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The data is in: RTO policies don't improve employee performance or company value, but controlling bosses don't care (www.businessinsider.com)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

19 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Billionaire CEOs were quick to sing the praises of working from home at the start of the pandemic, calling it the way of the future — but over the last three years, they've slowly changed their tune.

Late last year, Forbes reported that 90% of companies will return to the office in 2024, with 28% threatening to fire workers who don't comply.

But it turns out that the motivations for calling workers back to the office may have less to do with employee productivity or profit margins and everything to do with catering to the egos of controlling managers who want their workers back, according to a recent study published by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh.

Mark Ma, an associate professor of business administration from Pitt's Katz Graduate School of Business, who led the study, told BI he started the research hoping to understand why some S&P 500 firms want employees to return to the office while other firms avoid calling them back.

...

"One of the most common arguments management suggests is that they want to return to office because employee productivity is low at home, and they believe returns to office would help firms improve performance and ultimately improve the firm's value," Ma told BI. "That's the reason they give — but our results actually do not support these arguments."

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (3 children)

What's even more stupid about return to office is that we know that commuting is a major contribution to greenhouse gas emissions. So working from home would not only be an improvement in work conditions, sparing millions of individuals hours of wasted commuting time each week, it would also be an easy way to reduce pollution and mitigate global warming.

Laws should be passed that mandate employees can work from home whenever it cannot be demonstrated by the company that being on site is absolutely necessary to do the job.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Not only that, less people driving means less people buying gas, which drives the gas price down as we saw during the pandemic. When the gas price goes down, everything is cheaper. This could be a great way to get a bit of relief on the inflation.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

The other stupid part is that WFH makes more sense from a business perspective. Having to pay less in office rent and utilities is great for saving on costs.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

If you look around, fast food places and Pepsico and everyone price gouging, it's a race to the bottom for a last cash-grab before what appears to be an inevitable recession -- brought on by some of these same conglomerates. Mass layoffs (tech sector over 250k layoffs last year across the board), among inflation just murdering people's wallets. Credit card debt is over 1 trillion now, people are "surviving" off of high interest debt to maintain life at this point, but it's not sustainable at current rates.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (2 children)

We are witnessing companies engage in late stage capitalist practices because we are in late stage capitalism. Unfortunately I don't see us flipping to socialism, so Imo were heading towards recession, depression, and collapse, all while the climate continues to fuck us.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You can move to North Korea and enjoy socialism!

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Not so big on the dictator for life and beyond part, we can do better than that, why not a socialist democracy?

[–] [email protected] -1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You wanted socialism. Can't have socialism without a dictatorship.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Oh, you've been propagandized against an economic arrangement, that must feel strange. Hopefully capitalism will save you 🙄

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

all while the climate continues to fuck us.

To be fair, I believe the consensus is that we fucked the climate first.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Eat shit, office complex moguls. Get a real job.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 10 months ago

My personal theory: boomer bosses are intimidated by new tech and don't trust it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

This was obvious. Actual work involves focusing. WFH encourages me to focus more. The office is a distracting and annoying place to be.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

There's no need to use WFH as an acronym. Can we just stop using acronyms entirely at this point? I know I'm deviating from the point, but fuck acronyms!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

I would normally agree with you, acronyms are way over used. But this is an article about working from home and returning to the office. There's nothing vague or unclear about WFH or RTO here in the slightest, and no one is going to confuse those for a different meaning.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I work from home and my boss frequently says he doesn’t mind us working from home but always follows it up by saying he really misses seeing people “sitting in the seats” and “working in the office”. It really is a weird ego trip, being able to visually see people working for you. Actually getting the work done is secondary to the power they feel of seeing their subordinates toiling away.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Or he could just enjoy being around people. I personally prefer going into an office and having people around. I know that is not the case for everyone though.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

It's fine to prefer that. But forcing your employees to work in the office is an ego trip and makes you a bad boss. Especially considering it's been proven most people are more productive in a work from home environment.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

My boss constantly rode my ass about my coming into the office. I'm a consultant and work on site for various clients. I do a lot of driving that is not reimbursed in any way by my company so, whenever I have a break, I prefer to work from home. But no, my boss has set the expectation that any time I have no on site client work, I needed to be at the company office, a 45-90 minute commute each way (depending on traffic).

If I need to drive into an office every day, I'm going to get paid the most I can for it. She took away one of the main perks of my job, so I had no reason to stick around. So I found a new job that pays 50% more and I'll be letting the company know in my exit interview that's the primary driver for finding new employment. Oh, and the best part? I work from home at least one day a week. My previous employer can get fucked.