs to recognize the pay cut associated with forcing people back into the office. Upper management needed a plan for how to handle these obstacles and costs involved in returning to the office, instead of just a mandate that ignored practicalities. Yeah, call the question, set the firm in-office date for n months out, then start negotiating where needed. And prepare for some people (possibly your highest performers) to quit.

      1. Hell in a Handbasket*

        It’s not really a pay cut if these jobs were never intended to be remote, but only went remote temporarily because of Covid. It would be more logical to consider that the Covid period was a bonus. Everyone was rightly infuriated at employers who made people come in during the pandemic. The vast majority of employers who did the right thing and allowed people to go remote never promised that it was a permanent arrangement.

        1. I Have RBF*

          No, it’s still a pay cut.

          If it was only six months, it might be a temporary bonus.

          But after three or four years, it’s a change in effective pay.

          People get salty about effective pay cuts.

  12. Yup*

    This sounds like a recipe for losing a lot of good employees. Already people are struggling with workload, working till 11, burning out, and the CEO still thinks it’s not enough? Their way or the highway is more important?

    I don’t care if the CEO is right. They can be right all they want, but they will never, ever achieve what they want: a functional office with good employees.

    Honestly, everyone should start looking to jump ship. There is no hope here–put your energy where it counts: somewhere else.

    1. Sloanicota*

      +1 although sadly I think we’re now heading for a crunch where more and more employers feel confident demanding complete RTO because there’s fewer places for employees to jump ship – particularly if they moved out to remote areas and only accept *fully* remote work. If most of the Federal workforce goes back …

      1. Out of office, out of mind*

        One thing I really like about DOGE is its policy of requiring the federal workforce to return to office.
        The NYT had a story about a librarian – a librarian! – at the Library of Congress who was aghast that she couldn’t work remotely forever from Ohio. Why should the federal government be subsidizing waste like this?

          1. Out of office, out of mind*

            She says she doesn’t have an office to return to because someone else moved into her space. So find her some other space. Problem solved.

            And it’s the height of arrogance to assume they’d hold the same space for her while she spent five years working from Ohio.

            1. Emily (not a bot)*

              You are complaining about someone who is -not a librarian-, that is, who has a job that can be done from home, who was told her job was remote, who does not want to move, and who is also pointing out there isn’t an office for her to go back to. (A problem that may be solvable, but is certainly not solvable by her.)

              1. I Have RBF*

                IMO, providing an office, or even just a desk space, to someone who can do their job effectively from home is a waste of taxpayer funds. In-office, one-size-fits-all mandates are the height of inefficiency and waste.

        2. Alice*

          Do you think that librarians’ duties are limited to stamping the books when someone checks one out and reshelving the books when someone returns one?
          If you really want to identify waste in the federal government, you might read this: https://www.propublica.org/article/elon-musk-open-letter-doge. I’ll quote:
          “Simply put: If you [DOGE] ’re trying to identify wasteful practices and spending by federal agencies, you’ll find a wealth of actionable issues that our [ProPublica’s] reporting has surfaced over the past 16 years.”

          1. Out of office, out of mind*

            I’ll take the word of actual entrepreneurs like Musk and Vivek who have built actual companies over pro publica

            1. ragazza*

              Musk drove Twitter/X into the ground, and Tesla is also having issues, so not exactly a great example.

            2. Anonononononon*

              Ah yes, what could possibly go wrong with Musk (who didn’t actually build any of his companies, he bought the majority of shares in existing companies) steering the federal workforce ship!

            4. I Have RBF*

              Musk is not an entrepreneur. He comes in after a company has been started, pushes out the founders, and then takes credit for it.

              Quite frankly, the idea of running the government “like a business” is asinine. The closest would be a non-profit, not a for profit company. Those who advocate for the government to be run like a for-profit business understand neither government or business.

        3. Yup*

          How has this point been completely derailed by a news story you got wrong? My original point still stands, no matter how many exceptions to the rule are found.

        4. Helewise*

          Why do you assume it’s waste? I don’t think most librarians spend the bulk of their time shelving physical books. If anything, it could be a cost save because Ohio is unquestionably cheaper than DC.

          1. HungryLawyer*

            100%! Especially because most civilian federal agencies provide region-based pay, which means that employees in OH will almost certainly be paid less than those in similar, DC-based roles. Allowing remote work DOES save the government money.

        7. I Have RBF*

          Whereas I think DOGE will be a complete and utter farce.

          Why should the taxpayers pay for office real estate that is not needed? Just so some oligarch can see butts in seats slaving away? No, that’s downright stupid.

          If the work can be effectively done without requiring office space, then to save the taxpayers money it should be remote. Especially in cities, office space can cost anywhere from $3,000 to $10,000 per employee per year. Multiply that by the size of the federal workforce that can do their jobs remotely, and that’s not a small amount.

          I don’t want my taxpayer money wasted on frivolous in-office mandates from unelected oligarchs like Musk and Ramaswamy.

          Hell, I don’t want it wasted on mandates from elected officials who are just changing things to look like they are “doing something” about “government waste”, especially when their “doing something” costs more money!

    2. Caramel & Cheddar*

      “This sounds like a recipe for losing a lot of good employees. ”

      When I saw the justification of “Well, Amazon is doing it” my first thought was “Yes, they’re hoping people quit so that they can reduce their workforce by attrition rather than layoffs.”

      I don’t know if that’s what’s happening with LW’s company; their CEO could be clueless or just really committed to in-office work. But I think five years into WFH becoming a super common thing, we should be really skeptical about mandates for being in the office five days per week for jobs that are predominately done on the computer or from a smart phone.

      1. Sydney Ellen Wade*

        When I saw the justification of “Well, Amazon is doing it,” that told me everything I needed to know about the CEO.

        1. I Have RBF*

          Yeah, he’s a cargo-cult MBA CEO without an original thought in his head, just stuff from business school ten years ago or more. These people run businesses into the ground.

  13. Tradd*

    A question I keep asking and no one ever really answers. All these companies with RTO mandates. Employees want to be fully remote, not hybrid, so there are resignations after the RTO mandates. What are all these folks going to do if they can’t find a fully remote position? It seems the fully remote positions are much fewer than a couple of years ago. Will they very grudgingly take a remote or in office position and plot their exit as soon as they can find something else? What if they jump ship for a remote position that turns out to be hybrid or fully in office?

    1. Sloanicota*

      Yeah I do wonder about this. Sigh. At least I got to witness the brief moment of history where it seemed like workers had the upper hand for a moment. Nice while it lasted.

    2. Alton Brown's Evil Twin*

      I think some of it is just geography & commute.

      If I was working in Manhattan, but then went remote and moved far away, and then subsequently refused to RTO on 42nd street, I might not be opposed to an in-office role that’s an easy 10 minute drive away in Whereversville where I live now.

    3. Beth*

      I’m guessing some find remote positions (possibly at a pay cut or other loss, but if remote work is important enough to them, it could be worth it), and others find in-person or hybrid roles that suit their needs better (shorter commute, closer to their daycare, more flexible on medical appointments, earlier or later work hours, more PTO, a role they’re excited enough about to be worth the sacrifice, etc).

      1. Emily (not a bot)*

        Yes! There are lots of alternatives that aren’t either “this existing job/fully remote” or “this existing job, fully in the office.”

    4. CityMouse*

      I work for the government and my agency gave up the leases on a bunch if budings this year. The career people definitely don’t want us back in the office. The incoming political types keep saying they’re going to push it. Who knows what will happen, but RTO would cost millions just in the leases.

      1. I Have RBF*

        This!!

        It is a waste of taxpayer money to lease office space that is not actually needed because the work can be done remotely.

    5. Lisa*

      There’s been a lot of “well, I was thinking I’d work another couple years before retiring, but I guess I’ll be done now” and people who would be fine with any of remote/hybrid/in-office but who have moved and moving or commuting back to their current employer isn’t happening.

      Where I work, we’ve always (before C19) been mainly in-office but with some people 100% remote and with an option for occasional WFH, so we’re used to being flexible. If someone who was a reliable employee wanted to go remote I can’t imagine management saying no.

    6. Lumos*

      For me personally, I was able to successfully argue I had no reason to go back to an office, my entire team is spread across the US. But I also keep my eyes open for other remote options and there’s still a lot out there, even if competition is fierce.

    7. Busy Middle Manager*

      I keep wondering this too but don’t voice it because people think it’s an opinion (WFH is bad) rather than just a fact that we’re in a white collar recession.

      The threat to get another job has zero weight when most places aren’t hiring unless you’re an insanely knowledgeable Accountant or whiz coder. Most of the jobs being created the past six months are food service/hospitality, school jobs, home health aids, etc.

    8. Monkey*

      I can tell you where I’d go if it happened to me. I take my knowledge and skills to my company’s competitor for around of 50% raise. I might have to go in the office two or three times a week but at least I’d be getting paid for it. and my competitor would be getting some pretty key knowledge that would help advance their competitiveness by about 5 to 10 years in the span of just a few weeks.

    9. Never going back*

      I don’t think the fully remote positions are much fewer than, say, late 2022, after the pandemic had mostly died down. According to nearly all data sources, work from home shot up between 2019 and 2022, then dropped in 2022 and has more or less been steady since then. But it still WAY higher than it was in 2019 and shows no sign of returning to those levels.

      I do think there is a concerted effort in business-focused media to enforce the narrative that RTO must happen and working from home must end and that of course every company is going along with that.

      It’s just not the actual reality, across the board. You’ve got companies that do it, like the one here. But there’s a whole lot of twisted wish-fulfillment-type thinking in business media about this topic.

      Not so much in my experience though. Still plenty of fully remote jobs, and businesses that are starting up are choosing work from home because it’s a huge cost savings. We just haven’t been in much of an environment for many businesses to start up in.

      1. Just a different redhead*

        As someone with maybe a paralyzing fear of job searching, thank you for sharing this. It’s like a sunbeam.

