CEO video: back to the office now, or else
vice.com
vice.com
There are some leaders who simply can't function in a remote environment. However, this is a flaw of their leadership and the organizational culture, not a problem with employees or their preferences. It is a problem with personal fear, inflexibility, and lack of vision more than anything else. My experience is that the older people are and the longer they have worked at a company, the more issues they have with remote work.
We proved during COVID that we can function just fine remotely. It benefits the employees in a hundred different ways. An organization that wants people to come to work at their detriment is one that doesn't value their people, and this is how they are expressing it.
Yes this is the entire point. They want to turn up both voluntary attrition or be able to fire for cause. Either way they get to lighten their employee costs which is the goal.
Because if most of them just ignore you, what then? Fire most of your staff?
Also: Good luck filling those positions (especially after that video)
1. Track badging 2. Enforce RTO via chain-of-command. SVPs, VPs, and directors have aggregate RTO compliance metrics. SVPs crack the whip on VPs to get their numbers up, VPs crack the whip on their directors, and directors crack the whip on their reports, and so on, all the way down.
The actual implementation of the policy was a mess and there was poor messaging especially at the beginning. I'm pretty sure it still doesn't take PTO or illnesses into account — if there's an issue with that, you're supposed to work it out with your manager — and from what I heard they simply handled the holidays by excluding the work weeks before and after Christmas from the metrics. But, ultimately, the chain of command approach appears to have worked very well in terms of actually getting people to come in.
edit: Just noticed from your profile that you also work at Amazon, so I guess there's nothing new in my comment for you :)
Most people are maliciously complying. They will come in at 11:45, grab lunch, and then leave. The clever ones then come back late at night to badge in and out again after 6pm so it looks like they were there all day, just outside. So far they aren't counting total time on campus, but when they do those people will have good numbers.
But it means they are now not working during those drive times. And they ones that are coming in all day waste a ton of everyone's time, including the remote people, looking for meeting rooms and setting up video calls, because every meeting still requires video, since all the teams are spread out over multiple offices.
And they also had to resort to denying promotions and raises for anyone who didn't RTO.
People do work noticeably shorter days, a handful of people come in for less than 30 minutes (huge waste of resources and time), and yeah, there is a morale problem.
One thing I have noticed is that the more co-located a team is, the more people behave like pre-Covid — in at 9:30, out at 5. Satellite workers who are coming in are the most unhappy (for obvious reasons) and are the most likely to badge in, grab a coffee and check their emails, and then leave and finish the day at home.
* They already do their best to make delivery drivers' and warehouse workers jobs as inhuman and miserable as possible.
If someone is a top performer within a highly valued part of the org, then one way or another they will be able to navigate RTO without serious problems.
For everyone else, RTO is a dial for management to fine tune voluntary attrition before having to resort to more unpleasant tools like higher PIP quotas, at a time where big tech firms all still need to cut employee costs.
I shouldn't be amazed, but somehow I still always am.
Probably the 3 entry-level employees that still care to go to the office.
Yeah, if they won't eat their own dog food then why would I want to eat it?
But don't take my word for it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebMD#Criticism
That, and it won't immediately say "Cancer"
The economics of it make sense on both sides (Office costs, salary costs, commutes, hiring pool access)
And the organization impacts work well (for knowledge based businesses) if Leadership is able to adapt to measuring outputs instead of inputs and fostering clarity of goals.
The economics of it make sense on both sides
Smart companies don't care about either but many (usually larger) corps have vested interest in both.
Feels like we keep trying to look for a conspiracy when in reality that answer might just be that leaders believe their teams to be more productive in office
(Note: I'm not saying I believe this to be true, that there's evidence for this, that it's right, or anything else along those lines. Just that the most plausible explanation is that people asking for RTO believe it's going to make the company more valuable, not their commercial real estate holdings.)
people asking for RTO believe it's going to make the company more valuable
Personally I don't understand why there is even a push to return people to office if they are working fine remotely. We're having this argument at my place right now... Most of us have been remote for 3 years and there's no obvious signs that we're delivering lower quality or any slower than we were before. I think everyone is onboard with occasional team meetups, but requiring an arbitrary amount of office per week serves no good purpose.
