Most CEOs Won't Prioritize Return-to-Office Policies, Survey Finds (axios.com) 101
The pandemic may have proved to employeers that remote and flexible-work arrangements were viable — and changed the way we work forever. Axios writes:
Just 6 out of 158 U.S. CEOs said they'll prioritize bringing workers back to the office full-time in 2024, according to a new survey released by the Conference Board. Executives are increasingly resigned to a world where employees don't come in every day, as hybrid work arrangements — mixing work from home and in-office — become the norm for knowledge workers. "Maintain hybrid work," was cited as a priority by 27% of the U.S. CEOs who responded to the survey, conducted in October and November. A separate survey of chief financial officers by Deloitte, conducted in November, found that 65% of CFOs expect their company to offer a hybrid arrangement this year.
"Remote work appears likely to be the most persistent economic legacy of the pandemic," write Goldman Sachs economists in a recent note. About 20%-25% of workers in the U.S. work from home at least part of the week, according to data Goldman cites. That's below a peak of 47% during the pandemic but well above its prior average of around 3%.
"The battle is over," said Diana Scott, human capital center leader at The Conference Board. "There are so many other issues CEOs are facing." Headlines about CEOs determined to get butts in seats get attention, but they are the exception, says Brian Elliott, the cofounder of Future Forum, a future of work think tank. "There are a lot more CEOs that are actually quietly becoming more flexible...." Though the labor market has softened, employers still do care about keeping employees satisfied — and they don't want to fight with them. "It's not worth the fight," says Elliott.
"Remote work appears likely to be the most persistent economic legacy of the pandemic," write Goldman Sachs economists in a recent note. About 20%-25% of workers in the U.S. work from home at least part of the week, according to data Goldman cites. That's below a peak of 47% during the pandemic but well above its prior average of around 3%.
"The battle is over," said Diana Scott, human capital center leader at The Conference Board. "There are so many other issues CEOs are facing." Headlines about CEOs determined to get butts in seats get attention, but they are the exception, says Brian Elliott, the cofounder of Future Forum, a future of work think tank. "There are a lot more CEOs that are actually quietly becoming more flexible...." Though the labor market has softened, employers still do care about keeping employees satisfied — and they don't want to fight with them. "It's not worth the fight," says Elliott.
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Do Better (Score:1)
Most CEOs Won't Priorities Return-to-Office Policies, Survey Finds
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How did this get approved with that headline!??!
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How did this get approved with that headline!??!
Welcome to Slashdot -- The Home Of Increasingly Lower Expectations Every Day
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Literally impossible at this point.
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How did this get approved with that headline!??!
We haven't had editors on Slashdot in centuries at this point. If they ever entered the presence of an actual editor, there'd probably be a matter/anti-matter reaction.
This website needs an enema (Score:1)
Re: This website needs an enema (Score:2)
The company that owns slashdot now has its own cryptocurrency. That should tell you all you need to know.
Most editors won't edit, slashdot readers find (Score:3)
OK, in what version of English is "priorities" a verb?
This is sloppy even by slashdot standards!
Ohh noooo (Score:5, Insightful)
Now they'll only be able to hire responsible adults that get their work done even when they're not in the office, and cut back on costly, useless real-estate holdings. Such a traaaaaagedy.
Seriously, for so many jobs it was such a weird waste of effort, I still don't understand why they spent so much time at it. From a big picture perspective, I don't know how this wasn't a huge win. Just unwilling to adapt, I guess.
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From a big picture perspective, I don't know how this wasn't a huge win. Just unwilling to adapt, I guess.
Some management types are addicted to the attention and bootlicking their worker bees in office give them. To those sick managers, getting attention is worth as much or even more than getting money, and when most people work remotely, they cannot get their "fix" in the office anymore and hence need to call for RTO regardless of what it costs the company.
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There's the myopic reduction to stereotype I was looking for. Thank you. I'll file it alongside the pointy headed boss, the dumb blonde, and the lazy immigrant. Painting the groups in different layers of the org in simplistic, inhuman terms is as old as hierarchies.it couldn't be that they have a point... it has to be because they are so deficient in character and substance that they're compensating for it.
