Return to Office (RTO) orders are one ploy companies use to get employees to quit.
BambooHR discusses what’s frequently behind Return-to-Office Mandates.
The connection between RTO mandates and workforce downsizing is not lost on workers, many of whom consider an RTO mandate to be a layoff precursor. Vague reasoning and missing productivity metrics leave employees to assume the worst, which is only fueled by already-low employee happiness and trending anti-work content on social media. One in four (28%) remote workers fear they’ll be laid off before their in-office coworkers.
Nearly two in five (37%) managers, directors, and executives believe their organization enacted layoffs in the last year because fewer employees than they expected quit during their RTO. And their beliefs are well-founded: One in four (25%) VP and C-suite executives and one in five (18%) HR pros admit they hoped for some voluntary turnover during an RTO, proving, in some cases, why RTO mandates are layoffs in disguise.
By using RTO mandates as a workforce reduction tactic, companies are losing talent and morale among their employees. Nearly half (45%) of the employees who have experienced RTO report significant talent loss within their organizations—talent that was highly valued and wished to be retained.
Moreover, the discontent with return to office policies is strong among employees, with more than one in four (28%) stating they would consider leaving their positions if subjected to such mandates. This level of dissatisfaction could lead to a further drain of talent, affecting not just morale but also the stability and innovation potential of the workforce.
If you do lose your job it’s increasingly harder to find a new one.
Note that Continued Unemployment Claims Jump to the Highest Level Since Nov 2021
After stabilizing for about a year, continued unemployment claims have surged in the last two months.
Continued Claims Key Points
- The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending July 6 was 1,867,000, an increase of 20,000 from the previous week’s revised level.
- This is the highest level for insured unemployment since November 27, 2021 when it was 1,878,000. The previous week’s level was revised down by 5,000 from 1,852,000 to 1,847,000.
- The 4-week moving average was 1,850,500, an increase of 11,500 from the previous week’s revised average.
- This is the highest level for this average since December 4, 2021 when it was 1,859,750. The previous week’s average was revised down by 1,250 from 1,840,250 to 1,839,000.
I am closely watching claims now. There will be a new report on Thursday.
I’m still waiting for the in-depth study of Covid labor practices. You think the Dept of Labor (and Dept of Education) would like to know at least best practices, and the effectiveness gained or lost by sending people home. Heaven forbid, we might actually get something of use from the disaster caused by our government.
Meanwhile, one solution is work from home, you’re an independent contractor. Work from the office, you’re an employee. Salaries and benefits, responsibilities, and work expectations would change accordingly.
I suspect many of those who do not cave in to RTO demands are those with a strong position in the labor market, and are the more valuable employees. However HR will not be aware of who does and does not contribute to results, and land up axing components crucial for actual results.
Often the people/manager in charge of executing on some reorganization/policy have absolutely no view of what the work actually entails and who is keeping things running, working purely in formal titles and presumably replaceable cogs in the apparatus, until things fall apart, usually with blame placed on all kinds of other abstract issues.
HR doesn’t decide who gets 86’d. HR is told who they need to meet with who is getting fired.
Companies trying to force RTO mandates on employees hasn’t really made much of a difference as far as actually increasing in-person office attendance. If you look at Kastle Systems’ return to the office metric you’ll see that it has hardly moved in the past couple of years. It rose from a low of around 16% of the office attendance rate at the start of the pandemic until it hit a brick wall at the end of the 2022 summer season.
Since then it has only risen to about 51%. Employers have been barking a lot about RTO but they haven’t really been biting, at least not in the past couple of years. I doubt that a minuscule 2% rise in the total number of people collecting long term unemployment is going to change that either. We’d probably need to see a more serious deterioration in employment first.
Kastle Systems RTO index: https://www.kastle.com/safety-wellness/getting-america-back-to-work/
“One in four (25%) VP and C-suite executives and one in five (18%) HR pros admit they hoped for some voluntary turnover during an RTO, proving, in some cases, why RTO mandates are layoffs in disguise.”