I do get the need for office work in some cases, but outside of that it seems to me a lot of this is simply driven by managers feeling less important when they can't be office busy bodies. At very least it's interesting to note that the desire to return to work appears to be highest among those with more "power".
I finish work in 1-2 hrs. With RTO, I finish work within 4-5 hrs. Combine this with a physical commute.
Constant breaks in attention. People just asking stupid shit irl when it’s clearly documented online. The cOlLaBorRaTiOn is really just micromanaging issues projected onto us.
Oh and let’s not forget the exposure to your virus of the week/month from people with kids in school or daycare!
Just another deadass company and one that I will never directly work for
I think it's awesome some people have found such a place, more power to them/you, but having so little to do is a very alien concept to me.
Related: has any contested RTO on a disability basis?
https://vimeo.com/866052086/7d7781e9ea
The tag line at the end could be interpreted different ways and is slightly awkward, but not enough that I'd give it a second thought.
IMHO this article is just people yet again trying flex the power of shame and contempt, against something they dislike (returning to in-person work). Before you join in, just watch the video!
I would agree with your final statement and would go further: Share with any people considering work at WebMD: Better to cringe now instead of after you accept an offer.
Here is an incomplete list of items that might fall into this list:
- The opening frame of the video, indicating no one is there because everyone is in person
- "Unfortuately, too big of a group hasn't returned"- "We need you ready and present and we need it now". Both of these indicate the employees that are working remotely are not pleasing to the senior leadership staff -- and whether they were performing well or not doesn't seem to be addressed by that same senior leadership staff. It also seems to imply the employees weren't 'ready and present' up to this point.
- The background music (which is either tone-deaf to the message or downright menacing). Iko-iko (the song) has a meaning.
How would you like to see the CEO and executives communicate this message, without menace? Forget that you might not agree with the message; how do they say it better?
I watched the video. It was even worse than I expected.
I understand that it's for laughs - and I got some enjoyment your comment - but I also think it tends to cross over into 'real life'. It's used (maybe not by the parent, but by many) as a substitute for actually examining the merits, being open-minded, curious, learning.
Under these social 'rules', if we can ridicule it, shame it, that's the end of the discussion. It crowds out people who are atypical, and who are inventive and challenging the norms and the estabilishmen (in whatever place they are). It creates a very conservative culture.
To riff on: I think people have become much less expressive, much more afraid of ridicule, as social media has enveloped our lives. When the whole world wouldn't see, it didn't matter much if you took a chance with how you dressed that day.
What does 'correct' mean here, and what makes something 'correct to ridicule'? Other than when it's harmless, I think ridicule is toxic. It's an appeal to toxic emotions and interactions, and that spreads to other things, and especially in today's culture, it's a disease that we need to be careful about inflaming. Also, it fails to look at merits - almost the point of ridicule is to avoid that, which will lead to many mistakes, much harm, and closes the door on much innovation.
If you don't understand that, I can't help you.
In comedy I think the best litmus test is "punching up/down." I think riffing on a brand conglomerate's HR video could be considered "punching up."
Exactly. Who amongst us can say that they’ve never quoted Iko Iko lyrics in a threat to employees? It is a common and normal thing that happens all the time
Edit: I mean not that it's a message for the competition to hear, but it's the leaders telling telling the team 'we're tough - when we're together!'.
this means that "US" in the remainder of the video becomes the people speaking, which in this case is the high level management.
If a company doesn't have any way to determine employee worth other than counting heads in the office and peaking at their screen... there is a problem that won't be fixed by RTO.
Edit: 'we're tough - when we're together!'
That's on a level with children's cartoon "power of friendship" messages. If anything it would make me run even further from the offices.
This video was not intended for a wide audience. It was only sent to employees. The idea that the "we" was "everyone who works here" was lost on us, and it felt that "we" meant "Leadership"
I don't know why you like the flavor of boots, but it's a taste many of us have not acquired.
Here is another fitting quote
>I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse.
