After a year of remote work, big companies are starting to turn back

We may not have noticed that in many places outside of East Asia, "normalcy" has never returned.

Although the pandemic has subsided, many people are still working remotely from home.

This is also supported by their companies, and many foreign "big factories" have openly stated that they will accept the advent of a new era of human work, promising not to force employees to return to the company.

However, this situation has been maintained for less than a year, and the bosses have begun to regret it.

This year, almost every employee of a large company who has ever believed in the promise of his boss is experiencing the horror of being betrayed by a scumbag.

In May, Amazon suddenly made it mandatory for its employees to return to the office at least three days a week. And, to put it very mildly, CEO Andy Jassy declared that employees must be ready to come back, otherwise "there will be no good fruit to eat".

This led directly to the formation of a "dissident coalition" of 30,000 people, and a general strike of nearly 2,000 employees.

A number of executives left in anger and switched to the rival company Google, but unexpectedly, within two days, Google's thick-eyed guy also "betrayed the revolution".

Like Amazon, Google requires employees to return to the office at least three days a week, even though many of them work "with an internet connection."

The collapse of the Pledge is comprehensive, and with the exception of a few companies such as Airbnb, there is no place to spare.

The long list also includes Apple, Disney and Starbucks, as well as a number of well-known law firms, consultancies, real estate and financial companies.

One of the most tragic of all is the Twitter employees, who have just gone through the hellish layoffs of Brother Ma, and before they can close their eyes in peace, they receive an even more brutal email at half past two in the morning: "The office is no longer optional." ”

This means, on Twitter, no, it should be called X now, and everyone has to go back to work.

Ironically, even Zoom, the video communications company that made "remote work" possible, began requiring employees to be on duty at least two days a week.

It is worth mentioning that in February this year, Zoom also published a survey report on remote work, which pointed out that for today's migrant workers, work flexibility is almost as important as pay, because "when we start working when and where we want, we can take better care of our personal and professional lives." ”

Of course, the trick of pulling employees back into the company isn't always cool, and every company has some gradual little tricks.

Amazon, for example, offers a free cup of coffee to employees who voluntarily return to the office, while Google offers a hotel offer for $99 for on-the-job employees.

For those employees who moved early to low-cost areas, some companies set aside a grace period for them to return to work, others directly offered "moving subsidies" to stop employees from refusing, and some chose to set up small offices in multiple places for employees to choose flexibly.

It's quite thoughtful, but the employees don't buy it, no matter how complete the return-to-work plan is, it is always inevitable to be scolded with blood.

"Why are you trying to change something that's really good for everyone?"

This year, "remote work" is becoming the most important topic of negotiations between trade unions and companies in Europe and the United States, beyond salary and benefits. When it comes to returning to work, most employees seem to be covered in rejections.

The reason for the refusal was simple, as Amazon employees pointed to the company's statement: "Amazon's top-down, one-size-fits-all RTO (Return to the Office) directives undermine the diverse, accessible future we want to be." ”

As much as big companies would like to get things back to the way things were, it seems like an impossible task.

Knowing the migrant workers who have lived a good life, no one wants to go back.

Under the tough policy, employees did come back, but not completely.

Even more convincing than the statistics are the nuanced evidence.

According to The Guardian, mobile coffee stalls and sandwich vendors used to hang out around office buildings in central London from Monday to Friday, but now on Fridays, even the vendors don't even bother to go out because no one comes to work.

Tube stations near the City of London, which used to be packed with suit-clad staff, this year, according to Transport for London, there were only 35,000 departures on a typical Friday, less than half of the same period in 2020, and the majority of commuters wore casual clothing, suggesting that they were likely just tourists.

Sales of deodorants are another circumstantial evidence – Unilever data shows that "deodorant" is a necessity for many people in the office. When working from home, deodorant consumption plummeted, and when people returned to the office, deodorant sales only increased by 15%, which is far from returning to the level of the year.

If God created the world in six days and had to rest on the seventh day, then the migrant workers completed the clock-in task in four days and had to stay at home on the fifth day.

In fact, people are staying at home for far more than just Fridays, and hybrid work at home two to three days a week is the "new normal".

Nicholas Bloom, a professor of economics at Stanford University and a longtime researcher of working from home, notes in a new paper that before the pandemic, people worked from home about 5 percent of their workdays, but now that number has climbed to 25 percent.

