People always say this, but I’d bet that the vast majority of those 76% would begrudgingly go in if it was demanded. Talk is cheap, as they say.
Always be interviewing, always be ready to move on. If an employer wants loyalty, I recommend a dog. To be clear, this is not intended to be adversarial. On the contrary, it is simply recognizing the tenuous employment relationship for what it is.
Then you're left with the worst people, people who are unhappy but stuck, and people who just can't be bothered to do anything about it.
Sounds like a great recipe for productivity! I love working with my fellow cage-mates.
At some point, nobody will care or only the people that won't bother doing anything about it will care.
I don't think morale is the right metric to use here.
In other words if your company is paying way too much money as compared to the market, people would think they want to leave, but won’t. But if you’re a company that is at market or slightly above market, and you’re enforcing mandatory RTO, you are in trouble, you just don’t know it yet.
When they were hired during the pandemic, it was agreed there would be an eventual return to the office at an unknown time in the future. They'd been planning a move to my (high-salary, high-cost-of-living) area before the pandemic, so that was just fine with them.
Now it's several years later. If I order a full return to the office they'll have a choice: Either move house, or move jobs.
Selling a house and buying a new one costs $$$$$ and is a huge hassle.
Seems to me pretty believable that they'd look at other jobs if a full return to office was ordered.
Sample size of one, but I've thought about this a lot, and I decided I would hand in my notice if my company unilaterally demanded I physically present myself in a building for several days per week. I've never worked on-site in this job, and been consistently ranked highly in terms of productivity and responsibility.
It's astounding not worth the risk for my firm except for certain teams.
We've even had outright sabotage because one of clients was disliked by an employee.
It's getting ridiculous to keep track off.
We've had 2 of 3 engineering role candidates we recently made offers to decline citing our 3 days a week in office policy...
I think in both cases people were selecting between us and another job. One said he was taking another job for 10k LESS (GBP) but full remote.
(As always, the stated reasons might not be accurate)
Here in the UK, just not having to live near London will save you enormous amounts on rent/mortgage as well.
I'm in the office full time (I actually need to be) and I pay 700 a month just in rent on a crappy room not too close to central. That alone is the equivalent of about £17k before tax, and I am a single guy who doesn't mind housemates. No thanks.