“About BambooHR
BambooHR® is the leading provider of cloud-based HR software solutions that empower HR professionals to manage, support, and grow what matters most—their people.”
Hoping for something is hardly proof that the mandates are layoffs in disguise. The survey was conducted in mid-March and reached ~1,500 people, but I didn’t see any examples of questions or how that ‘hope’ was conveyed to the party conducting the survey. It’s quite possible rather than headcount they were hoping to reduce payroll and will backfill with cheaper labor. So much for statistical rigor for this self-proclaimed industry leader – fortunately that’s not a requirement for HR.
Yeah, I agree. Check out the hard stats on this issue in my comment above yours.
This tactic is a double-edged sword. Yeah, it might work, but you also risk losing good talent along the way.
I guess you better comply with the directions of your employer then. Or start a business for yourself where no one can tell you what to do.
Customer is always boss.
You’re being sarcastic, right? Let’s take education… Is the student the ‘boss’?
“Let’s take education… Is the student the ‘boss’?”
No. But neither is he the customer.
Instead, the “customers” are the decision makers in the various theft rackets who rob others to hand the loot to indoctrinating institutions. In exchange for said institutions arbitrarily handing nonsensical degrees to the dilettante children of The Fed’s favorite retards.
No different from the rest of the rackets making up nearly all of the once-was West.
Customers only have power when a company is dependent on a single or a few customers.
Do you think Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Amazon give a crap about individual customers? They don’t.
“Customers” aren’t all completely orthogonal. If MS stopped listening to the same complaint about Word by even a handful of individual customers, it wouldn’t take long before they risked having a big problem on their hands.
Woodsie, great comment, completely agree from the perspective of the employee. Three comments I humbly suggest for additional consideration.
– From perspective of the employer: Government workers are employed by the citizens – citizens are the boss, and hence bear responsibility in making tough management decisions for the success of the organization, not to exclusive benefit of the employee(s).
– The ability to effectively bear said responsibility is virtually nil due to many impenetrable obstacles – crony politics, vote buying, public unions, etc.
– Ironically, the same folks neutering any ability to manage our civil service/DoD behemoth are also employed by the citizens!
I think a poorly structured, non-competitive organization still boils down to poor (or absent) management. Respectful discussion on blogs like Mishtalk are one small way of contributing to a change in management.
Anecdotally, FWIW, career military, followed by a couple decades in executive roles at a two Fortune 50 companies. Very distinct differences in productivity between the two industries in my experience. Not because government workers are bad people or ill intended. It may have something to do with profit motive and actionable peril for underperformance;)
It was not that long ago when people were talking about chronic labor shortages, usually without understanding the fundamentals driving the labor market.
In regional economic base analysis, we think of ‘companies’ whose production leaves the region (export) vs. production only meeting the region’s needs (support), vs. insufficient production (import). The prime assumption is employment represents ‘production,’ which is subject to all sorts of issues, yet still far better than nothing. BTW, the technical term is ‘location quotient,’ and has been around for nearly 100 years. Simply, it is the ratio of (employment in an industry relative to total employment) for a region relative to the USA.
Long term, it is the export industries that drive regional growth (with a multiplier effect on support industries). The same is likely true at a national/global scale. Do the analysis for the USA and you can see the differences over business cycles. A similar approach using a variant of Beta (based on employment, not asset prices) and you begin to understand regional economic cycles, and what industries are crucial to growth (and decline).
Now, introduce global economic fundamentals, and changes in how work is being done, and where. The long-term result for the US is not pretty; not gloom and doom either, yet. However, it has gotten worse since the early 2000s.
BTW, IMHO, the problem is government (and politicians) not understanding what must be done for the US to become competitive. It starts with rethinking education.