"That's a huge number," Bloom says in the paper, "because the proportion of people working from home has been growing for almost half a century, but before the pandemic, that number was about doubling every 15 years, and now we're growing in almost two years what would have taken us 40 years." ”

And in the limited mandatory duty days, the situation of "people not being in the mind" is also becoming more and more popular.

In fact, reluctant workers are resisting with "coffee punch cards".

Every morning, disgruntled employees come to the office, punch in mechanically, and then quickly run to the coffee area, make a cup of coffee, and take it around.

The purpose of the scurry is to appear in the eyes of as many colleagues as possible to say "I did be", and to actively interact with each other to show my social energy, and then drink the cold coffee and run away with my bag.

Like the previously popular "quiet resignation", this is some kind of silent protest, focusing on a "I feel uncomfortable, don't think about it".

And this isn't just a personal act for some employees, as 60% of hybrid workers admitted to "punching in coffee," according to Owl Labs' latest survey of 2,000 employees in the U.S.

After a year of running out of the pandemic scenario, the benefits of remote work for employees have been confirmed.

As has been repeatedly reported in the news, remote work has been proven to be effective in increasing productivity, and people generally experience higher levels of happiness as a result, according to a PwC survey in Australia:

As a result, 63% of respondents have seen significant savings on commuting costs, 51% have achieved a better work-life balance, 38% have exercised more, and 37% have experienced a significant improvement in stress.

From an employee's perspective, fully remote work is equivalent to untying the geographical tie between work and life. An employee at a big tech company in Seattle has the option of living on Southeast Asia's waterfront, which is cheaper and more livable. The invisible reduction in housing, commuting and living costs is itself a "sweetness" that cannot be underestimated.

Bloom calculates that if the benefits of "remote work" are quantified for employees, it can be equated to an 8% pay rise. Because of this, no one wants to give up this "benefit".

According to a PwC survey, 29% of respondents said they would quit their jobs if they were forced to return to work, while another 32% would start considering leaving.

So after all, why are companies forcing people back to the office, even at the great risk of losing employees?

After all, according to the results of many previous studies, remote work can not only improve employee productivity and happiness, but also reduce company office costs, which is a win-win for everyone.

This is where the problem lies – it is clear that global bosses do not agree with ordinary workers on this issue.

Employees have the reason of the employee, and the boss also has the reason of the boss.

Urging employees to return to the office isn't just the result of the "midnight chicken" stinginess of old landlords, as evidence suggests that long-running remote work is indeed showing its pitfalls.

The most significant is the "loss of contact" between people.

In other words, because we can't see each other, the interpersonal chain that might have been born in the office is withering.

A study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that since the start of remote work, the formation of "weak ties" in the sociological sense of people has dropped by nearly 40%, which is a huge number that cannot be ignored, meaning that our social networks for work are losing important "capillaries".

Those nodding acquaintances in the elevator room, although seemingly unimportant, are often the beginning of a deeper connection and cooperation.

As a result, nearly every CEO who has asked employees to return to their desks is emphasizing that remote work stifles the ability to interact and innovate in the office.

But perhaps more importantly, it will lead to serious career disruptions.

The change in the situation, the "corner reaper" was the first to know.

There are always a group of companies, like cuckoo birds, who are not willing to spend their own money to train new people in the workplace, and wait for other companies to train them well, and then poach young people with high salaries.

That's the case with some of the big investment funds, which target graduates who have worked for two years at companies like McKinsey every year, doubling their salaries.

Every time they are harvested, they return with a full load: "You can't imagine how good this year's harvest was. ”

However, in 2022, they missed, and the quality of this batch of "corners" was unprecedentedly disappointing.

"Not because of intelligence, but because they don't know how to interact with people. They've never learned Xi as subtly as they did in the office. ”

Relevant talent consultants pointed out that compared with programmed remote work, which is more inclined to publish tasks and solve tasks, interactive communication in offline offices is more likely to help young people Xi more "seemingly useless" skills and build more interpersonal contacts.

And that's what students are most lacking when they're just starting out of the ivory tower.

For veteran workers who already have mature connections, remote work may not have much impact, but for newcomers to the workplace, it is like throwing a seedling into the red soil of undernutrition.

Living can still be lived, but root growth must be limited, and as a result, many leaders worry that long-term remote work will lead to a shortage of talent in their companies.

As Debbie Crosby, the new CEO of UK mortgage lender Nationwide, puts it: "When people meet face-to-face, they connect, collaborate and feel more confident. This is how we ensure cultural change and create high-performing teams. It provides visibility and significant opportunities for informal coaching, mentoring, and career discussions. ”

As soon as the woman took office, she reversed the previous CEO's promise not to force employees back to the office and forcibly recalled her employees.