    10. Aggretsuko*

      I just keep thinking, why quit for a job forcing you back if they’re all forcing you back? The trend seems overwhelming.

      1. I Have RBF*

        It actually isn’t. The big ego-driven companies with celebrity CEOs are doing it as a flex of their power. The others that are following like lemmings have cargo-cult management.

    11. I Have RBF*

      If it was me? I’d grudgingly take a hybrid role, and look to bail as soon as a fully remote role opened up.

      I loathe open-plan offices, since companies are too cheap to even provide the partial privacy of cubicles anymore, but are still too spendthrift to embrace the reduced costs gained from 100% remote. I despise spending an hour or more commuting each way to sit in a pool of desks with noisy people around me. I get irritated when people see me in person and make judgements about my cane, my limp, and my non-functional, right arm. I seethe at the idea that I need to risk my family’s health due to all of the people who work sick and act as super spreaders of every germ they’ve ever met. I’ve watched lots of people leave the bathroom straight from the stall without washing their hands.

    12. NaoNao*

      They’ll likely do one of couple things:

      Find a job where the office environment is more pleasant. My current office hub is pretty darn miserable. No available food options, coffee machine is terrible, it’s in a rough part of town, it’s freezing cold all the time, no amenities, and like many people who WFH with a scattered workforce, I wind up on Zoom calls with people all over the US and offshore while sitting in a “hotelling” cube that I can’t personalize or even count on day to day.

      Find a new job with a pay raise that makes up for the cost of RTO.

      Find a job that’s more flexible, but not 100% WFH.

      Find a job with a shorter commute.

      Patch together freelance, UE and other income sources while holding out for the job they want.

      Drop out of the workforce to be a SAHP or SAHS (parent/spouse) or pursue a passion project.

  14. Parenthesis Guy*

    You owe it to your team to keep them informed so that they can make an educated choice. If they don’t want to show up to the office anyway, that’s their business. Likewise, if they decide to say give one person their key cards and have them sign everyone in each day, that’s also their business. Your job is just to make sure they understand that such behavior can have consequences.

    When talking to your team, I’d try to emphaise that this mandate isn’t coming from you but rather your bosses and there’s nothing you can do about it. Your employees will still be upset, but you don’t want to get in an argument with them about a policy you can’t change.

    1. anon4this*

      This is like telling your children it is okay to cheat on a test. It is your business if you try and cheat and game the system. If I knew of employees coffee swiping they would deal with HR and if someone took everyones badges and did it they would most likely be fired. How people don’t see this as a judgment issue I will never understand.

      Also an FYI, you realize places have cameras right? And companies are also monitoring systems not just card swipes anymore?

      The time to discuss it was when the CEO mandated 3 days. Instead of skirting the policy OP should have spoken with the CEO with other leaders and maybe asked for 2 days in office or something like that. But honestly how everyone is reacting is probably going to cause a RTO 5 days and less flexibility.

      My partner has been going back for years but he is allowed to give his team flexibility. There are periods they must be in 4 days (forward facing), but periods that are slower or if someone has an emergency or is sick but can work they stay home (or use their lots of sick leave). But they earned it and showed that when the 3 day mandate came in they did it and they work hard. If I were the CEO I dont know if I could trust people who felt they could just do what they wanted and not follow the policy. If you are loosing clients and having layoffs then there is clearly an issue with working remote and maybe the CEO is trying to help the business/ stop layoffs.

      2. HB*

        I could be wrong, but I don’t think Parenthesis Guy is suggesting that the LW do a “wink wink nudge nudge” thing with respect to the card swiping. I think he’s saying the LW should stop worrying about how their employees are going to continue to try to get around the policy, and focus on making sure they understand that the policy is the policy and if they don’t follow it, there will be consequences. My general sense of the letter is that the LW is hung up too much on their employees’ feelings, because they themselves don’t like or agree with the policy which makes it more difficult for them to communicate/enforce it. I mean if the policy was “Everyone needs to start using these special pens” and the reason was because it turns out all other pens are somehow rendered explosive in their office then the LW could easily say “I don’t care how special your pink feather pen is to you, you could kill us all if you don’t use these Pilot G-2 07 ones.” LW isn’t going to feel bad about that at all. But telling people they need to come into the office x days a week no matter what just because the CEO says so just… kindof sucks. So Parenthesis Guy is saying to just disconnect and focus on communicating the policy and the fact that there are going to be consequences if they don’t follow it.

      3. MariposaEP*

        There’s a lot of wrong assumptions with your message (I’m the LW). I won’t write a big reply why since I’m replying late to these messages so I don’t anyone will really see them, but just wanted to have that clearly written here :)

    2. MassMatt*

      So, you think this manager has no responsibility to actually… manage the staff?

      Honestly this “see no evil, hear no evil” idea would make Sergeant Schultz of Hogan’s Heroes an ideal. “I see NOTHINK!”

      1. Parenthesis Guy*

        There’s a big difference between managing your staff to do their work and managing your staff to come in three days a week when you don’t care. If the CEO makes you in charge of determing who is coming up, then that’s a different story.

        1. Helewise*

          Eh, it’s the job of a manager to generally enforce the rules. If a manager is that opposed to a rule and hasn’t had success in changing their own manager’s mind on it, it’s time to move on.

    3. General skeptic*

      Idk. Enforcing a rule seems like decidedly her business. It will reflect poorly on her as a people manager, and I don’t think she should risk her professional reputation so they can feel autonomy in their protest (at least not with greater consideration to the risks to her career). To be clear, I don’t agree with the CEO’s decision given what’s been share, but it’s his bad decision to make and hers to communicate and enforce. And enforcement means not turning a blind eye to noncompliance. She can decide how much time and resources she dedicates to this, but she can’t decide (without consequences) to just not do it. This is literally just part of being a manger, unfortunately.

      1. UKDancer*

        Err yes. As a manager I am responsible for enforcing the rules of the company. If I think a rule is really stupid I will challenge it discreetly or suggest alternatives and sometimes they’re adopted. But I don’t get to decide not to do my job which involves ensuring compliance with the rules.

        If I didn’t want to have to manage people and ensure rules are followed, I wouldn’t be in a management role.

    4. Banana Pants*

      He’s their manager. It’s absolutely his business. I’m a GM. If my employee took everyone else’s keycards and swiped for them while I just kept saying “there are consequences,” guess who gets fired first? Me. And I’d deserve it for not managing.

  15. Alton Brown's Evil Twin*

    I’m curious – and frankly, a little concerned – about the “international calls from 8 am to noon” and the unspecified other reasons why OP’s team might be swapping days.

    How were those handled in the before times? If those weren’t a big deal pre-COVID, then I think it weakens OP’s case to bring them up – they become excuses, not reasons. If the nature of the work has changed – there are a lot more of these calls because new customers/offshoring/etc., then it is a valid thing to bring up. But it should start w/ the business needs, because that is what CEO is focused on.

    1. MassMatt*

      Since when is having to start at 8AM and work for four hours is a compelling case against working in the office?

      Other aspects of this workplace (working until 11?! Nonstop meetings?!) are more salient.

      1. Richard Hershberger*

        If you have kids to get to school and a long commute, getting to the office by eight can be tricky to impossible, while simply taking those calls from home presents no difficulty. Perhaps followed by coming into the office for the afternoon, if there is some actual point to this.

      2. Joron Twiner*

        Having to be in an office by 7:45 to zoom someone across the world means you have to get properly dressed and commute during rush hour. Maybe you also need to get your kids to childcare or pay for early dropoff hours.

        Being able to take that call from home means you don’t need to get fully dressed or commute during rush hour, and have more time to deal with dependents and get ready before your 8am call.

        And it doesn’t matter to your coworkers either way, because you’re not talking to them in person regardless.

    2. Reba*

      I think the thing here is that it is silly to commute into the office to then close your office door to get on video calls with people who are *not* in your office. If you are coming in to the office to work with coworkers there, then the international call-heavy day isn’t the best day for that.

      1. Silly indeed*

        Exactly. My team is in other sites, people in my projects are on other sites and making me go to the office for 4 days just to be in Zoom calls or work by myself just doesn’t make any sense. I have no collaboration on site and I find it frustrating that this is obviously not taken into account.

        1. Tired*

          And the changes and improvements in technology for calls etc. in the last 5-6 years are CRAZY – the ease and quality of video calls is so much better, and so many more people can actually do it now, that saying “what happened before C-19” is like saying “let’s just do what we did in the 2010s” when we had completely different systems and tools available.

          1. Justin D*

            It’s like getting rid of email a few years after it became common. “Well you did your work just fine without it before!” is not really an argument. Or trying to make everyone wear suits and ties again. “You used to wear that 5 days a week!”

    3. MariposaEP*

      LW: A good chunk of the local people this is affecting were hired during COVID, when we were fully remote, so there’s that!

      There’s also a lot of assumption in the comments I’ve noticed where it’s assumed the CEO even understands/knows what we do day-to-day and how this type of stuff affects our work. He does not! He does not care I work until 11PM a good chunk of nights.

  16. potofbeans*

    Every middle manager comes upon their opportunity to fight for their staff or to suck up to the execs. The best ones defend their staff, the ones that give in keep their jobs.

    1. FormerLibrarian*

      Nah. There are middle managers all over the place who can go their entire careers without being given a bridge too far. In a healthy workplace you can be the information conduit between your team and your upper management without having to choose sides like this.

    3. Middle Manager*

      I am a middle manager who will fight for my staff, but at a certain point, you have to recognize that the fight is over; otherwise, you’ll harm your reputation and your career. I’ve repeatedly addressed the merits of flexibility and WFH to senior leadership. Our executive team has decided they are against WFH, and I’ve conveyed to my team that I don’t agree with or like the policies but that we have to abide by them.

  17. Sneaky Squirrel*

    I could list out a million reasons why work from home is a better option to have available rather than requiring all staff to work in the office 5 days a week, but it doesn’t matter here.

