Bosses mean it this time: Return to the office or get a new job! — As office occupancy rates stagnate, employers are giving up on perks and turning to threats

worker: Gets new job

Employer: Shockedpikachu.jpg

Give me a good reason and I'll come back to the office. None of this "it's more productive" bullshit. We know that one is a lie. I'm also not wasting my time commuting to an office just to support the local McDonald's, gas stations, etc.

My partner's employer recently tried this. He works for a mental health agency. That mental health agency has issues with compensation, recruiting, and retention. Yet the CEO insisted that everyone come back, despite the fact that productivity has improved with remote work. In fact, a lot of their patients prefer telehealth.

"Take a title demotion, come back into the office, or quit. Pick one."

The mass exodus has been astounding. There's no chance they'll be able to fill in the gaps left by senior clinicians. Demand for psychologists is sky high right now, and just about every other employer pays more and allows telework.

The patients will be the real victims of this attempt at a "power play."

At this point businesses have two options:

• Bite the bullet, terminate lease agreements and pay the fines associated, then advertise yourself as a full remote company and attract global talent.
• Be penny wise and pound foolish, stomp your feet, slowly hemmorage the best employees until you're left with people whose only talent is playing office politics.

We'll see how this plays out in the long run, it wouldn't be out of character for the owner class to start needling their pet politicians to devalue currency even more to put those pesky workers in their place.

It’s funny how at least American employers act like we’re not at full employment. While the market isn’t as good for employees as it was about a year ago, the employees still have more leverage than the employers.

I'm lucky my role is remote and even though it's not required I spend a day fortnight in my office as we still have staff who have to be on site.

Head of our company is pushing to get rid of our offices in Australian capital cities as they were just for administrative roles and client meetings.

The staff who have roles that need to be on site have been given extra training to be able to do other roles with remote options.

Maybe we are fortunate to not care about work/city culture here and making work more difficult to keep cities "bustling" seems like a real cunt of a move aimed at the worker.

Do that and I’ll find another one just to spite you.

Feck off. Ill give the bastards 2 days in office, no more. I’ll sacrifice salary for personal time. As it stands, I’m considering applying for a 2nd full time remote job. And I’ll code away 90% of that work.

For such "genius" "business leaders" they sure can't understand the concept of supply and demand

They just want to make people they view as lesser than them suffer.

Suffer on the way to work, suffer finding a parking spot, suffer getting into the building, suffer working, suffer getting out of the building, suffer getting back to the car, suffer on the way home

Over and over your asshole bosses are getting off on your suffering

return to office or get a new job

I've chosen the latter twice and have been thrilled with the results every time

Headline seems weasel-wordy.

Numerically vague expressions (for example, "some people", "experts", "many", "evidence suggests")

I.e., are most bosses doing this? 50%? 20%?

Bold strategy cotton let's see how it plays out for them.

Executives: But we have a 20 year lease on this enormous office building! You guys have to come back! Besides, we can't breathe down your necks or waste 6 hours of your day (plus commute) if you're at home actually being productive! Wait, why am I telling the truth? I never tell the truth. Not too my wife, my mistress, my kids, my parents, or the IRS, much less you parasites! Don't you know how much more money I could have if I didn't have to pay you ungrateful peasants?

Is anyone actually living this out there or is this all just bullshit?

“The pendulum has shifted from employees having all the power,” wow how could that have possibly happened

And they'll win, eventually. They'll take the L, replace employees over time and suffer for it but in the end they will win and we'll all be back in office

This is the best summary I could come up with:

The new pushes for in-person work mark a major shift as executives directly acknowledge the challenges with the model — in some cases saying productivity has declined, and citing fewer opportunities for spontaneous collaboration, mentorship and connection-building.

President Biden recently called on Cabinet officials to urge their employees to return to offices this fall, as downtown D.C. struggles to regain its pre-pandemic crush of commuters.

The goal, Patel said, is to “get people excited” to come into the office to connect with their colleagues without overburdening them or limiting their ability to do focused work — something that’s been a struggle in the age of ballooning Zoom meetings.

Free food, great tools and attractive workspaces are a big draw, but HqO’s data shows that “the number one thing people want out of a workplace is concentration space,” Garbarino said.

With President Biden calling for federal workers to return to offices this fall, she may soon have to brave a two-hour commute through Chicago rush hour and rework her child-care plan — or consider a more drastic change.

The company now funnels energy and resources that used to go to stocking offices with coffee and snacks and determining operating hours toward creating intentional (and less frequent) opportunities for employees to connect in-person.

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I am one of those folks that simply doesn't have the personal discipline to work from home. There are literally dozens of us. While office life is lonely now, there's no way that people who don't need to be in the office to be productive should be made to come in. That said, my GF has a coworker who is WFH for a company that is based in the South but they chose to live in NYC (they didn't live there at first) and are getting paid NYC wages, which somehow doesn't seem fair.

Employees need to bite the bullet and come back to work. You had enough time sitting around in your underwear and skating off.