Not only that, but the benefits of remote work in terms of increasing productivity are also being challenged. This year, there has been a study that is diametrically opposed to the mainstream voice.

A new report from Stanford University's Institute for Economic Policy and Research states that "working entirely remotely reduces average productivity by about 10 to 20 percent."

Because working completely remotely impairs collaboration and makes it easier to "escape from home" and distract employees.

Data from the U.S. National Bureau of Economic Research also shows a decline in productivity among fully remote workers.

These reports are in the ring with studies that praise remote work for increasing productivity, and who is telling the truth is subject to rigorous peer review.

However, it is worth noting that the report does not reject remote work entirely, but rather points out the drawbacks of "entirely" remote work, and that hybrid work, which combines remote and on-site work, will not be affected, but will instead lead to a certain level of productivity gains.

From the perspective of the work revolution, the shift from "fully remote work" to "hybrid work" is still turning back the clock in history, but it may be the best solution at this stage after the game between employees and bosses.

Because in addition to the above-mentioned very good reasons, there is another, more important reason for bosses to rush employees back to the office - the unprecedented fear of losing control.

KPMG's outlook survey of more than 1,300 CEOs this year found that more than two-thirds of respondents believe that all employees should fully return to work five days a week in the next three years, with only 7% of CEOs believing that fully remote work can be the norm, and more than nine in ten saying they intend to reward employees returning to the office with better pay, assignments or promotions.

According to the report, "This sentiment highlights the persistence of office-centric traditional thinking among CEOs. ”

Although most companies will never admit this, the sales of office monitoring software have skyrocketed in the past two years will not lie, and the company is a hundred employees who cannot be seen or touched.

Sometimes this surveillance even reaches the point of a kind of madness:

An energy company in the United States requires employees to install office monitoring software, and the software calls the screen camera every 10 minutes to take pictures, and if the employee's face does not appear in the camera when the photo is taken, then the employee will lose the salary for those 10 minutes.

These monitoring software are like disciplinary committees placed in the masses by teachers, familiar with every bit of fishing skills of migrant workers, and leave no room for meaning to debunk.

One of the most notorious of them all, WorkSmart, not only records the frequency of employees' keyboard strokes and mouse calls, but also X-rays all the actions on employees' computers. Playing games, watching entertainment websites, and even delegating work to cheap outsourcing can be hidden.

What's even more terrifying is that it also has a spot check mode for taking pictures, which is not only fixed at a frequency of once every 10 minutes, but also randomly changes the interval between photos.

This makes people have to get up to make a cup of coffee or go to the toilet, and it will definitely bring a noose-like suffocating experience to everyone in the home.

And according to the New York Times, eight of the 10 largest private employers in the United States are using such technology to track employees' productivity levels at home.

According to forecasts, annual sales in the office surveillance industry will soar to $1.7 billion by 2029, up from $488 million today.

In this quantitatively addicted society, too many companies are willing to spend money on a visible sense of security rather than believing in ethics.

Given that society is still dominated by a generation that has grown up in a full-time working environment, the fear of remote work getting out of control is likely to persist for quite some time.

In a hybrid work system, the days of the week when employees are present in the office can undoubtedly help managers alleviate this anxiety, so that the other days when employees disappear are no longer so obtrusive.

But the concessions of the employees ended there, and there was no more.

At the most perceptible level, the labor shortage in Europe and the United States is still serious, and if a company is unwilling to offer the option of hybrid work, then employees have too many better options to choose from.

According to job search engine Aduzuna, more than a tenth of the jobs in the UK were already labelled as hybrid in the first half of this year, and with the full remote work option, the total number of jobs will exceed a quarter of the total.

A further factor is that there is a permanent shift in the way people think about work.

What was once an eight-hour, five-day workweek was a perk for some benevolent factories, but now it is a human right.

Now, more and more attitudes towards remote work are changing, and as we've seen, companies that are asking employees to return to the office aren't really going back to tradition, and they're tacitly keeping their employees at home two to three days a week.

Although half a step has been retracted, the times are still advancing.

Perhaps one day, the slogan of the current radical workers will also become a kind of common sense recognized by the whole society:

"Remote work is not a perk, it's a right. ”

Produced by | Tiger Sniff Youth Culture Group

Author | Mu Zitong

Editing, Cartography丨Slag County