cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/10481867
Billionaire CEOs were quick to sing the praises of working from home at the start of the pandemic, calling it the way of the future — but over the last three years, they’ve slowly changed their tune.
Late last year, Forbes reported that 90% of companies will return to the office in 2024, with 28% threatening to fire workers who don’t comply.
But it turns out that the motivations for calling workers back to the office may have less to do with employee productivity or profit margins and everything to do with catering to the egos of controlling managers who want their workers back, according to a recent study published by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh.
Mark Ma, an associate professor of business administration from Pitt’s Katz Graduate School of Business, who led the study, told BI he started the research hoping to understand why some S&P 500 firms want employees to return to the office while other firms avoid calling them back.
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“One of the most common arguments management suggests is that they want to return to office because employee productivity is low at home, and they believe returns to office would help firms improve performance and ultimately improve the firm’s value,” Ma told BI. “That’s the reason they give — but our results actually do not support these arguments.”
Wasn’t this always just a way to do stealth layoffs?
For some companies, yes. Ultimately, it all extends from greed. Gotta keep my using my land because otherwise it will lose value. Gotta layoff people to make profits go up. Must make money printer go, Brrrrr.
It’s ironic because only the largest of companies actually own the land their offices are on. Most companies are seeing higher costs as a result of holding onto offices that they don’t actually need.
RTO is in effect making employees significantly less productive because their productivity is countered by the added expense of leasing and maintaining offices.