My fondest wish for folks that truly hold this view is that they end up on the next tier of the hiera
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I actually got it right before I got it wrong. I second guessed my self, but was too lazy to verify it (typing on a phone).
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Guess it's true that with a lack of distractions productivity gets a boost.
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Now they'll only be able to hire responsible adults that get their work done even when they're not in the office...
I have done my fair share of hiring and managing in tech. Finding "responsible adults" is by no means an easy task. You can screen for basic competence during interview, it is entirely possible to determine if the applicant capable of doing the job, but it is not possible to determine if they are actually going to be productive or capable of working without supervision.
Had one guy, charming, intelligent and capable of doing his work. Yet, he left everything to the last minute, then would put crazy overtim
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I don't know why you were apparently modded down, you are absolutely correct about 'Finding "responsible adults" is by no means an easy task'.
There are plenty of tech workers who do in fact require in-person supervision or they won't get any work done. Or they will do the absolute minimum they think they can get away with, this frequently happens even in the office.
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Now they'll only be able to hire responsible adults that get their work done even when they're not in the office, and cut back on costly, useless real-estate holdings. Such a traaaaaagedy.
Seriously, for so many jobs it was such a weird waste of effort, I still don't understand why they spent so much time at it. From a big picture perspective, I don't know how this wasn't a huge win. Just unwilling to adapt, I guess.
Wont someone think of the landlords, someone please think of the landlords... Erm I mean the poor, poor sandwich shop owners who greedy home workers are sending out of business and definitely are not being squeezed out by greedy landlords.
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Maybe the gov't (usa, suburbs) should not have divided areas into residential and business/retail? (I think industrial should be separated though).
Then that sandwich shop could be located near where people live instead of a 20 minute drive away.
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responsible adults
Are those the ones that are destroying the planet and electing malicious idiots to leadership positions? Perhaps they're as uncommon as common sense.
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Ritals instead of understanding. That is the only reason for most work-in-the-office.
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Now they'll only be able to hire responsible adults that get their work done even when they're not in the office, and cut back on costly, useless real-estate holdings. Such a traaaaaagedy.
People might find they're going to involuntarily share in that traaaaaagedy if we ultimately find many 401k/pension funds invested heavily in commercial real estate.
From a big picture perspective, I don't know how this wasn't a huge win. Just unwilling to adapt, I guess.
From a big picture perspective, Greed invested in commercial real estate doesn't "adapt" well to losing money. Or being poor. I figure we're talking about the next business class that's going to become Too Big To Fail soon, with taxpayers bailing out the commercial real estate market.
Might be a bit premature to be that sarcastic about the pro
Re:Ohh noooo (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously, for so many jobs it was such a weird waste of effort, I still don't understand why they spent so much time at it. From a big picture perspective, I don't know how this wasn't a huge win. Just unwilling to adapt, I guess.
Because the C-suite is composed mostly of older white males, that's why. You might think of it as being "woke" but this population basically grew up in a world where working life consisted of going to the office every day.
And it's well known that when people are pushed into uncomfortable positions, they will generally want to return to the normal that they knew - so after the pandemic pushed WFH to be the standard, this group of people were uncomfortable with it and thus wanted a return to office and back to the full time work that they grew up doing for decades.
It's one thing where the lack of diversity in the upper echelons can impact policy - while not universal, having things like minorities and women do have different perspectives. For example, women who grew up juggling raising a family and career do appreciate the opportunities WFH can represent especially on tricky days like when school is not in session. Likewise, minorities often experience racism in the office, and thus appreciate how WFH allows them to prove their worth through their work rather than through the grapevine.
It isn't true 100% - you will run into the career focused women who gave up family for a career and thus expect everyone to do the same. Just like you will find vengeful minorities who decide to exercise their power over those who shown them ill. Or like how some more enlightened white male CEOs decided that things are working well with WFH and hybrid so why change things. (Usually these are CEOs who often work remote anyways - if it works for them, why shouldn't it work for others?)
