- Tech CEOs have been trying to force workers back into the office for the past two years, often threatening layoffs.
- However, a new study shows that tech bosses are now backing down from their demands.
- Only 3% of tech companies now require workers to be in the office full-time, down from 8% last year.
- The study, conducted by Flex Index, analyzed the flexible work policies of 2,670 tech companies employing over 11 million people.
- The number of fully flexible tech firms has increased from 75% in 2023 to 79% this year.
- The most popular policy among tech firms is now the “employee’s choice” model, where employees can choose when and where they work.
- This model is now used by 56% of tech firms, up from 38% in 2023.
- Only 18% of firms now dictate which days their workers need to work from the office.
- Despite tech companies being well-positioned to work from home, many CEOs have flip-flopped on their remote work policies.
- In 2020, companies like Meta, Twitter, and Shopify announced they would leverage remote work, but many have since backtracked on those promises.
- A survey of US CEOs by KPMG found that only one-third expect a full return to the office in the next three years, down from 62% last year.
- Resistance from workers has been cited as a reason for the change in CEO attitudes towards remote work.
- Amazon is an example of how contentious the RTO battle can be, with around 30,000 employees signing a petition against the company’s in-office mandate.
- Dropbox co-founder and CEO Drew Houston summed up the situation, saying that CEOs keep hitting the “go-back-to-2019” button, but it’s not working.
Return to office was just an easy way to get people to quit instead of laying them off and having to pay severance
I tend to agree, but isn’t it a little harder to control whom gets caught in that kind of constructive dismissal rather than targeted layoffs?
I dont think the big companies really care. They (FAANG for example) massively overhired
Targeted layoffs are tricky to pull off. You can be sued for wrongful dismissal and then you need to show you were not targeting that person by anything other than random. You can easially lay off everyone on a project. Anything where you select individuals is risky if they can somehow argue you choose them because of some status (minority or whatever - even white male is not a status you can dismiss someone on) . Don’t get me wrong, companies lay off part of a department all the time - but they would prefer to not do that.
Even if someone quits from a department you don’t want to lose people from, you can just transfer an employee from a different department that didn’t lose enough people. So this is good enough and someone who quits cannot sue.
Also if someone quits they cannot collect unemployment. Generally governments track how often a company lays off employees and charges higher unemployment rates to those who lay off more people so getting people to quit saves you here too.