Develop education please
The US (and most of the world) uses a ‘paradigm’ from the 19th/early-20th century. It is founded on organizational theories of Fayol, Weber, Taylor and others–‘scientific management’, well suited to mass production. Add in today’s anti-merit woke/DEI theories of liberalism and the result is largely conditioned thinking. Culturally, it reduces to memes. If you can’t say it in 10 words, forget it. We must restrict discourse to get what passes for learning across to recipients–debate ends, as does critical thinking.
Critical thinking, creative thinking, and consequential thinking are now ignored. Because critical thinking is so important, I tend to focus on it; however all three are crucial IMHO. Critical thinking requires an open mind in all things, and a desire to question. A simple example: Why the shift from global warming to global climate change? Without it, progress is stymied at best. At worst, it accounts for the government’s response to Covid.
Critical thinking is a buzzword in education, but really, it’s heavily biased and used to justify/conceal conditioning.
So, where do we see critical thinking, and how can we incorporate it in education? Imagine Ancient Greece circa Plato, Socrates, Aristotle…. The most brilliant minds of the time were teachers. Did they lecture? Give quizzes and grades? Belong to a union? I suspect debate and discourse went a long way to make thinking critical. Alexander the Great’s teacher: Aristotle. I realize this oversimplifies; however, thinking was not conditioned. Minds were opened, and ideas percolated through the society.
Nowadays, teachers’ colleges are among the lowest academically on any campus. There is a reason why Covid-era education failed miserably.
However, with the Internet as the communication basis, education can create another paradigm. For those students of high ability, taking MIT-quality courses in middle school will offer intellectual challenges far beyond any middle school teacher. Eg. I once took an engineering course from a famous engineer, an innovator–to say it was life-changing is not an exaggeration.
The same principle filters through all abilities. Instead of watching pre-made videos and reading textbooks, students could interact, learn by doing…. etc
Thanks
I notice that Dr. Jordan Peterson is starting an on-line university which he promotes as, “Ten times better and 1/20 the cost” of normal university education…. His final comment in this promotional video is, “I got cancelled at the university so I thought I’d return the favor”…😁
https://petersonacademy.com/enroll
“It was not that long ago when people were talking about chronic labor shortages, usually without understanding the fundamentals driving the labor market.”
And it’s not a coincidence that during much of that time, there were supplemental unemployment benefits incentivizing people to stay home and do no work.
Those days are gone, hopefully forever.
Stay hopeful, but the precedent of handouts now exists. In a bad recession, expect more of the same–politicians are a spineless bunch, always ready to buy votes with your money.
I thought, WFH was about saving the commute for millions who then spend their time in office on coffee breaks.
You know, saving the climate, or is it just a WEF joke.
What is RTO. Is 3 days in the office and 4 days WFH, including holidays and vacations ==> a RTO. If they are dreaming about moving elsewhere where can they go.
Ok peeps. Who is sick and tired of all this bull shit? A republic, if you can keep it …
There are many ways to get of deadwood and this way is the easiest and least expensive. For the ones you really want to keep you give them a side deal. Everybody is happy even those who choose to leave.
In California, you can look up every public employee: state, federal, municipal and see what they are paid by going to transparentcalifrnia.org. It is astounding! Most are paid at least 40% to 50% more than comparable private sector positions. As an example, I always hear how underpaid police officers are underpaid, so I looked some up. I found that a highway patrol officer with only a ged diploma, five years in makes over $220,000 a year. And they still call me every year asking for donations. Unbelievable.
If the job can be done remotely then the job can be done from the Philippines for $100/month, or from Viet Nam for less. Unlike Generation Z Americans these employees speak English and have a good work ethic. They also fit the DEI profile for a bonus.
And that is a scary thought
You’re right. I’ve been hearing about and dreading that for ~ 30 years.
And pretty soon will be able to be done by robots and AI, which will be even cheaper and easier to manage with no language issues, no benefits necessary, no need to take prayer breaks, etc..
This level of dissatisfaction could lead to a further drain of talent
Talent??? really
that belongs to CHINA/RUSSIA and other REAL TECH GIANTS
Don’t forget North Korea.