But in general, what has happened is that CEOs started paying attention to their companies - there have been very few morale killing ideas in recent history like RTO. And employees have started to fight back as well. Things like "Coffee Badging" where people do RTO, but in their own way (they work, then they commute off rush hour, badge into the office, chit-chat around the water cooler for a few hours, then return home just before the evening rush, then work the rest of the evening).
Or you get people who basically just arrive late, or leave early. Either way, you're not getting the full working day from them in the office. And once those activities take hold, it's extremely hard to stop - you might demand everyone be in the office 3 days a week, but suddenly on the 3rd day, they aren't there the full day - they will come in late, leave early. Then after a couple of months, they will stop coming in on the 3rd day. Then it happens on the second day as well, and soon you're back to a day in the office. Add in general excuses (e.g., bad weather) and you're back to where you started..
Or productivity plummets - if you wanted collaboration, it happens. But only on the mandatory days. So if you demand 3 days in the office, and suddenly you need people to get together, you'll find they'll book the meeting for the next day they get to gether (so if it's Tuesday-Thrusday, and a meeting need comes up on Thursday, the meeting will be scheduled on Tuesday, leaving Friday and Monday alone). After all, if you're being forced into the office, then you'll just reject being forced more into the office and thus what could've taken a meeting the next day, now gets pushed out over half a week later.
Yes, I've noticed it. I'm in 2 days a week, and I make sure to get all the stuff that needs me there done in those two days. Everything else after that can wait until I'm back in the office next week.
Finally, I'm sure a bunch of companies after seeing the big FAANG layoffs, realized that while they could never pay as well as the FAANGs, they could always offer relatively free perks like WFH that can mean a lot but cost the company basically nothing. Facebook demands people back into the office, then lays off 1000 people? I'm sure you can offer those people a remote job that costs you basically nothing as it's already better than what they were getting.
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This was definitely my favourite response of the bunch; I agree with this 100%.
Offshoring (Score:5, Interesting)
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Even low cost countries are getting pretty expensive. And the work ethic is lower and the corruption higher in many of those countries (and you don't know which in advance). And many don't speak english well. And those that do *still* may have misleading versions of english.. ("I'll do my best" does not mean "I'll get it done!"... it means, "You are bat shit crazy, I'll work to spec so my ass is covered, continue training and gaining experience on your time and then I'll bail or be assigned to another
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And those that do *still* may have misleading versions of english.. ("I'll do my best" does not mean "I'll get it done!"... it means, "You are bat shit crazy, I'll work to spec so my ass is covered, continue training and gaining experience on your time and then I'll bail or be assigned to another customer.)
Uh, you don't know many software engineers, do you? The latter is pretty close to what "I'll do my best" means. Though instead of working to spec, it usually involves demonstrating that the idea was never feasible to begin with.
Re:Offshoring (Score:5, Interesting)
I don’t know why a CEO would bother hiring new remote workers in high cost of living countries I expect many are just going to use remote as a way to gradually transfer jobs to lower cost of living countries without bad press.
You have mistakenly assumed they had not *already* tried to outsource everyone they could to low cost countries. The positions that are still remaining in high cost countries are the ones they found they cannot move elsewhere, either they cannot find the talent in low cost countries, or they tried and were burned before. Bad press? Cutting cost is *good* press for CEOs, it boost the stock price and means more money in their pockets.
If being able to warm a seat in the office is the only advantage you had over someone in India, you deserve to lose you job to someone in India.
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Call center workers came to the office, that didn't stop them from getting replaced wholesale by remote workers. Same with factory workers. If you want a job that can't be outsourced, try landscaping.
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Every CEO that has thought offshoring is a good idea, has already been doing that. Remote work doesn't change anything in that equation.
The fact is that remote US and European workers are still generally higher quality than offshore outsource workers, often by a lot.
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OTOH, they could also avoid a lot of downside and still save a lot of money by hiring people within the country living in lower cost of living areas.
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Already happening [reuters.com]!
