this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2024

630 points (97.9% liked)

News

23397 readers

3669 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil

Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.

2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.

Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.

3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.

Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.

4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.

Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.

5. Only recent news is allowed.

Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.

6. All posts must be news articles.

No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.

7. No duplicate posts.

If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.

8. Misinformation is prohibited.

Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.

9. No link shorteners.

The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.

10. Don't copy entire article in your post body

For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

630

The data is in: RTO policies don't improve employee performance or company value, but controlling bosses don't care (www.businessinsider.com)

submitted 10 months ago by MicroWave to c/news

54 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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."

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] pacoo2454 116 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I work from home and my boss frequently says he doesn’t mind us working from home but always follows it up by saying he really misses seeing people “sitting in the seats” and “working in the office”. It really is a weird ego trip, being able to visually see people working for you. Actually getting the work done is secondary to the power they feel of seeing their subordinates toiling away.

[–] SoleInvictus 34 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

My boss constantly rode my ass about my coming into the office. I'm a consultant and work on site for various clients. I do a lot of driving that is not reimbursed in any way by my company so, whenever I have a break, I prefer to work from home. But no, my boss has set the expectation that any time I have no on site client work, I needed to be at the company office, a 45-90 minute commute each way (depending on traffic).

If I need to drive into an office every day, I'm going to get paid the most I can for it. She took away one of the main perks of my job, so I had no reason to stick around. So I found a new job that pays 50% more and I'll be letting the company know in my exit interview that's the primary driver for finding new employment. Oh, and the best part? I work from home at least one day a week. My previous employer can get fucked.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Or he could just enjoy being around people. I personally prefer going into an office and having people around. I know that is not the case for everyone though.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It's fine to prefer that. But forcing your employees to work in the office is an ego trip and makes you a bad boss. Especially considering it's been proven most people are more productive in a work from home environment.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

But based on that anecdote, unless I am missing something (possible), it just sounds like the boss is stating they miss seeing people in the office. OP said their boss frequently says they don't mind employees working from home. What it sounds like is two things are true: (1) the boss doesn't care if employees work from the office or home and (2) the boss misses seeing people at work because it's nice for them to have in-person social interactions.

Also, to be blunt, using productivity as the marker of an effective workforce is how you end up with hellholes like Tesla or Facebook. Morale matters for quality of output. Anyway, effective managers know that their teams will have both people who prefer to be in office and people who prefer to WFH, so will create schedules that work great for everyone.