Return to Office Mandates
How Different Companies are Tackling the Big Issue
In the last couple of weeks there have been reports of many large companies updating their hybrid work policy, with mixed results. Some companies had existing policies prior and have made amendments, while others were yet to commit to a new work model coming out of the pandemic with this being the first real foray into their future of work.
Overhead Costs Outweigh Benefits
The headline grabbing Elon Musk who once said that remote workers were ‘only pretending to work’ changed his stance when deciding to shut down offices in Singapore and Seattle recently. For the owner of the now private company, the running costs of leasing these offices did not provide the cost benefit and his employees in these cities are now fully remote. We see underutilization of real estate as one of the key drivers which affect leadership decisions in this space, as it is an easy assessment to view empty offices as wasted resources.
Supported with Reasoning
Amazon’s Andy Jassey recently updated the company’s stance on their hybrid work policy to require employees to be in the office three days a week. Their previous position was to let directors decide for their team, but in an open letter to the company Jassey outlines several reasons why the Amazon leadership believe that in office interactions are required.
“Invention is often sloppy. It wanders and meanders and marinates. Serendipitous interactions help it, and there are more of those in-person than virtually”
This is one of the strictest mandates in the usually flexible tech world, so although local businesses celebrated the move, it will be interesting to see if the talent agrees that it is a good idea, or if they jump ship to a more flexible competitor. Jassy and his team are betting that the clear communication and reasoning allows them to align with their employees.
Employee Revolt
The returning CEO Bob Iger of Disney set a 4 day week mandate in January for all their employees starting March 1st, and as that day came around the employees started to push back Over 2000 employees have petitioned against the 4-day requirement in a strong display of resistance which does not bode well for Iger’s new mandate.
Shared Desk Policy
In an effort to reduce the amount of empty desks on a daily basis, and provide better ‘real estate efficiency’, Google recently suggested employees ‘buddy up’ and work together to share a certain desk. It's unclear how this works with their internal desk booking system, but it seems to ignore the fact that if people buddy up with someone on their team (very likely) then they will never see them in the office.
“Through the matching process, they will agree on a basic desk setup and establish norms with their desk partner and teams to ensure a positive experience in the new shared environment.”
No company is immune to the difficulty of navigating the question of how they are going to work in the future. They can provide fanciful reasoning or make up catchy names [shout out to F-Wow! : Future ways of working] but each company must find its own path to suit its own needs, and it’s something that should be addressed sooner rather than later to enable them to maintain their talent and more importantly, their culture.