    It sounds like LW is a senior leader at their company. A senior leader’s job is to champion the direction the CEO wants to take the company. That doesn’t mean you have to agree with it, can’t fight the battle behind the scenes, or that you should gaslight your employees into thinking it was the right decision. But LW needs to be enforcing the CEO’s decisions and making sure staff are compliant with the rules. It sounds like this wasn’t happening before and therefore the CEO continued to take more drastic measures.

  18. Beth*

    It sounds like this is settled in your CEO’s mind–he wants people in office, he compromised on a hybrid setup but people kept acting like they worked remotely, so he’s now going to insist on full-time in-office. It sounds like he knows it’s unpopular and doesn’t care.

    That sucks for anyone on your team who relies on a WFH setup (whether for childcare reasons, a bad commute, medical appointments, or just personal preference). But it shouldn’t be a surprise–not after 3 years of being told to be in office more and more often.

    The only open question is, what consequences will actually be enforced about it? I’m betting your CEO already knows if he’s willing to fire people over noncompliance. And I bet your team members already know if they’re willing to quit over this. If you can feel out the answers to those questions, that might be useful information for your planning.

    1. Ann O'Nemity*

      I’m curious about consequences too. Does the CEO want managers to go through the performance management process that may eventually result in firing? What if a top performer keeps flouting the in-person requirement?

      1. Out of office, out of mind*

        “What if a top performer keeps flouting the in-person requirement?“

        Then you address that on a case by case basis. Truly top performers can write their own ticket. But few people will get to be top performers (particularly in leadership roles) by isolating themselves at home.

  19. AnonInCanada*

    Your CEO isn’t seeing the big picture. Or any picture, for that matter. This “my way or the highway” attitude is a sure-fire recipe for already-disgruntled employees (Working until 11 pm and then having to be all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed next morning? Yikes!) to find greener pastures. And for what? To see butts in seats in an office?

    Just because that’s the way it worked in past, doesn’t make it work today or tomorrow.

  20. AVP*

    If you *need* to rehash out the arguments with your staff again, I would focus on triaging. Who really needs an exception and will quit immediately otherwise, and who is just hoping to keep this because it’s nice?

    For example, you mention some of your team are working out-of-norm hours because of international partners, is it even logistically possible for them to be in their office-seats for those calls? Or would your client/partner calls need to be rescheduled to allow for them to commute as required? Do you lose a top performer who moved farther away and has daycare/school limitations so there’s no way they’ll finish their big project? If you can pick out the points where it’s a real obvious inconvenience for the company to fight with you, you might get the actual exceptions you need (at the expense of the others, of course).

    Right now you’re fighting too many battles all at once, which just makes your team seem intransigent. Pick the best ones and you have a shot of winning where you really need to.

  21. RemoteStu*

    I have a hard time understanding how people who are hired full time on-site (versus remote) have a hard time going in to the office. Like, it’s no surprise, right?

    1. Alton Brown's Evil Twin*

      Hedonic adaptation. It’s a thing in psychology & economics.

      You get a new enjoyable thing that you weren’t expecting. After a surprisingly short amount of time, it’s painful to give that thing up, you expect that thing as a given in your life, and you get indignant if you can’t have it.

        1. Caramel & Cheddar*

          This. I worked five days a week in the office pre-pandemic, though I was definitely considering asking for one WFH day per week even before 2020. Now, being in the office even three days per week is immensely painful. My job can be done 100% from the computer, and my collaboration with my colleagues actually works better via Teams than it does in person for the kind of work that I do.

          All that is to say that while obviously I did five days a week five years ago, my philosophy has shifted in that time. My approach to work and understanding how my job functions and how it relates to my colleagues underwent a dramatic change five years ago; I don’t think it’s surprising in the slightest that I would want a change from my 2019 status quo. What I’ve learned in the past three years or so is that a lot of people apparently didn’t undergo the same kinds of changes, which is fine but surprising to me.

        2. Percy Weasley*

          You make a key point, Lisa! The REASON makes a huge difference. Make it meaningful or leave it alone.

    2. bamcheeks*

      I mean, it’s been five years since the Covid WFH mandates. That’s a very substantial amount of time for the new normal to have established itself and for people’s lives to have moulded around it.

      If someone had come along in 2001 and told you you had to go back to Windows 3.1, or taken away your smartphone in 2014 — would you have been indignant? Or would you have completely easily gone back to the way things were five years earlier?

    3. Not your trauma bucket*

      I also used to make a third of my current salary, doesn’t mean I’d be happy to go back to it.

    4. Beth*

      It sounds like OP’s company has been working remote or hybrid since the pandemic. That’s like 4 years at this point. I’m sure plenty of people were hired during that time frame, for what was at the time a remote or hybrid role, and is now being converted to in-person for the first time.

      1. Justin D*

        I was hired a couple years before the pandemic and they basically said “you can come in if you really want (to a mostly empty office) but hardly anyone does” and my boss was in another state anyways. We’re still all in different states but we have to commute into our offices.

  22. Saturday*

    You’re continuing to try to give your employees flexibility, but it seems kinder to let them know that they don’t really have flexibility here. Then they can decide what to do – look for a new job, move closer, whatever. I think people might feel like, okay, another false alarm. They said we’d have to come in, but we don’t really.

    1. Eldritch Office Worker*

      Yes! It’s great to advocate for your staff, but it’s incredibly important to be honest with them. They should have a realistic understanding of the expectations of their jobs, and make their own choices from there.

  23. Timothy*

    I’m retired now, so no longer have kin in the game, but I know that my last employer told us March 9, 2020 to go home and stay home until further notice. That setup worked fine for years.

    I worked in software development and support — so face to face contact wasn’t really necessary, but it is good to be in the office occasionally, because the dynamic of an in-person meeting is different than a Zoom call. But if I come into the office and spend eight hours in front of a computer, why am I even coming into the office?

    IMO, a good solution would be for people to come into the office 1-2 days a week. That should be enough face time to keep things going smoothly, while retaining most of the WFH convenience. I know I was thrilled to not have to spend an hour and a half commuting each day, plus buying or bringing my lunch.

    Good luck!

  24. Exile*

    Reading the letter one of the main things sticking out for me seems to be that from top with CEO through middle/junior management in case of LW there doesn’t seem to be any proper either feedback being supplied up why policy not working or proper notification down that this is what needs to happen.

    Different departments deciding to pick and choose what to do after the first requests and then not following up with employees is causing this Laissez-faire attitude to it and people feel that the request either doesn’t need followed or doesn’t apply to them. Unfortunately now it’s going to create an impasse, but feels like some more direct management and decision making at beginning could have stopped getting to this stage.

    Unfortunately for normal employees it’s going to cause the most impact as they’ll need to decide if they want to continue in job with hybrid commitment or find elsewhere. Particularly those that moved away from being local to office. Would be curious about the communication with staff at point of starting being remote whether they were given impression it would be permanent or not. Given what seems to be lack of communication elsewhere, I wouldn’t be surprised if they felt was new conditions going forward.

    All in all though a complete mess for all involved…

  25. Double A*

    I do think it’s a problem for a company to be largely remote when the top leadership doesn’t understand how to run a remote company. I know people here are firmly WFH and don’t see how anyone could think otherwise, but a functional remote company doesn’t just happen. Leadership sets up systems and processes that make it work. It has to be deliberate and intentional to be sustainable.

    And I say this as someone who works fully remote for an organization that has always been remote. I felt we were well set up, but then we went some major changes to our systems and the organization has been floundering. It feels way less effective because leadership is no longer being deliberate about how to make it work. It’s incredibly frustrating; I’m trying to care, but the lack of oversight means it’s extremely tempting to just take advantage of the fact that no one is paying attention. Obviously people slack off in offices, but it’s a lot easier with remote work unless you have systems.

    It sounds like a problem that people moved away. That was a gamble they took. Yes, you might lose good people, but they might lose their job. They made that choice when they moved even though WFH was an emergency measure that leadership didn’t fully buy into.

    Regardless of what way this goes, clarity around expectations and setting up systems that actually work for whatever structure you go with is key. But that’s all on the CEO.

    1. Double A*

      This being said, the more I’m thinking about this the more pissed I’d be if I were the CEO. I made my expectations clear, and my middle management undermined me.

      It sounds like there are plenty of reasons this company isn’t that well run (working till 11pm?), but in a functional company you implement the processes that leadership wants and if there are problems with them you work in an iterative process to refine them. You don’t just be like, “Oh, CEO says this but I don’t like it so I’ll be really lax about it for years.”

    2. Caramel & Cheddar*

      I think a lot of orgs definitely don’t know how to run a remote company, but I think that’s a bit of a red herring given how many of them don’t know how to run in-person companies either. Communication dysfunction, inability to keep on top of what staff are working on, making sure that people are productive, etc. were all recurring themes in letters published on this site pre-2020. Good companies don’t happen by magic, and bad management can certainly exacerbate the challenges of being remote, but I don’t think “Well, companies are bad at this!” is a reason for a company not to be remote.

      1. Double A*

        But if the CEO, the leader of the company, doesn’t want to learn how to run a remote company, that’s his choice? It’s not like a leader just suddenly has the skills and knowledge to run a remote company — those are skills they need to actually develop. It seems like people think there’s no difference, but there’s a huge difference and a steep learning curve.

        If leadership is like, “I am not interested in learning how to set up a well-run remote company and feel we’re most effective with facetime,” then he gets to make that decision. And if the middle management wants to fight for remote/hybrid, they should be focusing on what his concerns are about remote work and proposing systems that alleviate those concerns. This is also just intuition, but I also think that someone who’s not great at running a company is probably able to make it work a bit better in person than remotely, partly probably due to their comfort with the systems they came up in.

        Frankly there are other details in that make me think this isn’t a very well run company, there are clearly huge communication issues, and honestly hybrid is probably somewhat contributing to that. But the super long work days alone are a flashing red flag.

        1. Caramel & Cheddar*

          He absolutely gets to make that decision, but that’s not what your top-level comment was about so I didn’t think it was necessary to address that.