The US has plenty of talent.
The issue is that large chunks of the talent pool chase the money. In IT, that’s crap like Facebook and Snapchat. In medicine, it’s treating baldness and ED. Our talent isn’t deployed to make us maximally competitive or militarily dominant.
Actually, a cure for baldness is OK with me!
Talent? What do these talented people actually do? Please explain.
I worked in corporations for 40 years. I saw precious little talent anywhere.
Hence US corporations post ’71…..
At Toyota; as well as other world leaders small and large: Darned near every single position is held by the person on the planet best at doing that particular job. And it would take years to decades to train a replacement to the current guys’ level…
Which does make it hard to retire for those “talents”, when the generation following them consists of only half as many people……
But that’s what it takes to compete at anything useful. The alternative being the post-’71 US’ way; consisting of sucking on The Fed’s teat while burning seedcorn built up by previous generations. Until that seedcorn supply first dries up. Then others notice, and stop providing terms anymore. Leading to an unavoidable; first slowly then all at once; disorderly 75% collapse in purchasing power, necessary to bring consumption back into line with actual real economic output again.
I saw RTO as a kind of a “test” that employers use to weed out the goof-offs.
On paper it certainly appears so. Reality, it did the opposite. Why would a “goof-off” suddenly become a defiant trail blazer ready to start on a new, somewhat stressful exciting journey? Only motivated people with skills they know are valuable would do that for the most part.
Employers want more than skills, they want availability, for their money’s worth. Goof-offs go dark, don’t show up for zoom mtgs.
Fact is none of these work from home schemes are worth the powder it takes to blow them back to a plow and a mule. That’s where we’re headed. It took Satan three days to fall from heaven to the earth. It’ll take three decades for our artificial economy to implode. By then no one will remember what the skyscrapers were for.
“Return to Office (RTO) orders are one ploy companies use to get employees to quit.”
Incentivizing. I read that the Covid shot mandates incentivized some 70,000 health care employees in New York to quit or be fired.
Those are the people that will be treating patients in the future as they didn’t die or get disabled from the clot shots.
Jack Welch pioneered the idea of firing 10% of the workforce every year to get rid of ‘underperformers’. Every major company now does this. Even if it means getting rid of good people.
Only you don’t fire them, you get them to quit. Things like RTO and PIP (performance improvement plans).
If you ask me, it’s a psychopathic way of managing, but the world is run by psychopaths so that’s the way it is.
Agree with your comments. Even better if one learns how to cook the books like Jack.
It sounds good on paper but only works with unskilled or low skilled employees who can be immediately replaced with someone who can walk in and do the job day 1 (ie hit the ground running).
Otherwise that 10% turn over means you are constantly replacing and training 10% of your workforce. If training is 1-1 it means another 10% are perpetually training which leaves only 80 doing real work.
The real reason Henry Ford paid his workers well was so he wouldn’t have to constantly replace (and train) new people when existing ones they left.
My job took at least three years to train someone competent with a degree from a top college. Good luck when those people “walk” en masse.
That’s what’s happening now with the Baby Boomers’ retirement in full swing….
I did a computer simulation of this. Over ten years pretty much everyone gets sacked. .9^10 = 34% survivors, for a very rough calculation, and that sort of assumes the actual bottom 10% get sacked every year, as opposed to a good worker who gets a bad performance review one time (who hasn’t?). My model was alot more complicated but that gives you an idea. And GE is (was) a tech company. How can such a company survive that sort of knowledge loss? Welch spent $2K of GE money on a shower curtain. I could see him spending it on booze and hookers, but a shower curtain? He was a profound idiot.
“He was a profound idiot.”
Duh!
That has been pretty much the only way to get ahead in America since ’71.
If you’re not an idiot: You having any influence, is simply too threatening to the “made money on my home” imbecility pyramid headed up by The completely unconstrained Fed. Hence: Idiots only. By emergent design.