Because quality control is a problem (Score:2)
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The vast majority of offshoring goes to commodity jobs.
Jobs that require very little up skilling, that are highly repetitive and require minimal oversite.
The companies that offshore core business product maintenance and development almost always get burned. If it's central to the business it needs to be close at hand. If it's a commodity task that anyone can do then get rid of it.
Every single instance I have encountered of core jobs going overseas has met with a massive disaster for the company, most oft
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How good do you think your boss would be at finding qualified workers in Serbia, India, or some other place? They'd hire an outsourcing firm. Often those will underpay workers, overcharge the client and their best workers will be put on projects they prioritize most (ie not you). There are 100% good outsourcing partnerships out there, but remote work has never been the issue there.
Now if you legitimately would hire good remote workers in India or elsewhere straight up, then yes, that could be an amazing rem
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Why would they wait 'til now to do that? It's not like WFH changed anything about a company's ability to simply outsource what they can.
I'd guess that what can be outsourced already was, long before Covid and WFH became a thing.
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The stupid ones? Sure. The non-stupid minority realizes that you hire local workers because they know the culture and that you know what you can expect of them. Offshoring is, in most cases, a move that costs more than it saves.
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When outsourcing they want to put the money right down, but as it's a free market, skilled offshore workers know what they're worth, and generally speaking they'll ask for the money. Generally speaking when that happens local retailers can put their prices up too.
What I've seen is when off-shoring the hiring companies don't want to pay a good rate, so they don't get good labour. The local staff have to pick up the deficit. This isn't about on/off shoring, purely reduction in staffing budget, don't confuse q
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Time zones can be an issue, even if most of the workers are in the same TZ.
I'm on a team across 7 timezones. 10 hours is the maxium although some occasional contributors are 12 hours.
We have a tough time finding the sweet spot that's not too early & not too late to meet as a group.
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This is another myth. The workers that could be off-shored were already off-shored before the pandemic. Ergo, the folks that now are or could be working remote, can't be off-shored. (Or, rather, can't be off-shored while still maintaining whatever other benchmarks need to be maintained.) At my job the reason given for not being fully remote is that having people visibly in the office prevents downsizing our team. In other words, a team appearing to have more people in the office gets a bigger budget and is
Most CEOs Won't Priorities (Score:1, Flamebait)
Most CEOs Won't Priorities
Most editors won't edit, either.
The pandemic may have proved to employeers
FFS, you're not even trying, are you? You've come up with a new class of person, the employeer!
The EditorDavid script must be suffering bitrot.
Good luck with back-to-the-office, it's a dead horse.
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I think some form of ChatGPT could prevent this from happening. Which means... it's smarter than the humans they are using.
The longer they wait, the more normal it becomes (Score:3)
CEOs are finding it hard to find people who will work in-office. The longer they wait, the less leverage they have to force the issue in the future.
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CEOs are finding it hard to find people who will work in-office. The longer they wait, the less leverage they have to force the issue in the future.
Was always thus.
I've been around long enough to see a few boom/bust cycles. When times are good and you struggle to employ anyone, let alone anyone good you throw out more benefits just to get people onboard and to stay. When times get tougher, companies who only did this because they had to cut back and suddenly find that they're struggling to retain anyone who isn't desperate and half retarded. Of course CxO's will cry "no-one wants to work" forgetting that the rest of that statement is "for my shitty
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CEOs are finding it hard to find people who will work in-office.
I think Boomer retirements created market-wide labor shortage and as such workers no longer willing to both commute and put extra unpaid time toward a job. I think the future of jobs will be salaried overtime from home vs. 9 to 5 from the office.
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Right... because I'm sure that Trump and all of his real estate hedge fund buddies are HUGE proponents of working from home.
His biggest donors probably own 10% of the US office buildings that have been empty since 2020.