          1. Double A*

            “But some companies are dysfunctional in any format” also really didn’t address the meat of what I was saying either, though. I actually really am not sure what your response had to do with my comment. My point is that running a company remotely requires specific skills and decisions, which is a reality that I rarely see commenters take into consideration when advocating for remote work.

  26. Insert Pun Here*

    Personally, this long drawn out ambiguity and drama would drive me bonkers regardless of topic. Whatever the CEO chooses, and however the employees choose to react, there will be consequences. So just make the decision and see what the consequences are and then deal with them and move on. Maybe everyone quits. Maybe they don’t. Only one way to find out!

  27. Kate*

    I’m a manager, and I HATE hybrid. As far as I am concerned, it’s the worst of both worlds.

    (For context, I worked all-remote for most of the pandemic, then hybrid, then all-in-person, and now back to hybrid).

    All remote, people were in “remote mode” and stuff got done because that was the only way! Moreover, as a manager, my talent pool went wayyyy up because I could hire from anywhere across the country.

    All in-person, okay, it was largely back to the way things were pre-pandemic. Same old, same old.

    Hybrid? Setting aside the actual work schedule/ethic since that varies by employee and office culture, the system just isn’t set up to accommodate remote work as well as it was when we were all remote. Computer’s acting up? IT will tell you to bring it in on your next in-office day, and you’re fiddling until then. Don’t have a deep pool of people with the specialized skill set you need in the local area? Too bad, you can’t hire from further away because you can’t reasonably ask them to commute a four-hour flight 4 days a week.

    1. HybridRocks*

      I work 100% remotely now and have for about a decade, but I’ve been working hybrid since the mid90s. It’s not as cut and dried as you portray, at least not in a functional company. Many, many companies have had successful hybrid environments for decades. I work 100% remotely for medical reasons and I now work at a company that’s 100% remote, but when I was physically capable, I found hybrid was often the best option (for me, 1-2 days onsite, 3-4 remote is perfect). Some of it depends on the specific tasks – quiet focused time can be difficult in a cube farm or open office, for example.

  28. post script*

    Research showed that 80% of CEOs regretted forcing return to office policies. The ones that did it well actually worked with employees to make it manageable. The ones that regretted it used top-down ultimatums and found themselves faced with mass resignations. As other people have pointed out, the ones that have in-demand skills will be the first to go.
    The real question is, what is productivity like? If it has stayed stable or increased since WFH started, then forcing RTO with no corresponding increase in wages or benefits is going to be perceived as purely ego-driven and punitive and staff who can find other jobs will flee.

    1. Cacofonix*

      This is exactly what commenters are missing. The issue about the pro and con of RTO vs hybrid vs WFH. The issue is the lack of clarity and facts about RTO in general and for this LW’s organization. Everyone has *opinions* about the so called mandate. There is no clear direction from the CEO who apparently is him/herself working from wishes and wants vs. facts and apparently little guidance on communicating the mandate and consequences for ignoring it. Get that, LW, and since you have skin in this game, get data and plan to mitigate impacts. Demand clarity, whichever way it goes.

        1. Texan in exile on her phone*

          Record earnings when they were completely WFH but still demanding RTO. Senior VP had some snarky comment about how people would have to do laundry on weekends instead of during workday.

    3. EA*

      Always fascinating to wonder what research people are referring to when they say “research shows”!

      1. Caramel & Cheddar*

        Enter “80% of CEOs regretted forcing return to office policies” in your preferred search engine and you’ll get a CNBC article of the same name from 2023, which links to the research within the body of the article.

  29. ruthling*

    Seems like at the very least, the company should be getting what they “asked for”. Go to the office for your 8-5, take your actual lunchbreak, then go home. Don’t work until 11 pm, take your sick days and personal days, carve back some of that time creep that remote work allowed. And support your staff in this too.

    1. Mike*

      100% this. Leadership doesn’t get to force RTO because “that’s the way it used to be” while also expecting the early morning or late-night work.

  30. MsManager*

    I also work in a large international organization. Fortunately, our current CEO is not rigid in the ways described here. Unfortunately, I could see that changing depending on how US federal remote work policies change under Trump, because the US government is a major funder of our work.

    One thing I detect in this letter and in other international organizations with rigid in-office work requirements is an expectation of flexibility from staff without concomitant flexibility offered by the organization. Many US-based staff in international orgs start their work days between 6-8a to be available for calls with colleagues in other offices. Would this CEO agree to a policy where no US staf take calls before 9a Tues-Thursday? I think it’s very unlikely as that would not be in the interest of the organization.

  31. Kaybee*

    I agree with Alison on all these points! It’s the CEO’s call, but if they don’t enforce it, few are going to do it and those who do will be annoyed that so many others don’t.

    I’m in an office that is a long commute for me, where they literally don’t have enough desks or seats for everyone, and many were working remote before the pandemic (I started remote during the pandemic shutdown.) They also have way too few conference rooms and phone booths so people are shouting over one another on calls at the crowded desks.

    Yet every year or so they make some announcement that they want people to return to office, unless they were hired remote, or they live far away, or their manager allows them to stay remote, or they are feeling sick but not too sick to work… There are so many exceptions that it’s just annoying. I basically go to the office when I have rare meetings with someone who is in the office, otherwise I work at home because it makes more sense and I get more done.

  32. Experience makes WFH easier*

    I wonder about the discussion on RTO: if a job can be 100% remote, what prevents it from being offshored or downgraded in pay? Why should I pay Manhattan rates if I can hire someone in Wyoming for less? While talent may be hard to find and could leave, the option of going into the office might become a key advantage for employees in the future.

    Additionally, those who dismiss the need for mentoring often overlook that layoffs can force someone to move companies. Not knowing who handles tasks in accounting highlights the benefits of being in the office. Many who excel at WFH have already gained momentum and can rely less on in-office benefits.

    1. Mark This Confidential And Leave It Laying Around*

      Well, more people live on the island of Manhattan than in the entire state of Wyoming, so while in theory that works there’s a reason people pay NY rates. All kinds of hypotheticals work but not every notion pans out.

    2. Caramel & Cheddar*

      No one’s dismissing the need for mentoring, but lots of people are saying it needs to be deliberate and structured, rather than haphazard and on the fly.

      If you don’t know who handles the tasks in accounting, that’s an issue of bad onboarding, absent process documents, and/or lack of documentation in staff manuals. It’s not because you weren’t sitting in an office. I have an ongoing job manual that I keep up to date and it always includes page detailing colleagues on other teams that I interact with, for what purpose, and how often so that when I eventually move on, the person after me knows exactly who to talk to and about what. It doesn’t have to be some unknowable mystery.

  33. Lily Potter*

    Something that comes screaming through this letter is that the LW doesn’t want to RTO him/herself. I’d be shocked if their employees haven’t picked up on that and figured “Hey! LW is one of us! They probably won’t push back if we push the RTO policy to the limit. After all, they don’t like coming in, either”.

    Time to change that. As mentioned upthread, the CEO gets to make this call and it’s the LW’s job to enforce the new RTO mandate. It’s time for LW to stop ALL commiserating with their reports on this subject, and figure out how to implement that which the CEO has commanded from on high. When people know that their manager doesn’t like a policy, they feel more emboldened to push the boundaries of that policy.

    I’d also suggest thinking through ahead of time what constitutes an acceptable WFH day when it’s Tuesday – Thursday, and what does not, and talk that through with your team. Be completely frank – something like: “WFH on designated office days is allowed occasionally for life’s little emergencies like letting in a repairman or staying home when you feel a little under the weather. However, please know that WFH mid-week should be the unusual exception, not something you’re doing with any regularity. That vast majority of the time, I expect to see you in-office every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday unless you’re taking PTO”.

    1. MariposaEP*

      Funny enough, LW here, I wasn’t the problem. My boss and I supervise everyone. Pre recent layoffs, it was 3 of us (another director). The other director unfortunately got let go and he absorbed her people (like +3). So he directly supervises the majority of people. HIS people were the ones not following the mandate the most at first. So the less he pushed his people, when he’s ABOVE me, the more I got confused how enforceable should I even be.

      Funny how that works typing that out now! Because also, outside my boss, despite me making my feelings known on the mandate, I follow it the most :) I’d often be alone in the office til EOD.

  34. Not surprised*

    I read an article about a recent return to the office mandate (I don’t remember if it was Amazon or not), and the comments the employees left on the Slack announcement. Many of the featured comments in this particular article were about not being able to come into the office due to not having child care and WFH making child care easier. Traditionally, aside from the pandemic and the random sick day, you aren’t supposed to have kids at home when you WFH full-time(I learned that here on AAM). And honestly, I’m not surprised we are seeing more strict in-office mandates.

    1. Tradd*

      Exactly. I learned about the pre-pandemic childcare requirement here as well. If the LW’s workplace is representative of other companies, people are just flouting the in office days and doing what they like. I’m not surprised about the strict in office mandates, either.

    2. Justin*

      Like kids in a class, the people who abused the system are making the system worse for those who have been following the rules diligently.

    3. Anonononononon*

      A lot of people are still stuck between a rock and a hard place. It’s still very difficult to find affordable childcare in many areas, and in some areas, consistent childcare just isn’t available for very young children. Of course, remote workers should have childcare in place so they can focus on their jobs, but the reality is that that just isn’t an option for everyone. So those folks are stuck in the sense that they can’t afford/access childcare but they still need their jobs.

  35. Account*

    When my husband’s office declared a 2-day-per-week in-office hybrid, he was being slack about attending it. I told him to PLEASE straighten up and follow the mandate, because if people didn’t take it seriously, the CEO was going to get sick of the whole thing and make them 40 hours a week in person. It seems to have worked, people seem to be respecting it, and they’ve remained hybrid.

  36. Clementine*

    There’s a huge potential for such a policy to be enforced on people that the CEO or some senior manager doesn’t like, and unenforced for the managerial favorites. I think the CEO should be forced to give unequivocal guidelines on how to deal with someone who doesn’t come in often enough, even if this person is totally beloved by all.

