1y ago

RTO doesn’t improve company value, but does make employees miserable: Study

Overall, the analysis, released as a pre-print, found that RTO mandates did not improve a firm's financial metrics, but they did decrease employee satisfaction.
Drilling down, the data indicated that RTO mandates were linked to firms with male CEOs who had greater power in the company. Here, power is measured as the CEO’s total compensation divided by the average total compensation paid to the four highest-paid executives in the firm.

This is an interesting metric. And the research outcome makes a lot of sense.

Also, RTO policies are garbage - but I'm stating the obvious.

19 comments

- Even stupider (to me anyway) was the hybrid schedule I was put on at my last job. You could work from home 16 out of 40 hours every week. Why not 20/20? No fucking idea. However, you could take those hours literally however you wanted.
  So, like, I'd come in after lunch and another person would already be gone.
  Because of that, all of our communication was via Slack and all of our meetings were via Zoom.
  What was the point? I mean I appreciated being able to work from home at least part of the time, but if you're going to let us do it part of the time whenever we want, what's the point of having us in the office ever?
  On top of this, it was an office inside a large manufacturing facility, meaning that if they had just had us all do WFH, they could have added two to three more production lines.
  The whole thing was fucking stupid and it just made us resentful.
  
  Only thing I can think of to explain this shit is that it’s not about us, it’s gotta be about the value of the building you work in
  
  Why not 20/20? No fucking idea. However, you could take those hours literally however you wanted.
  So, like, I’d come in after lunch and another person would already be gone.
  The reason is staring you right in the face: to guarantee you have overlap in the office.
The goal was not to improve company financials. It's to justify paying rent to corporate real estate holders so the people who get rich from owning property don't lose their infinite free money exploit.
- I don't get why this thought is so prevalent. Unless these companies are also in the business of renting the property out, it makes no sense for them to line the pockets of someone at their own expense, especially if it also costs them in productivity and employee satisfaction. Or maybe there is some bribery going on, but I've seen precisely zero evidence of this.
  
  the businesses themselves aren't renting property out, no. the shareholders and executives who run the companies and hand down these decisions, however, are frequently invested in real estate.
RTO mandates make employees unhappy because I think they perceive it as a punitive measure. It's not "We need you to be in the office because we have a big project in the coming weeks and we need everyone on board" instead it's received as "We don't believe you're actually working anymore so now you have no choices left".
The statements I've seen have been suggesting that corporations try to make remote workers feel like those who don't come in are lazy and worthless and you need to prove your worth by being present. (See web MD RTO cringe) and the insults people suffer only go so far.
Imagine if you feel like you worked very hard through the pandemic and even through working remotely you were able to keep the ship afloat just to turn around and get spanked for it by your boss "Thanks but we really need you to get back to your REAL job and stop slacking off", you would perceive the RTO mandates as injust punishment. All self respecting people reject injustice.
::Tinfoil hat:: This is by design and they want you to quit as they are done extracting value from you and firing you is harder than making you quit.
- I don't even need to slack off, my coworkers will drain 50% of my time without me even trying to work less.
Even if it did improve company value, I don't think you need a study to show that taking away a privilege makes employees unhappy.
Believe it or not, they'd be unhappy if you took away the coffee machine too. Just far less unhappy.
- The problem is that sometimes when something seems obvious, it's actually incorrect. A big example is that if people didn't bother to think about it, and actually do something to confirm it, we might still think the world is flat. It's understandable to believe, if you just walk outside and look around, that it is flat.
  I agree with you that this is "obvious" but that doesn't negate the need for a study.
Water is wet! News at 11.
- Water is what makes other stuff wet.
  
  "Water is wet" is used to describe something that is obvious, and dismiss the fact that someone looked into it.
  Ironically, because it is incorrect, it shows exactly why we should look into things despite it being seemingly obvious.
The problem with RTO is that you need management to institute procedures to make it worthwhile along with employee expectations.
That you are seeing poorly performing companies pushing for RTO makes sense, they can't meet metrics in WFO so they are changing how work is occurring. And there probably is a continuation of poor performance as those managers probably aren't the best.
If you are going to have staff come in some time to the office, you have to make the face time worthwhile. That means all staff in certain departments are in that day and you use some of that time on employee training and network building.
I've been in solutions architecture too long, I was already working up arguments about how important Recovery Time Objectives are.
If you don't make employees miserable, how do you get them to quit on their own so that you don't have to pay for severance?

19 comments