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Corporate America executives are stepping up efforts to get workers back into the office, using a combination of threats and inducements to get employees to abandon the work-from-home lifestyle they embraced in their early years of the Covid-19 pandemic.
For over a year, Google has been asking its workers to come in three days a week, enticing them with free food and other perks. But now the company is getting serious. On Wednesday, the company told employees they must meet the three-day requirement or their no-shows could show up in their performance reviews, according to a memo sent to employees by Fiona Cicconi, Google’s chief people officer and the Washington mail is available.
At Farmers Insurance, many workers are being told to return to the office three days a week from September, even after being told last year that remote work would remain. In contrast, tech giant Salesforce announced later this month that it would be donating to local charities for each day employees come into the office. an attempt to appeal to workers’ altruistic impulses.
Despite President Biden declaring the pandemic over, the tug-of-war for office is still in full swing. Workers are reluctant to give up the flexibility they’ve gained during the pandemic, arguing it’s benefited their mental health and work-life balance. But many leaders firmly believe the office is still a necessary hub for innovation and collaboration, and local governments are eager for workers to return to help revitalize ailing inner cities.
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Perks — like great coffee, free lunches, and commuter benefits — that employers used to use to lure workers back are gone in most workplaces. Big corporations like Disney, Starbucks and AT&T have ordered their workers to return to their offices in recent months. Despite these efforts, office occupancy rates in the country’s major metropolitan areas remain stubbornly below 50 percent of pre-pandemic levels, according to data collected by Kastle Systems.
Now, as a huge wave of layoffs continues in Silicon Valley and general economic turmoil continues across the country, companies are making renewed inroads — and many of them are no longer playing nice.
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Google has long been known for its colorful offices and perks, which include all-you-can-eat dining, laundry service, and free massages. Its executives boasted of being one of the first major US companies to send workers home in March 2020 as the pandemic began to spread. Google has introduced its video conferencing and cloud services to other companies as remote work, recreation and education opportunities. But it was also one of the biggest companies pushing for a return to the office.
The company began requiring employees to go to their offices three days a week in April 2022, but many have simply ignored the requirements, enforcing attendance requirements infrequently, depending on manager and department. Many of Google’s gleaming offices, including its massive new building in Mountain View, California, were well below capacity.
“We’ve heard from Google employees that those who spend at least three days a week in the office feel more connected to other Google employees, and that this effect is amplified when teammates work in the same location,” Cicconi said in the memo. “Obviously not everyone believes in ‘magic hallway conversations,’ but there’s no question that working together in the same room makes a positive difference.”
Management’s recent announcement that a person’s no-show should be noted on performance reviews was seen as the most aggressive attempt yet to get people to enter an office, said a Google employee, who spoke on condition that anonymity be avoided should revenge. It could result in many more workers quitting or being laid off, adding to the thousands Google laid off in January, they said.
“Our hybrid approach is designed to combine the best of being in person with the benefits of working from home for part of the week. As we’ve been working this way for over a year now, we’re officially incorporating this approach into all of our workplace policies,” said Google spokesman Ryan Lamont.
Meanwhile, Salesforce is trying an unusual tactic to get reps on the door: The company plans to donate $10 to local charities for every day an employee steps into its office from June 12-23, an initiative first reported by Fortune. Salesforce will also make a charitable donation for every remote employee who attends a company event during this time slot.
“Giving back is deeply embedded in everything we do, and we are proud to launch Connect for Good to encourage employees to raise $1 million for local nonprofits,” said Annie Vincent, director of corporate communications at Salesforce, in a statement to The Post.
With nearly 12,000 employees in San Francisco, Salesforce is the largest tech employer in the city, where office vacancy rates have risen to a record 29 percent. Salesforce is part of that retreat: Since March, the management software company shed 1 million square feet of office space from its 61-story headquarters, which towers over San Francisco as the tallest building.
Around this time last year, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff offered strong criticism of some executives’ strict return mandates. He argued that they “never go to work” and touted the Salesforce “work from anywhere” model as a key recruiting advantage in a tight job market.
But Benioff’s attitude has changed as the economy worsened and mass layoffs swept Silicon Valley. The company cut its workforce by 10 percent, or more than 7,000 jobs, in January, and the door to further cuts remains open. In addition to downsizing its office space, Salesforce has ceded the 75-acre Trailblazer Ranch in Scotts Valley, California it leased last year as an onboarding and team-building retreat. (Staff could take yoga and cooking classes, take nature walks, and meditate.)
It’s not just tech giants changing course when it comes to remote work. At Farmers Insurance, which told employees last year that the majority could work remotely, CEO Raul Vargas announced last month that starting in September the company will mandate three days a week in offices for employees working within a 50-mile radius live an office. According to Carly Kraft, a spokeswoman for Farmers Insurance, about 60 percent of the company’s 22,000 employees will be hybrid workers, while other roles will be filled remotely or fully in the office.
The mandate is designed to “encourage greater collaboration, creativity and innovation, while providing better opportunities for learning, training, mentoring, career development and organic interaction,” Kraft told The Post.
Kraft added that while remote work made sense at the beginning of the pandemic, a hybrid approach now works best for the company. A mix of working in the office and working from home According to Gallup’s Hybrid Work Indicator, work remains the predominant way of working for white-collar workers. According to Gallup’s Hybrid Work Indicator, 52 percent of local jobs were done on hybrid schedules in February.
Kraft noted the decision was made with “extreme prudence,” including providing staff with a three-month prep period. However, according to a Wall Street Journal report, the move was met with fears from employees who had geared their lives around the opportunity to work remotely, sell cars and relocate to cities far from Farmers’ offices.
Farmers’ justification echoes the arguments made by executives from Disney’s Bob Iger to Amazon’s Andy Jassy, who advocate for a strong return to offices. The workers of these companies have signed Petitions rejected requests to return to offices, arguing that it would affect their productivity, mental health and work-life balance.
Many experts believe that clerical mandates are not enough to create a stronger corporate culture. Cali Williams Yost, a longtime flexible work strategist, said that many leaders “try to avoid the hard work,” figuring out how to turn time spent together into meaningful connections, rather than simply mandating a set number of days in office .
“Sure, people will stick with it because they don’t want to lose their job, but is that a dedicated, purposeful, conscious way of working for anyone?” asked Williams.