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Some company heads hoped return-to-office mandates would make people quit, survey says

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/06/company-heads-hoped-return-to-office-mandates-would-make-people-quit-survey-says/

1,504 workers, including 504 HR managers questioned.

Some company heads hoped return-to-office mandates would make people quit, survey says

Nearly two in five (37 percent) managers, directors, and executives believe their organization enacted layoffs in the last year because fewer employees than they expected quit during their RTO. And their beliefs are well-founded: One in four (25 percent) VP and C-suite executives and one in five (18 percent) HR pros admit they hoped for some voluntary turnover during an RTO.

52 comments

poo

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Joke's on them, I quit my 11-year job with a company enacting RTO and it fucked them over because I had no backups and very little cross training my entire time there. Ex-employees have told me things went to shit after I left. Good. 😂

Technoguyfication

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Offer to come back as a consultant for 2x your previous pay

FaceDeer

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With work-from-home as a non-negotiable condition.

kibiz0r

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As a contractor, your client isn’t allowed to dictate your work methods. It’s one of the things the IRS looks at when identifying misclassified employees.

Nollij

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While true, it's a bit more nuanced than that. They can absolutely have requirements in the contract that will put you on site. For instance, they can have you being the one to set up the conference room for the morning meeting. They can also categorically say that their VPN access is only for FTEs.

But as an independent business negotiating a contract, you just haggle these terms away. It's still a good idea to document expectations, including work hours and locations.

poo

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Funnily enough I heard that internally they were talking about asking to have me come back as a contractor (with insane pay) but I was so much enjoying my time away from such a toxic company that nothing could make me return. I took a 7-month staycation after quitting just to unfuck how much they fucked up my brain, self-worth, and anxiety

PrettyFlyForAFatGuy

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i dunno, grinding for a few years on contractors income and funneling it all into a pension sounds like a pretty good way of retiring early.

mosiacmango

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5x pay. Independent LLCs have all sorts of expenses, including taxes/marketing/accounting/etc.

realbadat

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Health insurance...

ChanSecodina

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So much this. Health insurance is the primary reason I have a salaried position.

TexasDrunk

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Yep. I've done exactly that. Something overlooked a lot of places is to actually start an LLC (it does cost a bit, especially if you're strapped) if you can because that protects you. If you screw something up by accident a company can either come after you personally or the business that employs you.

Nollij

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Simply having an LLC isn't enough- it's the separation of personal and business that enables protection. Until you have other employees, this is really hard to do/show.

If you're going to go this route, you should probably talk to an attorney anyway.

TexasDrunk

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And an accountant, but yeah this is solid advice. It was definitely something I knew but didn't realize that it's harder than it looks back when I did it.

FaceDeer

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With work-from-home as a non-negotiable condition.

BrianTheeBiscuiteer

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Yeah, I love my teammates but when I leave I'm gonna do like zero "knowledge transfer". Not my fault you haven't expanded my team in 5 years or that you keep giving us more and more responsibilities from roles you removed because they were "obsolete" or that you spread us so thin we can't naturally transfer knowledge as we go.

xpinchx

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That's something, lol. I'm not irreplaceable but it would be an absolute clusterfuck if I left, at least for a while.

I do a good job of documenting everything but so much of my work relies on scripts that I wrote and never properly deployed - a mix of python and VBA, and all my reporting relies on an API connection that nobody else maintains and other than a handful of queries I shared, nobody really knows how to use it.

I'm not trying to be shitty but it's job security.

poo

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Not shitty at all! Cross training and backups are your employer's problem, not yours. It may hurt you if you go on vacation or are sick, but it hurts them even more when you leave. Job security is job security and I'll take it lol

CodexArcanum

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Ah man, living the dream!

FenrirIII

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I could walk away from my job today and the only thing people would notice is the email daemon. Going to keep cruising as far beneath the surface as I can and get that paycheck. Probably get some free AI training too.

Pacattack57

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As a corporate guy, I’ll let y’all in on a secrete: a lot of the bullshit policies that you hear about are meant to piss people off and increase turnover. It’s an attempt to get rid of the bottom of the barrel and keep the people in the middle in a state of fear or discomfort to maintain productivity.

Why ends up happening is you skim the top employees and are left with the bottom of the barrel that performs even worse because they are in a state of fear and discomfort.