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I wasn't aware Biden started either war. Last time I checked that was down to Russia/Putin and Hamas respectively. Also you are aware that the US isn't giving cash to Ukraine? What it is doing is sending mostly old kit to Ukraine and then spending the money buying replacements manufactured in the USA supporting US jobs? Many of the systems sent such as ATACMS missiles that where about to need expensive decommissioning actually saved the US tax payers money. They are also booking things like M111A's at the c
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Re: Return to office politics at its finest! (Score:2)
Most people voting for Trump don't have an office job. This demonstrates both the class divide in this country and the complete lack of class consciousness by the left. I get that the left wishes we all thought of ourselves as part of the same America. But clearly there are people who don't like the left and don't consider themselves in any of this.
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Actually, some polls and news reports from this weekend, indicated that it appears that more and more college educated suburbians ARE leaning more towards Trump and the republicans.
At least the independent ones....
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I'm at least sympathetic to people who are in a tough spot financially, haven't seen the prosperity that was promised to them by Democrats, and haven't had received much education in civics or history. But, I don't have a lot of respect for educated people who are willfully ignorant. People who have gotten everything, who ostensibly received a high-quality education, are acting like the tax cuts they receive under both administrations never happened, and that somehow the new tax hikes on people much richer
Re: Return to office politics at its finest! (Score:1)
To my shock, I found out recently that "working class" means that if you stop working you can't survive. I haven't met anyone rich enough for that. They must be far away from me.
I always used to think I had made it into the middle class...
Blue-collar workers never worked from home (Score:3)
Re: Blue-collar workers never worked from home (Score:2)
Smart guy
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Given that most CEOs run companies with a blue-collar workforce....
The article is obviously referring to knowledge workers who do not need to be on-site, not the type of blue-collar workers you're referring to.
Well yeah .. (Score:2)
Most CEOs that were inclined to prioritize return to office have already gone through with that priority. They may have further aspirations, but doubt they'd describe it as "prioritized".
It's almost like asking how many CEOs are planning to force remote and work from home come into the office as a priority of 2018.
To the extent I'm sure there are executives that feel it has not gone far enough and would love more, they probably don't want to admit defeat by saying they haven't done yet. They also may not
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The problem here is that these "frogs" already have been boiled, steamed and fried before. We know by now to look for the telltale bubbles of steam, and we simply jump out of the pot before you even get a chance to turn up the heat to anywhere close to boiling temperatures.
In other words, we have been bullshitted by management before. An announcement from management is usually treated the same way as a new feature in a Microsoft product: The first thought is always "how are they gonna screw us over with thi
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Well, we may know, but further measures may not be just an arbitrary "come back or else", and harder to argue out of.
For example, the office has customers come to the office, and starts making "meetings" representing being at desks while customers walk through. So you may know that you aren't actually going to "meet" with the customer, but to reject a role in a customer meeting even as a background decoration is a tougher situation to reject. I anticipate a fair amount of 2024 behavior in companies to be s
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If you disallow me to join a meeting remotely, I will ask why. And I'll make sure that a lot of people will be in that conversation. As stated before, employees are very, very sensitive to anything that could be a "backdoor to RTO".
I work in an industry that is pretty desperate to attract talent. People here are not just wanted, they're literally being stalked, as soon as there is as much as a notion that you might consider switching jobs, be prepared to get calls. And we're by far not the only ones. The on
Employers are realizing that offices are expensive (Score:3)
"Executives are increasingly resigned to a world where employees don't come in every day"
I'm not sure "resigned" is the best word here. I think that in addition to improved employee satisfaction and, often, improved productivity, they're realizing that they can reduce the cost of their office space leases. That can be quite significant.
With several years of experience now available, it is possible for employers to make some quantitative assessments of today's enhanced work-from-home culture.
Regardless of any moral suasion, at the end of the day employers are going to make these sorts of decisions based on business imperatives.
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My office is already at the point where we have hired more people than we have desks. You only get a permanent desk if you are supposed to be in the office at least two days per week. Less than that, you reserve an unassigned desk for the time that you are in. That happens to fall disproportionately on the most senior people who spend a lot of time at other sites or with customers.
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"Regardless of any moral suasion, at the end of the day employers are going to make these sorts of decisions based on business imperatives."
