Layoffs and increased monitoring are not the answer to RTO woes

Since Covid-19 forced companies to try remote work, many employees have come to find that when working from home, they get (cue: Miley Cyrus) the best of both worlds. People were reporting equal or improved productivity, according to multiple studies, all while sitting on the couch in their sweatpants.

Remote working didn’t break the economy, either: The S&P 500 index soared to great heights in 2021 and has been volatile in 2022 but currently sits about 9% higher than it was in January 2020.

And yet, recent months have seen employers pushing for greater office attendance—and employees feeling like performance reviews, productivity monitoring, and the possibility of layoffs are being used to make it happen. They have plenty of reason to believe this: 60% of US managers who responded to a recent Beautiful.ai survey said that remote workers are the most likely to be let go in the event of layoffs. But some workplace strategists, including Steve Cadigan, a consultant and former HR leader at companies like LinkedIn and Cisco, say measures such as layoffs are missing the mark.

Employees are actually attracted to the social aspect of the office; meeting their teammates and “work friends” are among the top reasons for wanting to come into the office, according to recent research from Microsoft.

“People come to work for other people,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told Bloomberg, “not because of some policy.” Lenny Beaudoin, executive managing director at the commercial real estate firm CBRE, has shared a similar sentiment: “The biggest amenity in the return to work for employees is other employees,” he told Fortune.

Tug of war. After the Covid-19 vaccine became widely available, companies including Apple, Meta, and Tesla tried to reel employees back into the office at least a few days a week.

But the workforce has demonstrated a clear preference for remote-friendly arrangements: 32% of US workers in “remote-capable” jobs would prefer to work exclusively remote, while 59% would prefer to be hybrid, a Gallup poll found. Additionally, 54% of remote workers said they’d quit their job if forced to come back to the office; 38% of hybrid employees agreed.

It’s no wonder that RTO mandates have been met with employee backlash, including increased turnover and even labor organizing, as witnessed by Google, where members of the Alphabet Workers Union have pushed back on salary adjustments for remote workers. Workers have expressed fears that they could be punished for working from home, or be the first ones on the chopping block in workforce reductions.

But a looming recession, Bloomberg reported, could erode workers’ power to push back.

“The situation where employees refuse to come to the workplace at all is not likely to hold,” Johnny C. Taylor, Jr., president and CEO of SHRM, told CNBC. Even employees at companies like Google and Meta have shifted from making demands around benefits and pay to being concerned about keeping their jobs.

A more people-centric approach. Some executives have cited innovation and spontaneous moments of collaboration and mentorship as reasons for wanting employees in the office. But Cadigan points out that no proven correlation between office attendance and company success exists.

He told HR Brew that the key to high performance is a culture of trust and psychological safety. The best companies, he explained, are experimenting with ways to simultaneously meet employees’ desire for flexibility and their business needs.

Spotify, American Express, Zillow, and Dropbox, for example, are embracing remote-friendly policies, with some hiring product manager-types to oversee the WFH experience.

Cadigan acknowledged managers’ performance- and innovation-based fears around remote work, and the fact that people have some appetite to go into the office. But he cautioned against using performance reviews or monitoring to get employees back to the office, given that “the landscape’s been anything but stable.”

Ultimately, a company’s employment brand is on the line when it comes to how it approaches the return to office.

“How you think about flexibility is going to impact your attractiveness as an employer to a very significant and important demographic,” Cadigan said. “So, if you’re going to limit that...you’re going to cut the addressable market for talent substantially.”—AK

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