If an adult spoke to me like that in the context of any type of relationship, I would immediately look for a way out. Maybe that’s the point here. Yes, there’s a hierarchy at work, and those at the top have the right to make the rules. But the smug condescension in this video says “I haven’t made the business case for this or I haven’t effectively communicated it, so I’m just resorting to ‘because I said so’”. Not the kind of environment I’d want to be part of.
I get that the intro with silly office shots and lots of different members of the management team is meant to provide some levity, but making a significant, unilateral change to an employment agreement isn’t a situation that calls for levity, and so it comes off as disrespectful and condescending. I think that getting straight to the point and being honest about it is a better approach.
> empathy
I still don't see the video as a problem. Most of the comments here (not yours) are jumping on the ridicule bandwagon, so I don't know if I have a blind spot, in which case I need to be careful with how I communicate, or if a lot of it is that bandwagon.
translation: "we want you to work harder and spend 2 hours a day commuting to an uncomfortable office to make us more money"
Oh and additionally, they've been running at less than a skeleton crew for the last couple years. Choosing to hire overseas contractors that can't due the full job due to HIPPA requirements. They are trying to get people to quit so they don't have to pay severance.
The great thing about free markets however is that companies that offer remote working have a great competitive advantage by virtue of that alone.
However, there haven't been any long term studies on "innovation", if you can even define that, and how it fares with remote work. There is also no long term data on how new people to the industry will do starting their career remotely. I know personally I would not be where I am if I weren't in the office near senior people at the start of my career. But I also know that there are ways to replicate that ad-hoc learning with remote work.
Lots of bean counters and HR types, though.
I would quit over just the existence of this video if it had been authored by the company I work at.
I'm not sure they mean to start a RTO Krewe, but it sure feels like they're calling out the WFH Krewe.
In office work is prone to the same difficulty in different forms. You don’t think people were alt-tabbing in the office? Taking really long lunches or coffee breaks? Tying one or more drinks on during those breaks? Clocking out mentally if not physically by 2 on Fridays?
Tell that to these guys. It’s not the remote workers demanding everyone work remotely.
Now this came out. I was not given a special email on the side that said "don't worry, this isn't about you". I just got the weird threat video.
Don't defend these people please. They're not good at their jobs.
We had a young woman working multiple jobs and feeding the work back to Pakistan. We had a young man who smoked weed and played WoW all day.
Turns out you can just fire people!
So what you're saying is, the work was getting done?
My second thought was their CEO looks like someone named Chester who isn't legally allowed near children.
My third thought was they made the finals of weird videos to be mocked on Last Week Tonight when it comes back in February.
Conclusion: They jumped their own shark in a way Elon would find difficult to attain so I don't think anyone good would want to RTO to work for them anyhow.
*CEO stops talking... extremely cringe workers dancing with a greenscreen backdrop... google meet "no one else is here; because we are all in person now!" and... their interpretation of the lyrics to the background song*.
Wow. What a close, awful.
Truly awful.
--
However to defend them a little, I personally have noticed that the people who routinely come to the office tend to be better informed and have more realistic expectations of what is possible.
It's true that being in-person can paper over communication gaps, and you can argue that those gaps shouldn't exist; but they do. Additionally, while I am CTO of a remote-first company there starts becoming a knowledge and culture imbalance with the people who are capable of going to the office from time-to-time.
It's also true that we need a lot of positive interactions as humans, and we tend to have micro-positive interactions more often in person, usually when we reach out to someone over text chat or have a meeting it's somewhat negative. My psychologist once told me it takes 9 good interactions to offset 1 bad one, which is probably not grounded in science but I think the proportions are something like that; and it seems like we are more prone to communicate more often negatively if there is any friction in making that communication.
I would like us to have some form of strongly flexible work, but I am not certain that this is possible... it's essentially "worst of both worlds" where we have an expensive office that is barely used and people can't live where they really want to.
I guess co-working is the way to solve the former, but it doesn't help with the latter. Though co-working spaces can be as expensive for 1 week as taking a whole month anyway. :(
Sarcasm aside, capitalism at work, really nothing to see here. They'll lose employees from the demand to work in office for the various reasons, and maybe it'll affect their bottom line, and maybe they'll learn some lessons. Or maybe they whither by not moving with the times. The websites they create are nothing that couldn't be lost.