  37. Clementine*

    A blanket policy that doesn’t acknowledge how stressful it is to do 10 PM or 3 AM or even 6 AM calls, and then also have to come into the office just like everyone else for a full day’s work, is wrong, imo. If I have such a call, I consider that a good reason to work from home that day (or the following). If the CEO doesn’t think so, they need to specifically address that point.

  38. Pounce de Lion*

    I read on a forum recently from a person who stated categorically that they cannot return to the office because they will be killed while driving in traffic. That underlined for me one of the reasons I prefer my hybrid schedule. Being at home so much was reducing my resiliency for dealing with the world outside.

    Just chiming in for those of us who are not devoted to 100% WFH. We’re out here, and we’d love to go for lunch sometime.

    1. Account*

      I work in mental health (I’m a psychiatric NP) and I see people— not a ton, but I’ve seen several— for whom WFH has drastically worsened their issues. “I can’t go back to the office because I’ll be too anxious” is an example. Prior to Covid, there were people who were forced to address their anxiety and learn to function, because they had no other options. Now, there is this option to retreat and hide, and for some people, it is devastating to their functioning.

      Your word “resiliency” is a succinct way of describing this.

    2. Justin*

      Yeah, I like my hybrid a ton. Quite similarly much of my social life (with two young kids) is meeting people for lunch on office days, coworkers or not because I work in Midtown.

    3. allathian*

      Yeah, hybrid once a week is perfect for me. I was 100 remote for about 18 months, went sporadically to the office when it was allowed again and have been going regularly for the past 2 years.

      I’m more productive at home but I enjoy seeing my coworkers.

    4. HungryLawyer*

      I find that really interesting, though I have the opposite experience. Working from home has increased my resilience to the everyday problems that life throws my way. Because my social battery isn’t drained from being in the office all day and my physical energy isn’t drained from commuting, I have more energy and emotional resources to deal with life.

    5. Parakeet*

      Do people not leave their homes to go places other than work? I truly don’t mean this to be snarky. It’s just so far outside my own experience. I WFH unless I’m doing work travel, but I go to activism-related meetings and protests, I go to the crafts studio where I’m a member, I go running, I volunteer at a food pantry, I go to ethnoreligious events, I go to medical appointments, I go to cafes and restaurants and friends’ homes.

      I’ve found that not having to deal with a commute and an office helps me deal better with the rest of life like HungryLawyer does, but that one will definitely vary from person to person.

    6. Just a different redhead*

      If my body hadn’t started throwing pain riots when I went to the office (multiple different reasons/sources), I’d still be willing to go, but I will say that commuting in rush-hour traffic regularly made my overall driving worse until after I stopped having to do it XD

    7. Joron Twiner*

      How do you separate that from the trauma of living through a global pandemic and being let down by our governments and society? There’s a lot less social trust than there used to be and it’s not due to WFH.

  39. I'm Here*

    I’m not understanding what’s not going great about this process, other than that it’s maybe too slow. Senior management has decided they want to employ a team of people who are willing to work from the office, and currently the company is shaking out who is willing to do that and who is going to leave.

    Having been involved in a return-to-work process, I’m pretty confident this is exactly what the CEO expected.

    OP doesn’t like what’s happening. That’s fair. But it’s going about how the company likely expected.

  40. Sack of Benevolent Trash Marsupials*

    A major issue we are facing in my workplace is the cost of maintaining a physical workplace when everyone is on a hybrid work schedule and our office is only significantly occupied 2 days per week. I totally understand why leadership is having trouble figuring out how to balance WFH while also justifying the half million a year our leased space costs. Especially as we are absorbing budget cuts due to changes in our core funding.

    I see a lot of scorn for CEOs/leadership and their inflexibility, some of which is probably well deserved, but think larger corporations and companies located in high COLAs are probably really struggling with this right now. In many cases it may not be really possible to cut down on space to allow for hybrid work and some cost savings due to the way the building is configured or where it is. And IME, telling people with offices that they work in a couple of days per week that their offices are going away because they aren’t used enough causes the opposite complaint.

    I don’t know what the right answer is here – I hope hybrid is here to stay and that we and other groups can figure out how to keep enough space to have the opportunity for regular in person meetings (I am so tired of Zoom although it’s so great to have it in the toolbox) while permitting a decent amount of WFH flexibility.

    2. Mutually supportive*

      I’ve seen some places say you have an allocated desk if you’re in 4 days or more, otherwise it’s hotdesking.

      There may be some reluctance at first but you can’t have it both ways and really, hot desking is fine for most people/roles, as long as you have a locker or storage to keep some things at the office

    3. The Gollux, Not a Mere Device*

      This feels like a version of the sunk cost fallacy. You have a lease, so you’re going to be paying half a million a year whether or not you use the space, so management feels like they have to get their money’s worth, by having people in the office.

      But the relevant number isn’t that half a million/year: it’s that half a million, minus however much or little you’re spending specifically because people are working from home. An empty office doesn’t cost you more than it would if someone was sitting in there, using a computer or talking on the phone.

      There may be other reasons for wanting Fergus in the office, depending on the specifics of your work. If so, focus there: you can’t do hands-on lab work remotely, and that would be true even if the lab space was free.

  41. Grumpy girl*

    In my experience the problem with the leadership mandates is that they fail to clearly communicate what they expect the results to be. They need to provide a general goal that managers can filter and specify for their team’s roles, and that shows leadership understand how business gets done. Otherwise it’s cute that they say they want more collaboration … when teams are geographically dispersed anyhow.

  42. Czech Mate*

    Yes, I agree–I think transparency on both sides is really important here. To the team, as Alison says, you can say, “Look, I know you don’t like it, but this decision has come down from the CEO and this is going to be the reality of working here. It is up to you to decide if you are willing to do that.” Likewise, I think it’s also worth telling the CEO, “We will lose people if we stick to this mandate. Are you comfortable with that?”

  43. TexasLisa*

    I think WFH is mostly a huge “It Depends.” As someone in Tech: all of my teams are dispersed into multiple geographies. A mandate would mean that I drive to the office to have virtual calls all day long (on worse internet than I have at my home office). Not all teams are co-located or tied to the region. OTOH, my young-adult kids graduated during COVID and have worked mostly remote — office work would benefit from office-based career seasoning.

  44. Justin*

    My company has committed to never forcing us back full time, aside from occasional (like monthly) events. We can go in if we want, and I choose to because I really do work better from the office – I get distracted at home with my dog and so on.

    But anyway, the cat is out of the bag in this situation, and it’s technically the CEO’s call. There are not ZERO benefits to being in the office before people go there, it’s the mandate that’s cruel.

    Sorry you’re in this. It’s a boulder that’s all the way down the hill.

  45. Katydid*

    I find this very frustrating as a remote employee. We are all able to WFH as much as we want and come into the office whenever is convenient. In the summer, I am there at least once every two weeks if not more. In the winter with weather and travel, probably more like once a month. However, some of the higher ups and HR are always saying they would love to see more people in the office for no other reason than “Vibes! Collaboration!”. We have employees who live in different time zones and an office in the UK at this point. I work with clients all over the globe and frequently spend most of my day on Teams calls. I am very lucky that I have an entirely separate office at my house (my house was built to contain a dentist office in the 60s) so it truly feels like I am “going to work” when I go there in the morning. In this situation, I think the manager has to be very clear about the mandate and that they will need to enforce it and let people make their decisions. For us the handbook states that WFH could be changed for anyone who lives less than two hours from the office. Are there any parameters to this mandate? Have they set any guidelines?

  46. Jojo*

    It seems to me the real issue here is that there are no consequences for not coming into the office. My business unit it supposed to be in the office 5 days a week now, but I come in and it’s pretty clear that more than 50% of the people on my floor are not coming in. But you know what? The managers are not allowed to do anything about it. No consequences, no change. The OP’s CEO needs to state what the consequences are and enforce them, otherwise the managers have no power to enforce return to office. The issue isn’t trying to get the CEO to back down on return to office, the issue is to force the CEO to decide how failure to return to the office will be enforced.

    I’m starting to get a little worn out on the whole return to office debate. CEOs get to dictate what they want. In my case, a condition of my job is to come into the office everyday. I would prefer hybrid, but it’s not really an option. I like my job, I like the money I make, and if it requires being in the office 5 days a week, that’s the deal. (We aren’t unionized, so we lack negotiating power.)

  47. Mouse named Anon*

    My company went hybrid at some point after lockdowns happened (I am not sure on timing as I came in during 2022). Sadly many people abused the hybrid format. If the bosses weren’t in they didn’t come in. Even if you were required to be in. I was hired in during the fall of 2022. And anytime my boss wasn’t in (he travels from office to office) few people were in. My department wasn’t alone in this. It was bad esp in the beginning bc there were days as someone brand new in the role where I was totally alone in the office. Yes I could reach everyone via teams, but honestly it felt a bit unfair I was the only one to abide by the rules. Not gonna lie, I see why lots of placing are enforcing this. If you have brick and mortar place that you “report” to I think the majority of people should prepare themselves to go back in. As much as it stinks.

  48. Dasein9 (he/him)*

    Honestly, it doesn’t sound like the problem is RTO, but rather being overworked and understaffed with poor workplace culture and then RTO on top of that. Going from the details in the letter, RTO is a late-landing straw, not the whole camel-load.

    In your position, LW, I’d work to rule while job searching.

  49. Justin*

    “junior employees who are missing out on the learning by osmosis that happens when they share space with more experienced employees”

    I keep seeing this offered as a reason for RTO but I think it’s mostly BS. Or at least it’s heavily outweighed by the benefits of WFH for most professional office roles. When I was a “junior employee” long before COVID I don’t remember management caring about anything except me getting my work done and keeping the more senior employees happy.

    1. FAFO*

      Oh gosh, it’s not at all! I have a new hobby where I go to classes 1-2 days per week. I learn so much from listening to and observing the people who have done it for 25 years even though they are often just talking about ways to improve their excellent work. You could literally never think of all the little things that make a good worker an expert.

