RTO Bullying Tactics
Another headline that got sent my way today. This is from ABC News.
“Employers push for staff to return to the office after working from home as commercial property values plunge” by Daniel Ziffer.
I am sure my well-intended friends, family, and followers see these articles and exclaim, “Wow, let me send this to Karen. This will really get her riled up.” They are right – it did.
Let’s tear this apart.
Bullying
Not only have employees been threatened with performance management and job losses if they do not return to the office, but executives are also having their bonuses linked to their time in the office and getting their employees there.
This, to me, is out-and-out bullying tactics.
The Australian Financial Review has reported that ANZ, one of Australia’s big four banks, has told employees that their annual bonuses will be cut if they do not spend at least 50% of their scheduled working hours in the office.
The Commonwealth Bank, Suncorp Group and Origin Energy have similarly linked office attendance to annual performance reviews and bonuses.
UK banking giant Citi has told employees bonuses will be docked if they are not in the office for at least three days a week.
ANZ Chief Executive Shayne Elliott has told employees that being in the office is in their interest. Well, of course, it is if you will punish me financially or threaten me with losing my job!
"Almost everything we do relies on teamwork, relies on people collaborating, sharing ideas, doing things together — not just in their team, but with an adjacent team as well. And it's proven that collaboration in general works much better when you're actually in the room," he told LinkedIn.
“Office attendance will boost your career. Don't think you are doing it for me. This is in your interest. This is how you learn. This is how you get better. This is how you build your skills. This is how you observe others."
Many activities, such as collaboration and complex problem-solving, can have better outcomes when done in person. But those activities are not governed by how many days you must be in the office.
I could have a week of collaboration activities followed by a week of deep-focus work. It would make sense for me to spend five days in the office, followed by five days working from home.
Elliott claims, “Almost everything we do relies on teamwork, relies on people collaborating.”
A large portion of these finance disciplines is best done in isolation, such as focus work, which requires the elimination of distractions. I can testify to this as I have worked in or around these areas.
Technology - architecture, service management, software and infrastructure engineering.
Corporate Services - finance, talent and culture, legal, risk, communications, corporate responsibility and strategy.
Data - analytics, data intelligence, data asset management and data services.
I should go into the office when it makes sense, there is a purpose, and it is intentional, not because the company mandates 2 or 3 days a week in the office.
Flexible working
The ANZ website has this to say about ‘flexible’ working.
“All roles can be worked flexibly at ANZ, ensuring we are better able to meet the needs of our customers and our staff.
How we work is an evolution of flexible working whereby the vast majority of our teams will work to a 'hybrid' or 'blended' model - that is 2 to 3 days in the office and 2 to 3 days at home.”
The Cambridge Dictionary defines “flexible” as: “able to change or be changed easily according to the situation.”
I should be able to change the number of days I work in the office or from home according to the situation I find myself in.
I should locate where my work activity is best performed, not because I need to meet my quota for days in the office and at home.
If I could get 10 minutes with Mr Elliott, I would ask:
“Do you not trust me to determine when my work is best performed from home or in the office?”
“No one is saying they do not want to work in the office – ever. They say they will work in it when it makes sense, such as for coaching, mentoring and training.”
“Why do I have to do a 2-hour commute to and from the office to do what I could have done equally as well, if not better, from home?”
“Why can’t my team and I decide when we should be in the office?”
“Why do you have to mandate the number of days rather than provide guidance on what activities are optimised when done in person in the office? Then let me and my team operate within that guidance?”
“Tell me this is not just about power, control, money and real estate. I do not have to be in the office 2 to 3 days weekly to learn, build my skills, and observe others. You are mandating I work in the office when there is no need for me to do.”
“Flexibility must come with autonomy for me to utilise that flexibility as I see best. There is no autonomy when you mandate.”
“When you asked employees to return to the office, they explained the above. You are now telling them to return, not having listened.”
Real estate
So, let’s talk about real estate.
The ANZ Centre at 833 Collins Street, Melbourne, was completed at a cost of $750 million in 2009. It is the largest single-tenanted commercial building in Australia. It comprises 14 storeys, provides a gross floor area of 130,000 square metres, and accommodates 6,500 staff.
Is Mr. Elliott’s mandate to return to the office about teamwork, collaboration, and sharing of ideas, or more about concern over the empire he has built and the square footage of real estate that could sit empty?