Someone who can decline returning to an office likely already had other income streams or employment options lined up. Maybe even close enough to retirement where they could scoff at management even bringing it up.
For everyone else they are not quitting. These are the people by and large with financial obligations. Alimony, child support, child care, going through a divorce…you name it.
Big picture RTO mandates get rid of people without a lot of personal baggage and hand their work off to people with it.
haven’t you heard of the real good ones working for multiple companies Remotely
on guy had 3 gig jobs(each full time)
was raking in around $1mil year
had to setup 3 different systems in 3 rooms to keep them straight
And that’s the way it should be. More power to him. It’s called meritocracy.
Graph it back another decade or two. We’re still well below normal/good economy numbers.
Pretty lame to do a graph that only goes to 2022. 2022 was the hottest job market in history, it no surprise claims are higher than that ffs.
Agree that Mish’s alarm bell might be going off prematurely, but if continued claims break above 1,950,000 or so, the game is on.
Employees who quit get no severance benefits. Employees who are laid off may get significant benefits, including salary continuation for several months and health care coverage or at health least insurance subsidies.
Depends on the employer. My former employer (small, poor college) gave one month of health insurance and no addtl. salary, to laid-off employees.
First they started with the openings shenanigan, where the businesses left many job openings as needed, but not really.
That skewed the crap out of real openings, and lots of people were jumping from job to job and many ended up unemployed, and with a bogus resume with too many hires and quits listed. Now they are having an even harder time finding work.
So now we go to the work from home crowd to downsize some more? What’s next?
By the way, does anybody else notice that Government Employees hardly ever lose their jobs, get laid off, or hours cut back. In fact it appears just the opposite. They are always hiring, but never firing. They are always adding, but never downsizing, they are hardly never in the paper, but rather hand picked/selected.
Things that make you go Hmm…
Things that make you go hmm? Well, understandable given Government Employees, especially the unionized ones, negotiate not only the selection but the pay negotiation with their elected bosses. (At least in Oregon)
When you calculate in benefits … government workers average far higher compensation than in the private sector. My “pension” check is $541/month … my cousins who worked for the state of PA retired at 48 and 51 respectively … neither had a college degree, both worked 30 years and now make 80% of ending salary + COLA + health benefits for life. They will cost PA far more in their retirement than they did while working. It’s good to have an unlimited revenue stream not tied to your performance.
It sounds like your cousins retired from a police, fire or prison job. In California, such jobs come with especially good pension benefits.
In Chicago ‘burbs that would be the guy with 20 -25 years on the public works woodchipper truck picking up tree branches and twigs along the street.
Teachers also get same superb benefits.
I’ve heard Cali lifeguards can pull in 6 figures in retirement too.
Basically all government jobs over pay benefits.
If the health benefits were free, they were cops, and cops have unions that make the state legislatures pass laws giving all cops in the state a very good retirement at 50, plus making them immune from prosecution for just about everything.
Retired Fed employee here. Your cousins, and you, made choices. You could’ve been a PA state employee but decided against that. You denigrate their lack of a college degree. Can I assume you have one (or more) and assume that makes you “better” and thus feel you are more deserving?
In 1989 I was just plain lucky to get a government job. I dont think it is so easy now unless you have relevant work experience. Perhaps youll also agree that managers everywhere have no interest in hiring losers that are just gonna require large amounts of time to document their “loser-ness” 🙂 Government supervisors and managers are gonna screen out the “had four jobs in three years” people before they get hired.
Having ‘four jobs in three years’ could be good, bad, or indifferent. Why presume they are ‘losers?’ What if they lack relevant experience, but are fast learners? How do you identify a loser? How much does the work environment contribute to ‘loser-ness.’
Is the person you interview, the person you hire? Um, not usually. They say what they think you want to hear.
The motivation to hire someone could stem from a desire for ‘fit’ in the department–we hire ‘team players.’ What about ‘we hire inspiration.’ We hire people for their other/outside experience?
