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The data is in: Return to Office policies don't improve employee performance or company value, but controlling bosses don't care

cross-posted from: lemmy.world/post/10481867

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.”

Yoz ,

I change company every yeat and Often notice that the places I have worked where boss are really controlling they always seems to have a miserable life. Meaning no friends, they stay back after 5 in the name of “work” and don’t care about anything but them.

Stern ,
@Stern@lemmy.world avatar

Could be a nice addition to those old sabotage manuals

danielbln ,

What is that article picture? A bunch of 4:3 monitors, people sitting on unpadded wooden chairs, shoulder to shoulder? What kind of office hellpit is that?

VindictiveJudge ,
@VindictiveJudge@lemmy.world avatar

After examining the magazine being passed and discovering a (frankly super creepy) website documenting, among other things, every magazine cover featuring Angelina Jolie, that is most likely a November 2008 variety office hellpit.

800XL ,

Open seating facilitating C o l l a b o r a t i o n, my friend. It’s the newest in a long line of corporate circle-jerk KPIs.

Quarterly losses got the shareholders on your back?

Mandate more collaborations!

Employees realizing their worth got the shareholders on your back?

Mandate more collaborations!

Feeling insecure about your authority got the shareholders on your back?

Mandate more collaborations!

The high mount of time spent collaborating on Teams/Slack got the shareholders on your back?

Mandate more collaborations!

Some other company’s Exec bragging about their greater number of collaborations got the shareholders on your back?

Mandate more collaborations!

What’s the easiest most effortless method to generate more collaborations without having to use any brain power whatsoever?

Copy what other CEOs who’ve failed have done and change nothing because you’re a lazy hack but tell yourself it’ll work perfectly because you’re a snowflake and smarter than everyone else! 🌹🌹Return to Office! 🌹🌹

When it doesn’t work, what do you do?

Blame the workers for not collaborating right! YAAAAAAAAAY!!!

xmunk ,

Open seating facilitates headphone sales!

JJROKCZ ,

It’s a picture of an open office floor from 15 years ago based on the monitors, clothing, and magazine

danielbln ,

Sheesh, I sat in an open plan office in 2008, and we had ergonomic chairs and wide desks and widescreen monitors even then. IT privilege, I suppose.

BaldProphet ,
@BaldProphet@kbin.social avatar

It's annoying that I've seen essentially the opposite headline from Business Insider as well in the past few days. I feel like they're not much of a "news" source with this kind of clickbait content.

Evotech ,

images.app.goo.gl/CS4rA53rLvvKEq6Z8

andrew_bidlaw ,

And now I wonder if covid misinformation campaigns were co-paid by the same Forbes companies intentionally, to make people ignore safety measures.

bedrooms ,

I think these managers who love open office don't understand we need individual rooms.

Also, before talking about returning, there are bigger factors that contribute to productivity. Having a secretary is probably far more important than working in an office.

And to completely de-motivate to return, I work for my life, not the other way around.

bionicjoey ,

I think these managers who love open office don’t understand we need individual rooms.

It’s hard to understand while sitting in a corner office

minorninth ,

I think it’s more that it’s hard to understand when you’re extroverted and your job depends on talking to people all day.

captainlezbian ,

Yeah I’d kill for an office at this point. Like it’s not even to fuck around, I just need to not be constantly distracted or on show. I’m a professional, part of my job is sitting there thinking, I’d like to have space to do that. But nope, open office plan with insane upper management

Whirling_Cloudburst ,

Its all about the property income. They need people to fill the offices regardless of productivity. Even if you are not more productive, you are still lining someone else’s pockets.

xmunk ,

This is absolutely the real reason… Everyone who knows shit knows it’s bullshit, but they want their commercial rent back.

minorninth ,

I’m sure this is true for some businesses, but there are also tons of businesses that have no vested interest in commercial real estate. It doesn’t explain all of it.

Honestly I think a much better explanation is that on average, bosses like being in the office and they don’t understand why everyone isn’t like them. Top leadership tends to be extroverted and they got where they are by lots of networking. They don’t have enough appreciation that for a lot of other types of people and types of jobs, being in the office just makes things harder.

w3dd1e ,

This. What’s the point of finally getting that corner office if there’s no one to feel superior over?

HobbitFoot ,

You also have items in the article noting that managers who saw drops in performance during the pandemic were the ones most likely to pull people into the office. So it seems like some managers saw issues with group performance and going back to the office was seen as a way to resolve the issue.

PutangInaMo ,

It’s not a singular issue. You both have valid points.

It’s also about local economies losing the market share they had pre 2020. Every business in between your house and your job loses revenue. And all of that encompasses local tax revenue.

In other words it’s completely changed the commuting economy in it’s entirety. From the top down and those who have vested interests want that back.

The_v ,

Those are actual logical reasons. I personally think it’s more emotional.

For most of the last 100 years the corner office with a view and all sorts of luxuries has been a “reward” for middle to upper management.

Now nobody gives a shit about those offices. It hurts their feelers that nobody gives a shit about their perks anymore.

PutangInaMo ,

Absolutely, it’s a huge cultural shift. And it happened quick too, which humans aren’t really good at reacting to.

I think every reason you can imagine plays a role in it. But yeah the cultural norms are a huge part of it, we’ve been conditioned to view those things as success.

BirdyBoogleBop ,

Why though? Utilities would be cheaper if the property was vacant then you can just end the lease!

centof ,

Data only matters to them if they can use it to support the conclusions they want. Otherwise they just ignore at best or at worst call it fake news.

PoliticalAgitator ,

Exactly. They’ll claim “it’s just business” when they need to lay off half their workers and squeeze anyone left twice as hard but when it’s something upsetting to them, all the studies in the world won’t convince them to loosen their leashes.

jjjalljs ,

I had a ceo who was all about data driven decisions. It was a core company value. They put it on tshirts.

Workers pointed out that studies were showing 4 day work weeks were good on most metrics. He didn’t give a single shit. Just laughed and said we’re not doing that.

doublejay1999 ,
@doublejay1999@lemmy.world avatar

I am genuinely baffled at how people are still debating this and still being so utterly wrong about it.

The reason your boss wants you in the office has been on the front page of the page for the past week.

www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/…/ar-AA1mEGiy

Moira_Mayhem ,

A lot of money is being spent propagandizing this point, and guess which side is doing it?

There’s a lot of value tied up in commercial real estate and some of the largest real estate firms will get soaked if those offices aren’t occupied and paid for.

The thing is, capitalism almost always makes the wrong short term decisions to result in long term results, so instead of adapting to the problem we are at the stage that the value holders will burn themselves quite a lot to cling to forcing everyone back to the office.

And a LOT of people are susceptible to propaganda.

jonne ,

Wasn’t this always just a way to do stealth layoffs?

centof ,

For some companies, yes. Ultimately, it all extends from greed. Gotta keep my using my land because otherwise it will lose value. Gotta layoff people to make profits go up. Must make money printer go, Brrrrr.

BaldProphet ,
@BaldProphet@kbin.social avatar

It's ironic because only the largest of companies actually own the land their offices are on. Most companies are seeing higher costs as a result of holding onto offices that they don't actually need.

RTO is in effect making employees significantly less productive because their productivity is countered by the added expense of leasing and maintaining offices.

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