BearOfaTime

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Seen it numerous times since the mid-90's.

Preferred folks will stay because they're part of the in-crowd (hard to know what that is, but it's senior management building their own little fiefdoms).

The performers have options, so are either part of that in-crowd, or have opportunities elsewhere.

pastermil

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That's because the top ones have better options out there while the ones below, who are worse performing in the first place, often have no option but to stay, ignoring their fear and discomfort.

Aceticon

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More and better options, more experience moving jobs (because beyond a certain point of seniority, expertise can only grow if you've seen a couple different ways of doing things, so you'll find that pretty much all top people have changed jobs at least a couple of times), higher income hence higher savings hence can handle any financial risks much more easilly, and more confidence in their own expertise.

They're better prepared mentally and financially to change jobs AND they're more in demand out there not least because they're a lot rarer and bring a lot more added value.

corsicanguppy

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skim the top employees and are left with the bottom of the barrel that performs even worse

It's called the Dead Sea Effect.

Etterra

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It's always interesting to see what kind of names people come up with for the consequences of stupidity.

Aceticon

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Having been a senior expert in a high demand area for most of my career (and, modesty on the side, pretty good at what I do), I couldn't agree more.

People really good and senior in expert domains come in two styles:

The kind that complains that "it's the same everywhere", are miserable and never change jobs, who eventually stagnate in terms of professional growth because their professional experience is so narrow (to progress professionally beyond a certain point you really need to work in different places and have different responsabilities so that your knowledge is broad enough and well rounded enough that you start getting the meta part of you job - work processes and stakeholders - that becomes important at the senior levels even outside management).
The kind that has a well rounded experience, worked in a bunch of places and is comfortable with the whole "getting a new job" process (both interviewing and starting a job in a new place) so can walk out the door and have a new job tommorrow paying the same or better.

Whilst, both kinds generally value stability (though the former overdoes it) as there is comfort in the familiar and people generally also make friends were they work in if they're there long enough (in fact, large Tech companies heavilly push for "your work is your family" exactly for this reason), the second does have the confidence to know their skills are in demand and hence they can easilly find another job, compared to more junior professionals with less expertise makes more money (also a product of changing jobs once in a while) and usually have more savings, so have more freedom to move (both in financial and mental terms) hence a lower threshold for how much shit they will take: push them and you'll easilly lose them (and, from my experience, they're the hardest kind of professional to replace).

I would say that in a company, of everybody it's the second kind of senior expert who has the more ease of moving and are more comfortable doing so: they have the most pull from the outside, the most savings to cover any financial risk (and, as pointed out somewhere else, people have a higher income growth from moving jobs than staying in the same job, so even amongst senior experts the type #2 tend to earn more) and the most experience with the whole process of finding and starting a new job.

ICastFist

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Why ends up happening is you skim the top employees and are left with the bottom of the barrel that performs even worse because they are in a state of fear and discomfort.

Sounds like the definition of insanity, doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result (keeping the best, getting rid of the rest)

YarHarSuperstar

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That's not the definition of insanity.

spongebue

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It's not, but it's a common phrase and brings up a fair point even if the wrong way.

aisteru

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It's a quote from Far Cry 3

YarHarSuperstar

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I know, it's actually much older than that but it still drives me crazy when people say that for some reason.

Aceticon

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"Incompetence" would also fit the bill.

reddig33

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Really dumb, because it means your most talented employees will quit (because they can get a better offer elsewhere). This isn’t like a targeted layoff.

Crashumbc

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Other than short term, greed most executives are extremely stupid.

balder1991

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It’s not that they’re stupid, it’s that their incentives aren’t the same as the long term wellbeing of the company.

far_university1990

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Happy cake day

800XL

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If you can replace one talented high-wage employee with 3 college hires then do this a couple times statistically you're still going to retain some talented employees because not all can leave. Those that remain will train the others ou of necessity either directly by management or indirectly by a fear of missing timelines/ego/being the local expert/etc.

Management knows this and actively encourages this behavior because by the time the talented employee burns out and self-destructs, at least one trainee will be competent enough to keep things moving.

BearOfaTime

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Or, they don't really need the expertise they claim to need.

Aceticon

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It really depends a lot on how junior those "talented" employees are.

