A lot of workers living in big American cities have been working ‘remotely’ since the beginning of the COVID crisis in 2020.
Which may have prevented the spread of COVID, to some degree. And probably also cut down on in-office love affairs.
But lately, it seems a number of big corporations are requiring their office workers to return to the office, based on the idea that, after all, they are “office workers” and it just seems to make sense.
There’s even an acronym for these company policies. “RTO”. “Return To Office”.
Who’s forcing their workers back into office cubicles? Let’s make a list.
Amazon, Apple, AT&T, Citigroup, Dell, Disney, Dow, Goldman Sachs, Google, IBM, JP Morgan, Meta, Salesforce, Starbucks, Tesla, Toyota, Uber, Walmart, Washington Post…
That’s for starters.
Reportedly, President Trump has issued an executive order informing over 1 million federal employees they can no longer work remotely.
Fortunately, the Daily Post has not required everyone to return to the office, and is not likely to ever require everyone to return to the office… at least in part because the Daily Post doesn’t have “an office.”
We all have our own “offices” in our own homes. Otherwise known as “a corner of the bedroom.” Admittedly, this makes for a lonely existence, unless you happen to own a cat. But it also removes the temptation to engage in illicit love affairs.
Fact is, I’ve never met most of the contributors who supply news and opinions for the Daily Post. Which also means, they haven’t met me. Or my cat. But we know each other by our attitudes, as revealed in the articles we write. So maybe it’s better that we don’t meet.
I came across an interesting podcast earlier this week, where three people were discussing the new RTO policies now being implemented by big corporations. One of the commentators, economist Heather Long, was explaining what’s really going on.
After five years of allowing remote and hybrid work, why are big companies (and the federal government) forcing people to return to the office five days a week, when the alternative was so much more pleasant?
Ms. Long explains:
Well, that’s a loaded questions, but I would say, in 2025, is the year of ‘operational efficiency’. And that’s corporate-speak for ‘Save money at all costs.’
And how do you save money? The easiest way is to get people to quit. And these ‘return to the office mandates’, particularly the ‘five days a week in office’ mandates — we have a lot of data on this now, and it shows, people will quit, and you don’t even have to pay them severance to do it…
I’m not sure whether I would quit, if I had to return to an office after five years remote and spend eight hours a day in a cubicle that’s probably bigger than my bedroom. But it’s a cubicle. You can’t just get up out of your ergonomically correct chair, and roll over onto the bed for a quick nap.
But we have to wonder about Ms. Long’s data… of which she has a lot, showing that people working for Apple and JP Morgan and Citigroup are just going to up and quit if they have to return to the office.
She continued:
There has been a decent amount of research so far, on fully-remote, hybrid and fully-in-office, and it’s kind of a mixed bag for fully-remote, and that’s why I think, when you look at the Fortune 500, only about 16 companies are fully-remote. But a lot of companies are hybrid, and the reason so many companies are hybrid is, that’s the sweet spot. There’s no productivity difference between the hybrid schedule and fully-in-office.
But what you do see a difference in, is employee satisfaction, and happiness, and employee retention. So if you are really happy with your workforce, and you want to keep those high-performers staying at your company, what do you do?
You offer them the chance to continue to work from home…
Especially, I would think, you would want your humor columnist to be happy. The humor columns written by an unhappy humor columnist do not belong in a family-friendly online magazine.
Ms. Long:
So I think my big fear is, whether it’s the federal government that’s going to do these return-to-office policy, or whether it’s all these big companies, is: who are the first people to leave in these scenarios? It’s star employees who know they can get a job elsewhere. And unfortunately, it’s a lot of women…
An interesting statement. She thinks the women are more prone to quit.
Well, it’s true. Women like being home more than men do. Men like to be out, conquering the world. Women like to be home, doing the laundry and mopping the floors. But also, working at a remote job.
I’m not a woman, but I’m still okay with working from home, and wearing my pajamas all day long.
That doesn’t mean I don’t want to be out conquering the world. It just hasn’t worked out that way.
Yet.