Respectfully, in many cases, no.
The sociopaths working as corporate executives aren't there to make the company more successful. They're there to get off on bossing around other human beings, and seeing them squirm when they do so. That's the fundamental motivation.
In some minority of cases there are rationally-run businesses. But the culture isn't shared universally th
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You make a fair point, albeit with a rather jaundiced view.
I think we also have to admit that not all businesses, or roles within businesses are suitable, even if all we do is sit in front of our computer 90% of the time. And 100% WFH may not be viable. (That's why I'm flying across the ocean to meet my team in person in a couple of weeks; sometimes you just need to be able to scribble on a whiteboard and wave your hands.)
But I think my point stands: if the business case is there to support a WFH culture, t
Resignation (Score:2)
What stake exactly does an executive, who has no contact with the day-to-day work, have in their employees commuting to an office where they will never see them? An office they pay rent for and that they know makes their employees unhappy, and by extension less productive?
I thought the whole idea of innovation and the exchange of ideas requi
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The psychopath needs that mental picture of rows and columns of wage slaves toiling away without a joy in their life for him. If you work in your home office, where you have a window, one that even opens and lets you look into a green garden, that idea really kills the mood for that kind of psycho.
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Indeed. The resistance to WFH is so deeply irrational, there is really nothing left in explanation except deep mental problems in the "leadership".
Boiling the Frog (Score:2)
One survey says 90% of CEOs want full RTO by 2026. Another says they are not prioritizing full RTO in 2024 and are instead working on 2/3 day hybrid compliance.
These are not incompatible goals. Once they get most people at most mid to large sized companies back in part time, they can prioritize ratcheting up if job market conditions allow to suit their long term RTO goals.
labor wins (Score:2)
Yes yes labor wins. Now back to work, we're shorthanded after this quarter's round of layoffs.
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Too bad we didn't cut the dead weight at the top. Again.
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It's better that we don't, most of these jokers have golden parachutes that make it too costly to fire them.
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It could be fairly cheap to fire them, only depends on the execution [wikipedia.org].
"Resigned" to not be stuck in the past? (Score:2)
These must be economics graduates. The most stupid ones around, essentially.
LOL (Score:2)
Have employers ever actually cared about keeping employees satisfied, or have I just been "lucky" about where I've worked? AFAIK executives view employees as an expense that they'd love to eliminate, if only that were possible (thus the "AI" fad).
Re:LOL (Score:4, Insightful)
Have employers ever actually cared about keeping employees satisfied, or have I just been "lucky" about where I've worked?
Employers care about keeping good employees satisfied. Not sure if you've been "lucky" or simply better at proving your worth.
That's the inherent problem that employers are facing. They already know good employees now have plenty of WFH options. A planet rather drunk on Green initiatives also sees the hypocrite CEO for what they are when they utterly fail to justify the push back into an office with a polluting car commute for all.
AFAIK executives view employees as an expense that they'd love to eliminate, if only that were possible (thus the "AI" fad).
Is the commercial dirt a company is paying per square foot to use..along with all building maintenance and operating costs, also not an expense they'd love to eliminate? They probably should, if they're going to compete with the companies who can and will eliminate it today.
As far as fads go, when AI consumes every human job and no meatsack is earning a paycheck, have the executives figured out how they're going to stay in business when they have no customers left to sell product to, or will the social unrest from a mere 25% global unemployment rate prove plenty enough to sustain chaos instead of profits? I wish the shortsightedness of Greed was a fad..
The New Company advantage. (Score:2)
(CEO of new company) "It feels great to get that round of funding we needed! OK, let's go over the largest expenses we're going to have to tackle first to get started."
(CFO) "Well...here's the traditional costs of commercial real estate. Per square foot. Or we could consider a WFH policy, save a lot of money on costs, enjoy better margins, and offer higher salaries where needed to compete."
(CEO) "Please send someone to dismiss the real estate agent. Permanently."
Inmates (Score:1)
Inmates now running the asylum. Except inmates are now outpatients.