    2. Nina from Corporate Accounts Payable*

      The junior people in my team love being remote and all I got out of being in-office during the first half of my career was dealing with toxicity and being reminded constantly that I was a low-level peon. I can count the senior managers who took an interest in my growth on two fingers.

  50. HonorBox*

    I have opportunity to WFH some and I enjoy those days. I CAN be more productive and generally hold a few tasks that are more focus-intensive for those days.
    Having said that, the mandate is the mandate. There will likely be consequences when workers decide they want something different than in-office all the time.
    What I’d hope for as middle management is two things. First I think it would be helpful for the CEO to give a clear “why” for the return to office mandate. Are we more productive? Are we losing out on business because we can’t collaborate as easily? It can’t just be that Amazon is doing it. That doesn’t hold as much water with the workforce as something directly related to YOUR business. Second, he needs to be willing to empower managers to enforce this. If there isn’t a consequence, as there hasn’t been to this point, no one is going to take this seriously.
    The fact that the present return to office has been so sloppy and willy-nilly isn’t helping this either.
    CEO can dictate this. CEO also has to realize he may get to find out when he f*cks around.

  51. Cold in KC*

    With RTO, I always want to ask is the CEO there full time as well? I guarantee they want butts in seats when they cruise through occasionally but mostly work wherever and whenever they want. This smacks as unfair to employees who have been productive at home. But also I know life isn’t fair and CEO’s always get the lions share.

  52. Anon for This*

    COVID changed expectations about remote work/telework, but before we were all sent home it was understood that telework was a privilege to be earned, not a right. I have argued that this is what we need to return to. If your people are getting their work done from home, and aren’t relying on people who are in to do certain parts of their jobs, they should be eligible to telework. But if your team is like mine, your high performers will still perform at home, the slackers will be slackers no matter where they are, but at least if they are in you can keep an eye on. I never had anyone telework full time, but there were a couple that did three days a week at home because they were very productive there. Again, I think I’d argue to the CEO for telework for those who earn it.

    1. TheBunny*

      Yeah. At my work we have one of those people who claim they can totally work fully remote…but at least once per day they are asking someone to find something for them in the office.

      They don’t want to admit it…but they need to come in.

  53. Medium Sized Manager*

    I work fully remote and it’s a big plus for why I continue to work at my current job, but I also think people have gotten very weird about WFH vs. in office. Yes, not commuting is great! I love the flexibility to work out in the morning and walk my dog, etc.

    However, on days that I do go into an office, it’s also fine. It’s nice to talk to other people and leave my apartment. It’s nice to have a routine outside of spending 98% of my time in the apartment. And if being 100% remote is your only priority, then you need to have a job that permits that. It doesn’t really matter (IMO) if the job can be done remotely if the CEO is saying they want people in office. Especially when people are flagrantly disregarding the hybrid RTO because they just don’t feel like being in-office!

  54. RCB*

    There are arguments above of “okay fine, the CEO gets to make that call and let the chips fall where they may if it’s the bad decision it seems to be”, and that’s LEGALLY true, but let’s put on our human hats here for a second and realize that they pushback is because these are HUMANS we are talking about, their livelihoods are hanging in the balance, and we all know that the workers of a company know how it runs much better than the CEO ever does and we have more than ample examples of examples screaming “STOP! That’s going to sink us all” while the CEO steered the ship right into the iceberg and drowned everyone.

    My point here is that the livelihoods of many people shouldn’t depend on the bad judgement of one mediocre person at the top who can’t manage effectively. A company that listens to its employees will be successful, not one that blindly follows its CEO.

    And now I open it up to all the mediocre bosses to comment and tell me how I’m wrong and they are right….

    1. Tradd*

      Livelihoods in the balance? Isn’t that rather dramatic? If someone doesn’t like the RTO mandate, they can go find a job elsewhere. That’s their choice. It’s also the CEO’s choice to require everyone in the office 5 days a week.

      1. Zap R.*

        I will say, it is WILD to see how much the opinion on WFH has changed among this site’s commentariat.

        1. Tradd*

          I was laid off from a job of 13.5 years at the start of the pandemic. After being out of work for 4 months, I got a fully remote job for 8 months (laid off due to expected business increase not happening). I’ve been in office at current job for almost 4 years. Current company owners loathe WFH. Whatever. There are reasons I like being in the office, although I did the same job from home for 8 months during the pandemic. I’m not sure why everyone thinks they’re entitled to WFH after the pandemic ended. Some companies like it and downsized their buildings. But the absolute freaking out and losing it some people display due to RTO mandates? Headscratcher for sure.

    2. Out of office, out of mind*

      “we all know that the workers of a company know how it runs much better than the CEO ever does“

      Sounds like you’re looking for an anti-work blog, not a career advice blog, Jan.

    3. HB*

      ??? No one is in danger of drowning here. I feel like you’re trying to imply that the LW or the others in the company have a *moral* duty to… do what exactly? Stage a mutiny and wrest control of the company away from the CEO? Over a RTO policy?

      The policy isn’t illegal, immoral, or dangerous. The absolute worst thing that could happen is that a critical number of employees leave and the company closes/dissolves. Except that’s not particularly likely to happen unless there are other reasons why the company is teetering. The LW referring to some abysmal working conditions might point to this, but if the WFH policy is literally the only thing that’s keeping this company from collapsing… that’s not exactly a good argument for trying to defeat the RTO mandate since that’s basically saying “Don’t rip the band aid off otherwise people might realize they’re hemorrhaging from where I keep stabbing them in their arteries!”

      What’s *most* likely to happen if the CEO pushes all this through is that a lot of employees will enjoy their jobs less. Some/many? of those will start looking for other jobs and will leave. They’ll be replaced – possibly with less competent/productive people but also possibly with just as competent/productive people who prefer working in an office.

  55. Generic Name*

    I’m curious about the people you say are too comfortable and abusing the system. Have they been spoken to about expectations at all? I work for a company that is largely in-office, but our department is more flexible than most. We had one guy who I think was abusing the system. He would often leave early. When I first started, I was taken aback when he told me that he doesn’t really ever use PTO, even though he goes on vacations and visits family in another state. He said that over the holidays he didn’t take any PTO because he “monitored his emails” while visiting out of town family. So basically the guy glanced at his phone every so often while hanging out with family/going on outings during the workday and put 8 hours of working time. Eventually his boss told him that if he was going out of town, he had to use PTO, and that he was expected to be in the office for 8 hours on his in-office days (remote work wasn’t fully revoked, but it had a lot more restrictions). He eventually left for a fully remote position. I hope he likes his new job better, but this is the type of person who spoils flexible work/hybrid work for the rest of us.

    1. Firm Believer*

      This comment just summarized exactly why WFH is going away. As a manager, this is exactly what happens. It simply does.

  56. cactus lady*

    I have changed how I think about this in the past year or so. Previously I was vehemently opposed returning to the office full time, and while I still would prefer hybrid, working in the office full time isn’t a dealbreaker anymore.

    However, I came to my current employer during lockdown and was remote for the first 18 months. We now work 2-3 days in and the rest from home. If THIS employer tried to tell me to come back in full time, I would quit. There is no way I would ever go into the office full time here. But it wouldn’t be a dealbreaker in a new job, if I knew that was the deal going into it.

    I wonder how much of this is “I won’t go back to working full time in person” vs. “I won’t work THIS JOB full time in person when I have been doing fine hybrid/remote.”

    1. Medium Sized Manager*

      It’s a fair question. Part of the reason I don’t think my job should be fully in office is because I have a team across the US, so I would still be in virtual meetings all day. But the exact same job where everybody comes into the same office would be perfectly fine.

    2. Sloanicota*

      I think this is actually a good point. I remember the phrase “a little change hurts a lot, and a lot of change doesn’t hurt that much more.” If I have to radically re-orient myself in my current job, I might as well look around and see if I can do better. They’ve lost the advantage of “devil you know / inertia.” Maybe I won’t find another job that’s fully remote either but I might well discover while I’m looking that I can get more money or a project that seems more exciting that the thing I’ve been working on for the last three years, and now have to keep working on from an office.

    3. Caramel & Cheddar*

      I think for me it’s a little of both. I don’t want to do this job full time in person because I did it successfully fully remote. But knowing that my job is 100% computer based, I would also be annoyed to have another 100% computer based job in the future that required me to come in. It’s about the nature of the work for me, so I can’t see myself being fine doing hybrid or full-time in office ever again unless the nature of the work demanded that.

  57. bye*

    Just for once during these discussions on RTO, I would love to see proof of the following:
    1) everyone going to the office and just sitting on Zoom, not talking to any of their team members
    2) CEOs continuing to work from their beach houses instead of in the office
    3) CEOs not using any sort of reasoning for demanding return to office (because they’re all just doing it off of vibes, I guess?)

    A lot of AAM commenters just throw these things out but I’d love to know widespread these phenomena are. Or is everyone taking the same dozen examples and insisting that every RTO policy is like that?

    1. Boss Scaggs*

      #3 certainly happens – the reason will be a vague “collaboration” or talk about the energy of the office and all the great brainstorming that will occur.

      1. I Have RBF*

        The Amazon RTO was not based on data at all, just on “vibes” and “gut feelings”. There have been articles written about it. Google is your friend.

      2. Out of office, out of mind*

        Despite your Mr. Burns stereotype, CEOs are generally not making arbitrary decisions based on no data whatsoever. As to “it happens,” well, it’s a big universe, and undoubtedly you can find exceptions. But the plural of “anecdote” isn’t “data”; they’re certainly not doing at *as a class*, at scale.

    2. tabloidtainted*

      #1 was the case in my company and I had to push for in-person meetings. If we’re going to be in the office, it doesn’t make sense to be Zooming, and if we’re worried about making each other sick, we shouldn’t be in the office.