The senior types won't let themselves burn out and self-destruct, it's only the gifted juniors (who are way less productive than the seniors and lack the senior's capability to enhance other people's productivity, no matter how amazing their raw talent is) who will fall for that shit.

Put gifted juniors through the meat grinder a couple of times and the ones who are left recognize that shit a mile away and either avoid ending up in such work environments, refuse to take that shit and exercise informal control around them to stop it if they can or simply leave.

It's not by chance that the Tech companies with the worst work environments (such as Google) are heavilly focused on straight-out-of-uni graduates with high grades as "talent" - their meat-grinder environment can't retain people beyond a certain seniority unless they're moved out of the meat-grinder parts - and this then gets reflected on the quality of what they produced ("messy" barelly begins to describe how badly designed and architectured the software that comes out of Google is).

abs_mess

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As a college grad, I'm pretty sure they aren't replacing anyone. They're just dumping the work on other employees and telling us we need another 5 years of experience to hire us.

gravitas_deficiency

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That much is obvious

NOT_RICK

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Always good to have data to confirm even that which seems obvious

originalucifer

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trust but verify!

ForgottenFlux

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Summary:

A survey by BambooHR found that some US companies implemented return-to-office (RTO) policies in the hopes of getting workers to quit.
52% of respondents prefer working remotely, while 39% prefer working in an office.
37% of managers believe their organization enacted layoffs because fewer employees than expected quit during RTO.
25% of VP and C-suite executives and 18% of HR professionals admit they hoped for some voluntary turnover during RTO.
22% of HR professionals said their company has no metrics for measuring a successful RTO.
28% of remote workers fear they will be laid off before those working in the office.
45% of people surveyed whose companies have RTO policies said they lost valued workers.
28% said they would consider leaving their jobs if their employer enacted an RTO mandate.
The survey found that remote and in-office employees spend an equal amount of time working (76% of a 9-to-5 shift).
In-office workers spend around one hour more socializing than remote workers, while remote workers spend that time on work-related tasks.
32% of managers said one of the main goals of their firm implementing an in-office policy was to track employee working habits.
48% of respondents said their work results have improved since returning to the office, and 58% said they have a stronger professional network.

Aviandelight

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It's almost as if upper management doesn't actually give a shit about productivity and workers work better where they feel most comfortable.

_number8_

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employees spend an equal amount of time working (76% of a 9-to-5 shift).

that seems high. 6 hrs of pure work every day isn't even sustainable

Vaggumon

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Worked for my wife. She quit and found a job that was fully work from home that paid 3x what she was making. The company she left shut down and filed for bankruptcy last year. Last I heard, her old boss was working at Walmart as a cashier.

jmp242

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My sister did that but only netted 30k more not 3x. Still well worth it imo. Of course it's kinda amazing that more companies aren't taking this "cheat code" to get cream of the crop "minor league" non major center talent for the discount of amazing wages out in the hinterlands that are 40k or more less than big city prices.

01011

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“Only 30k more”…

Bruh.

_number8_

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Some company heads are psychopaths, popular deep-seated belief confirms

DudeDudenson

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I mean, they're required by law to be if the company has stocks

BearOfaTime

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Some?

veeesix

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In this economy??

autotldr

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This is the best summary I could come up with:

Despite an apparently large interest in remote work, numerous companies made workers return to the office after COVID-19 pandemic restrictions were lifted.

Nearly two in five (37 percent) managers, directors, and executives believe their organization enacted layoffs in the last year because fewer employees than they expected quit during their RTO.

"By using RTO mandates as a workforce reduction tactic, companies are losing talent and morale among their employees," BambooHR's report says.

The report notes that 45 percent of people surveyed whose companies have RTO policies said they lost valued workers.

The finding is similar to that of a May study of Apple, Microsoft, and SpaceX that suggested that RTO mandates drove senior talent away.

"The mental and emotional burdens workers face today are real, and the companies who seek employee feedback with the intent to listen and improve are the ones who will win employee loyalty and ultimately customer satisfaction," Anita Grantham, head of HR at BambooHR, said in a statement.

The original article contains 709 words, the summary contains 162 words. Saved 77%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

rsuri

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I've never been to business school so I'm trying to imagine what it's like. Do they have textbooks and actually pretend to learn things, or is it all just networking events and golf field trips?