Is it about an image? The more real estate you have, the more it costs, and the bigger your headcount, the greater your position in the hierarchy of the ‘successful’ CEOs.
If size does matter, is that the reason behind the mandated return to the office of Google to return to the 2 million square feet (190,000 square meters) of the Googleplex; Apple to return to the $165 billion ‘spaceship’ at Apple Park; and Goldman Sachs to return to the 749-foot-tall (228m), 44 story building at 200 West Street?
Top term
And it is more than just existing employees looking for more flexibility. Job seekers, your potential talent, is too.
Matt Cowgill, senior economist for jobs website Seek, said:
“Since COVID, work from home has consistently been the number one search term on Seek.
“It used to be that people go on and search for 'administrative assistant' or 'retail job' or something like that. They still search for those things. But number one — head and shoulders — the most searched-for term is 'work from home. So, it’s clearly something that people value.”
Companies must get their hybrid working model right with autonomy and flexibility to attract and retain talent.
The impact
When employers mandate a return to the office, they say they do not trust their employees to do the right thing. They need to treat their employees as adults who can decide where they will do their best work.
A 2023 Slack survey revealed a crisis of trust in the workplace. It found that more than 1 in 4 desk workers do not feel trusted at work, despite the data also showing that trust boosts both experience and performance in the workplace.
Feeling trusted at work has the most significant impact on employee productivity.
Trusted employees report:
2.1x better focus
2x higher productivity
4.3x greater overall satisfaction with work
Trusted employees are significantly more likely (1.3x) to say they put in more effort at work. They’re also 1.2x more likely to say they’re willing to go above and beyond than those who don’t feel trusted at work (40% vs. 33%).
Employees who don’t feel trusted by their employers report:
2.3x higher stress and anxiety levels
2.1x worse access to relevant people, files and resources at work
4.2x lower sense of belonging
Gartner research shows that only 53% of employees trust their organisation, and only 63% of organisations say they trust their employees.
Workplace trust is particularly critical to innovation – in high-trust organisations, 79% of employees bring new ideas to their managers as opposed to 17% in low-trust organisations.
If you do not show your employees that you trust them, you impact productivity and innovation, both critical to organisational success.
The turnaround
Both employers and employees will agree that the office is important. The disagreement is about how often they should be in the office and the type of work that should be done there.
Going into an office to spend most of the day on Zoom calls makes no sense. Team members and other teams may surround you, but you are not spending time with them.
During the pandemic, organisations gave employees more freedom and flexibility to organise their work around their lives rather than vice versa. They could work where they wanted. They avoided a time-consuming and costly commute. They had autonomy that preserved their well-being. Research by Gartner found that autonomy reduces employee fatigue by 1.9 times and makes them 2.3 times more likely to stay with the organisation.
The pandemic also changed employee priorities in what I termed The Great Realisation. Many companies recognised the shift and set to work on a more human-centric approach to work that revolved around people and consideration of their needs. These companies saw better talent and business outcomes.
Employer mandates to return to the office are a complete turnaround and at odds with the human-centric approach. They are a slap in the face to employees who were given autonomy and flexibility only to have it taken away.
It’s a slow burn
The Unispace Global Insights 2023 study engaged 9,5000 employees and 6,500 employers across 17 countries worldwide. It found that mandated office returns are hurting talent attraction and retention. I explored these findings in July’s newsletter “Return to the Office – A New Balance.”
Almost half (42%) of firms that mandated returns have experienced higher than normal employee attrition, while 29% struggle to recruit.
72% of employers surveyed stated that they are taking this approach. An additional 20% have not mandated a return but highly recommend it.
In that newsletter, I acknowledged that many employees, especially those in the banking sector, are tied to their employers with golden handcuffs.
“These are the financial incentives given to employees to discourage them from leaving. While these may retain staff in the short term, the retained staff will quickly become unmotivated and disengaged, stressed, and anxious, as they must take on the workload of those employees who have jumped ship. Remember, the mandated return adversely impacts recruitment, so attrition cannot be replaced. Eventually, the golden handcuffs become tarnished, and the once-handcuffed employee will find a way to slip them off slowly. They realise that their mental and physical well-being is worth more than their financial benefit.”
While these big banks may not immediately feel the impact of their mandates, I predict they eventually will. It may be a slow burn, but the touch paper has been lit.