    3. Joron Twiner*

      What kind of proof can we offer? We can’t share internal communications or photos of our offices. We can only share anecdotes about what we’ve experienced.

    4. Percy Weasley*

      #1 is me twice a week. Any meetings are virtual & my most substantive (live) interaction with a team member is at the end of the day when our admin says goodbye to me on their way out.

    5. MariposaEP*

      As the LW here, I can tell you #1 super happens for our situation. My team is quite friendly, but they’re often stuck in meetings.

      Our CEO comes in 50% of the time himself, and sits on his phone in his office. If he’s not busy on his phone, he’s giving random projects that impede the paying client work.

  58. Zap R.*

    I’m the office admin/receptionist at a company that’s just done this and I’m of two minds.

    On one hand, I was constantly being made to pick up the slack for people abusing the hybrid system. People would flake out of coming into the office and opt to work from home at the last minute and then I’d be stuck redirecting all of their mail/onboarding their new hires/supervising complicated technical installations by third party contractors in their area of the building.

    On the other hand, we downsized to a smaller office during the pandemic and the new space can’t comfortably accommodate everyone at one time. The mandatory return to three days a week (with basically everyone choosing to come in Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday) has been a logistical nightmare for me. Everyone’s already cranky about having to come in and I’m the closest punching bag. I literally feel sick about going into the office every morning and I don’t even get the benefit of two WFH days.

    1. Zap R.*

      Sorry, hit “Submit” too quickly. My point is that I think the issue with a lot of return-to-office policies is that they’re not made in consultation with the people most affected (i.e. low-level pink collar office grunts like me) and therefore are often done in a way that causes maximum inconvenience to everyone involved.

    2. HB*

      This sucks and I’m sorry. I hope you’re given a chance to express everything you’ve experienced/observed to someone who can help make a change.

      1. Caramel & Cheddar*

        This. You have grounds to push back on this, and if you’re coming to work feeling sick every day because of it, I think it’s probably a good idea that you do because you can’t continue like this.

  60. Orange You Glad*

    I work for a very large and bureaucratic organization (multiple business units & subsidiaries, dozens of folks that could be called “upper management”) that mandated a 3 day in the office week back when RTO was just a vague concept. My office/subsidiary resisted a long time, our CEO is very pro remote work, plus our work teams are split among 4 time zones so everything is happening on Teams no matter where your desk sits.
    Higher management began enforcing RTO across all offices in early 2023, so while we don’t like it, we’ve had to learn how to live with it and work around it. I have mandated that my team’s in office days are Tues-Thurs with the agreement that anyone can swap days if they need to, as long as I’m informed. I also know things may change for special circumstances. The overall company only tracks swipes in to the building. I figure, as long as our group average for days swiped in stays around 3 days per week, we should remain under the radar. This also means I can split days (half day in the office, half day at home) without anyone raising concerns. If there are big meetings or events in the office, I notify everyone I advance and strongly encourage attendance that day.
    Sometimes it sucks to be the bad guy when I don’t want to be there either, but if we can work within the rules and fly under the radar, while also getting our work done, then I think I’m meeting everyone’s expectations.

  61. disgruntled*

    at my job, the people who moved away from our city during the pandemic are allowed to stay remote but everyone who still lives here has to go in three times a week. if you don’t, you might get reprimanded by your manager, who works fully remote and you have never met in person. all of it is clearly just to justify their expensive office. make it make sense.

    1. Nina from Corporate Accounts Payable*

      Same at my employer. The division I am in has been more flexible and looks the other way (for now), but the inconsistencies are unfair to those stuck going in while their colleagues who moved get to remain remote and connect with those in-office via Teams. I’m one of the lucky ones who moved away.

  62. FAFO*

    Honestly, if WFH were as great for the company and productivity as online communities claim it would be the new normal. Personal observation – only 10 to 15% of the workforce is professional and self-motivated enough to WFH, the rest just aren’t. And that’s okay. Given this particular situation, where the employees blew off a good compromise and are now looking at 5 days a week, my guess is that is will be years until they try WFH again, and are prepared to lose workers over it.

    2. Justin D*

      Interesting, I’d say only 10-15% of professional class workers AREN’T cut out for remote work in my experience. Most of us have stakeholders, partners, coworkers, etc. who live in other places so we’re already “remote” even when we’re in the office.

      And all it takes to “try” remote work again is a manager or two deciding that they’re going to allow it or upper management deciding that it’s not worth enforcing anymore. Or recruitment/retention problems.

    3. MassMatt*

      But it IS the new normal for many jobs and workplaces. This trend started many years before Covid, the pandemic only accelerated it and made some work places that were unprepared or for whom it was unsuitable try do do it because there was no choice except shutting down altogether.

  63. DJ*

    Perhaps point out that staff won’t be working back to 11pm and putting in the extra.
    Who’s going to be able to work until 11pm say arrive home at 12.30am to be up and leaving by 7.30am to commute back in AND be productive!

  64. Sigh.*

    Discussions about to WFH or to not WFH are like discussions around American politics right now. Neither side is willing to even admit a tiny little bit that the other side might have good points, and both sides think the other side is idiotic/uneducated/too old/dangerous. I’m honestly tired of hearing about any of it, and I don’t understand how after five years of this we still have so much to say about it. It’s not like there’s been any massive revelations or breakthroughs.

    Anyway, OP, your CEO gets to make whatever rules he wants to, it’s why he’s the CEO. You would need to organize a big enough group with enough capital and craft a cohesive proposition as to how WFH would benefit him and the company to push back on his mandates, and even then you’ve got a 50/50 chance. If you can pull it off, great. If not though, you’ve got to first decide if this is a place you want to stay at. If that answer is still yes, then you have to hold your people accountable to the rules of the establishment whether you empathize with them or not.

    2. Anon this time*

      “Neither side is willing to even admit a tiny little bit that the other side might have good points, and both sides think the other side is idiotic/uneducated/too old/dangerous.”

      This … is an unfortunate summary of the whole debate. Doesn’t fix anything, but here we are.

    3. Justin D*

      I don’t think anyone on the “WFH side” refuses to acknowledge that there can be benefits to in person work. I think it’s the mandatory and pointless nature that people have a problem with. I work remotely 5 days a week but am forced to do so at an office 3 days a week for some reason. If I needed to be in person occasionally for good reason I’d be fine with that. I think most of us would be.

      Whereas the “RTO side” seems to base their entire position on maybe one potentially legit reason (collaboration) and the rest is just vibes and “well some people can’t WFH at all due to their nature of their job and you did it before so suck it up!”

      3. All The Tired Horses*

        WFH/Remote work is a disability justice issue.

        Work already leans far far far towards arbitrary and nonsensical business “needs” at the expense of employee quality of life. We don’t need to encourage it by letting these RTO mandates be implemented without challenging them, or pretending that people who are advocating for the right for WFH are somehow entitled, elitist, lazy, antisocial, etc.

        I am multiply-disabled. If I had to work in an office, I wouldn’t be able to work. Because I get to work from home, I’m able to support myself, my husband and my son on my income alone. Commuting, not being in control of my work environment, spending energy on social interactions in office, are just some of the things that make working in the office impossible for me to maintain long term.

        Who is stopping people who want to work in the office from working in the office? No one. But plenty of companies are using RTO mandates to get rid of staff, to enforce archaic standards, to encourage unhealthy and unproductive management styles, etc. etc. etc. Nothing good for the working class comes from these mandates.

    4. Parakeet*

      I think that part of the issue is that WFH people are used to people demeaning our work and treating it as though it isn’t “real” work. The “essential” terminology during the pandemic exacerbated that (my answering a crisis hotline from home and helping homeless DV survivors apply for benefits/obtain housing and food/etc from home was not “essential to remain in person” but I would argue that it was pretty essential in that it’s work that needed to be done, and there was in fact heightened need for it during the pandemic). I’m used to having to defend my work as work, the dignity of my labor. I try to not dig in with blanket statements in the way you’re describing. Not all work is the same. Everyone should have good (safe, well-paid) working conditions, but that will mean different things in different jobs. But I do feel the need to assert the value of my own work in no uncertain terms, because it’s pretty common for anti-WFH people to demean it.

      1. I Have RBF*

        Yeah, just like the people who call remote workers “entitled” because we chose careers that don’t require in-person hands on. Annoying.

  65. HybridFan*

    After 2020 – 2021 being WFH (with some, like me, going in about 1x a week to do things) our office went back with a mandated 3-2 hybrid schedule (3 in office) in January 2022 (with a three-month advance warning). There are very formal and strict rules around it which can seem unfair or antiquated on the individual level but work across the institution to make things fair. Our division has a rule that everyone is in the office on Mondays which is the day for internal meetings and this works really well for us. As someone in my industry for more than 20 years, this seems to be a good balance between work/life and the subtle benefits of in-office work, especially for new and new-to-the-industry employees. It’s not perfect, but as a manager I appreciate that the rules are strict – I can pretty easily point to them if anyone abuses the schedule.

  66. YoungTen*

    This is less about what’s “right” or “wrong” or how things “should” be but more about what IS. Then everyone can decide if they want to remain on the job or leave. Because you fill the role you do, you are committed to doing what is best for the company since the company is who pays you. I say all this as a junior employee myself who only WFH one day a week and sits in traffic twice a day. Since everyone on your team is an adult, they need to make adult, treat them as such.

  67. HalesBopp*

    I feel like so much of the insistence on returning to office can be attributed to companies wanting to “get their money’s worth” on commercial leases. We had an office that, prior to COVID, most staff worked at home at least part-time, with many others only coming in for meetings. After COVID, no one returned to the office. When our execs realized that staff did not have a desire to return, and productivity had not changed, they quickly found another company to sublet our office space. It was around that time that I saw some numbers for how much we had been paying for the office. I was blown away! We were able to take the funds that had previously gone towards the lease and contribute them to some much desired employee benefits. When the lease ended, we did not renew, and there’s not been a single complaint to the best of my knowledge.