Congrats. You are one of the 2 wolves with the 1 sheep at the table deciding what is for dinner in the “democracy” Franklin warned about.
I used to be astroboy and I did not write this.
The problem is not your cousins. They signed on, and gave up other opportunities. They probably paid into a retirement system, with a lower contribution paid by the employer. Likely they were not eligible for tax-deferred programs, 401Ks etc. Their pension fund may be funded at 70% if they are lucky–and will have a huge problem when the market collapses, and the pension fund falls to 30% funded, or less. When they die, there is no principal to pass on.
You, on the hand, had tax incentives to contribute into your own ‘plan.’ You retain the principal…
Please provide some proof to your assertion that government jobs pay much higher compensation than similar jobs in the private sector.
“Unionized Government Employee” now that’s an oxymoron, if ever there was one to see…
Stu is just bitter he never left his McDonalds job. 🙂
Walmart, get it right…
As a retired Federal worker, I can say that we got rid of positions that computers automated out of existence (fewer secretaries and clerks), and the remaining low skilled jobs were contracted out (they dont count as govt. jobs). What is left is a well-paid professional workforce, typically college-educated, that know they have a great deal and dont go out of their way to get dumped. 🙂
My field is filled with competent and honorable people. We are well-paid, highly educated and very professional too.
The basement-living old men who were run over by life find it easier to complain about everybody else “getting an advantage.” These are usually people that turn into white supremacists as well.
I was using irony.
I was “run over” but chose to get up and fight Turning 70 with a 40 something wife and happier than when I had double the assets that I have now Getting out of the rat race of NY didn’t hurt
I don’t ever disparage people for their job choices, provided they aren’t complaining about thier choices.
If you can get a government job and you like it, great. If you’d rather work in the private sector, great. If you wish to be overly ambitious and secretly work 3 remote jobs then, fantastic. I’m happy for you. If you’d rather have lots of free time and work part time, again….that’s great.
Everyone has a flipping opinion on how everyone else should live thier lives. It’s mind numbing. Government workers are simply taking advantage of what’s available, just like those in the private sector. You can argue all day and night that government jobs shouldn’t exist or they get paid to much, but the reality is they do exist.
We are all just trying to make a living. Focusing on what others have compared to you does nothing to improve your life situation. Comparison is the thief of joy.
Yup.
And sometimes, depending on current circumstances, you have to grab whatever work comes your way.
And not be too picky depending on circumstances.
Apparently we have both been there before.
Perhaps more than once?
The more practice, the better.
In the private sector you are always auditioning for your job (ie showing you are good enough not to be fired or replaced by cheaper worker).
If government jobs also worked like this where anyone could challenge for your job the rest of us wouldn’t mind as much. That would get rid of the entitlement factor and over payment that unions breed. Basically if someone wants to do your job for less pay and same work they should oust you from that spot.
“…know they have a great deal and dont go out of their way to get dumped…”
Perhaps this is why there are so few people coming forward about policies like DEI, that clearly are reducing effectiveness. Willful negligence is the end result, even banding together to protect the incompetent.
The average age for a federal worker is about 58 also, so they’re at the peak of their earning days. In my experience very few feds do the actual work, they’re all managers, and generally have little to no technical knowledge. There are exceptions. But the vast majority people who do the actual work are contractors employed by Beltway Bandit corporations who often are laid off whenever a contract is ended, cancelled, defunded, or underbid, in which case the knowledge is lost. I doubt if 10% of the work I did for the feds wasn’t completely wasted. I know that most contracts had me down as over $300K a year, that’s alot of overhead. Really a dumb way to run a government. The Chinese aren’t that stupid, I’m sure.
All true. Meanwhile, we continue to vote in politicians who cannot balance budgets. Do any politicians/presidential candidates have a platform of reducing government employment by 20% with no loss of effectiveness? I wonder why.