    1. Not The Earliest Bird*

      Exactly. Commercial Real Estate is expensive. Until you can get that off your balance sheet, companies will insist on Return to Office. It doesn’t matter at all what employees want to do, or even if it’s better to work from home.

      1. Alton Brown's Evil Twin*

        Rule #1 of microeconomics: Ignore sunk costs.

        Nothing about whether employees are in the office or not changes the fact that the lease has already been signed and the future cash flow is obligated to it.

    2. Tradd*

      Lease? How about if the company *owns* the building. That’s the instance with the office where I am.

  68. Head Sheep Counter*

    I think the outside of business hour calls are a distraction. If this business existed in the before times they surely navigated phone calls then. Is it nice to have more options? Perhaps (although for whom??? because separation of work and life is a good thing).

    I totally agree with Allison and the commenters about there needing to be consequences or not. Having an unenforced policy is the same as not having a policy.

  69. Elizabeth West*

    he certainly wouldn’t be the first CEO to cling to an old way of operating because that’s what he’s comfortable with, without recognizing that the workforce has changed, or that what technology makes possible has changed, or that what top talent in your field will demand has changed.

    Honestly, these folks, even the younger ones, need to retire. It’s not about age — it’s the inflexibility. I get that commercial rents can be steep, especially in larger cities, but if that’s the main problem, there has to be a solution. Move the office maybe — I don’t know. What I do know is that workers with in-demand skills will bail over stuff like this.

    1. Caramel & Cheddar*

      I remember in early 2020 and even into 2021, there were so many articles about how there was going to be a reckoning in the workplace and things were going to permanently change, and I just had to side-eye it a bit because my experience was that senior leadership was mostly stuck in their ways and seemingly incapable of adapting to a new reality at the best of times. Everyone thought work-from-home was here to stay, but these leaders were just counting down the days that everything could go back to 2019, not finding a way to manage their workforce differently.

      Which is fine, that’s their prerogative and they can do whatever they want with their workforce, but I think anyone making that choice surrenders the right to ever be called innovative or forward-thinking as a leader ever again.

      1. It'sNot2019Anymore*

        I think what those back-to-2019 leaders don’t understand is that the burden of proof has shifted. Pre-COVID a leader resistant to WFH could always demand “more proof” that the employee would be just as productive, connected, etc. Well, 202o provided that proof and more. Senior leaders who don’t realize that and think that motivational poster slogans and declarations that “it’s time” and “COVID’s over” are going to be convincing or motivating are going to be disappointed, in the long run. There may not be an immediate exit, but there will be damage. Of course they can demand that their employees return to the office, but if they do not want to damage their credibility they will need to provide some actual justifications for why the employees need to come back.

  70. Raida*

    My first question is: Do you have flexible work hours?

    If not, bringing that in or codifying it (core hours, min hours per day max hours per day) could help maintain some of the value of WfH flexibility.

    Honestly, I’d try to get a different job.
    You’re tired, demoralised, unappreciated – leave. When you get a new role, encourage all your staff to brush up their resumes and interviewing skills to leave, too.

    Sometimes what is needed is “how about Go F Yourself?” for a person in the CEO’s position to understand that them *wanting* something doesn’t make it *important* or *valuable* to the business. In some cases that means they learn, in others they get replaced, in others they get outvoted on policies, and in others the business tanks because they have a shitty reputation and big staff loss.

    1. MariposaEP*

      Truth hurts.

      My situation is complex. I do often think to myself that my junior staff would be better off elsewhere. I’m waiting for them to figure it out. The RTO mandate will make them think of that more quickly for sure.

  71. Zarniwoop*

    “I’ve never worked as hard as I’ve had to this past year, due to layoffs and terrible clients. It’s so demoralizing working until 11 pm sometimes and still be expected to be cheery the next morning in-office for the benefit of an out-of-touch CEO.”
    Sounds like your best bet for how to deal with this problem is to GTFO and let it be someone else’s problem.

  72. Angrytreespirit*

    This is exactly what’s happening at my midsize government office. Three days butts in seats no questions or excuses. And the GM has forced all non union represented staff back in full time. I have a hybrid role often working in the field, have a company vehicle, etc. I am equipped as a field staff. I also am one of the folks who absolutely benefits from and is more productive doing remote work, and I am a leader in my department and highly productive, so it rots my socks that someone six managers above me who doesn’t even know what I do for the organization let alone my name should be able to dictate where I do my job. Meanwhile, all our team meetings are still on zoom because we have three conference rooms for 600 people, and they’re cutting our cubicles in half because they’re running out of space to put people.
    And yes, should the 5 day mandate come down, I will absolutely leave over this. They’ll lose an experienced project manager and changemaker with 22 years of experience. Until then, Allison is absolutely hitting the nail on the head – what is the consequence of ignoring in office mandates? I suspect I’ll be one of the first to find out. They can try me.

  73. el l*

    At this point, it’s been a generation since remote work started, and 5 years since covid. Everyone has an opinion on WFH, it’s mainly based on their own personal experience, and it’s not changing. Counter evidence can be dismissed as unreliable, beside the point, or a price worth paying for the greater good.

    So let’s all move on. Literally, if the policy doesn’t fit the life you want.

  74. HannahS*

    I actually think the truest and most important thing you said is this: “I don’t want to care about this.”

    Stop caring about it. It’s not your decision to make, and you’ve done what you can. Let it go. Tell your employees that the CEO has decided XYZ and HR or whoever has instructed that people who don’t follow the rule will be put on a PIP/fired. You know how the kids are into quiet quitting? Take a leaf from their book. Do your job, don’t stress about it. Easier said than done.

    And maybe start looking for a job? I’m sure you’ve considered it; this place sounds like it’s stressing you out in more ways than one.

  75. Tiger Snake*

    In the legal and security areas, there’s a view on how employees engage with regulation. Its very similar to how people view change. At the far-right, you have the champions. And yes, we want people to champion change because we like people to be active and accountable and all that. They see the value and care for it, and in championing they try to make other people see the value. But the middle of the diagram, the point that people need to meet for the change to happen, is not “acceptance”, is is “compliance”.

    It is okay for people to not want a change. It is okay for them to believe it is silly. It is okay for them to believe its not valuable. They just to have to it regardless.

    You aren’t actually here to change their minds. You do not need to care. You do not need to champion to make other people care. You just need to go back to the line of “we are required to work from the office. I am going to measure your compliance, and if you do not comply I will act accordingly. How you feel doesn’t change what we’re required to do.”

  76. Heather*

    Unpopular Opinion: people making no effort to comply to the RTO order should be put on a PIP and then fired if they don’t comply. Because THEY are ruining it for everyone. So many people are doing their best to keep the flexibility and a few selfish jerks shouldn’t be able to ruin it for everyone.

    Also as someone who has run the gamut between in-office hybrid and fully remote AND was unemployed for 9 months last year i will continue to scream till im blue in the face that this job market is horrible, the hiring process has been absolutely destroyed by AI and the only way you can get an interview is if you know someone… maybe. Please don’t lose your job over being stubborn about RTO. Now is not the time.

    1. Lenora Rose*

      I don’t know if it needs to be as strong as a PIP, but this manager seems to have decided that, having opted to allow her staff to do 2 days instead of 3 in office (And thus already bending the rules), she can’t do anything about people who bend the limit she DID set, and never show up, or can’t be reached. And she absolutely can! She’s a manager!

  77. Speak*

    This is an extremely timely question, on Tuesday we got an email that we NEED to be in the office for at least 3 days a week up from our 1 that we could skip with a reason. From what my division manager has said is that he will not be enforcing it for our division since we have proven time & time again that we can work remotely successfully. However for the next few weeks it would be best to be in the office more often. We work well doing 1 day a week in the office and coming in to the facilities as needed when our projects are being worked on the shop floors. The 3 days would be up to us to choose what days we want to come in and which of 2 facility we want to work out of. The biggest issue is that up until early Fall we were in the upstairs of our 1st, original, facility and were moved to a new smaller area in the 2nd facility (~1 mile away). Our projects are located between both facilities but more are being moved to the 2nd facility from what we have been told. When we were upstairs at the 1st facility, the division manager and lower project managers all had nice offices and the rest of us engineers had nice sized large desks. The new 2nd facility area has ‘breakout rooms’ which the managers claimed since it was the closest to an office, but they lack desks (have tables instead) and don’t have multiple monitor setups, only a large TV on the wall. We got much smaller desks that were meant to be hot swappable with no separations between them and no storage for our samples, test equipment, and catalogs we need to reference when doing our jobs, it feels like we are now in a call center instead of an engineering facility. We also have to travel with our projects, so there have been times (before 2020) that I was not in the office for weeks at a time due to working off-site when everyone else was in the office full time. The big boss (the one who demanded the change to a minimum of 3 days) still has his extremely large office in the 1st faculty, and I have only seen him at the 2nd location twice in the past 3 years since we had it. There is a large discontentment in our division right now but our direct managers don’t want to do this either, so it is nice for them to have our backs.

  78. Tradd*

    I just wanted to suggest commenters think about how all this would read to someone lower-income who has to go into their workplace daily and WFH is *never* an option, such as grocery store workers, etc., those who were so essential during the pandemic. I usually don’t say “check your privilege,” but I think that certain applies in this thread.

      1. Tradd*

        How many currently remote workers chose remote? I’d bet a lot of them just fell into it due to the pandemic and their employers not returning to the office.

        1. Fred*

          Doesn’t matter. It’s a role that can be remote. You’re arguing that the conversation should be flavored because of those that can’t. That’s what’s not relevant.

    2. All The Tired Horses*

      Many of us who are advocating to keep the ability to work from home are disabled and/or immunocompromised. Your take is ridiculous.

    3. FunkyMunky*

      your comment doesn’t make sense. then again most of the people who never WFH during the height of the pandemic just don’t get it and it’s fine. this conversation is clearly for the office workers who shifted from in-person only to either fully remote or light hybrid, made life and family choices based on those mandates and now seeing back paddling from their higher ups

Comments are closed.