Latest news with #returnToOffice
Telegraph
8 hours ago
- Lifestyle
- Telegraph
Scruffy British office workers should put a damn shirt on
Finally, British bosses are getting tough, and workers are heading back to the office. John Lewis is insisting on a minimum of three days a week, while Conde Nast, whose magazines include the likes of Tatler and Vogue, is demanding a minimum of four. The Telegraph insists most of its workers are in the office five days a week, my dispensation excepting, as I have to be out for lunch for most of the time in your service. And one very clear indicator of this cultural shift back to sanity is that the smart shirtmaker TM Lewin is gearing up to open more shops. It recently opened a new store on Bow Lane in the City of London, with the company saying it will open other stores in the capital as well, in cities such as Manchester and Edinburgh. Which is wonderful news because it could be an opportunity for this nation to return to sanity on another issue: dress. I'm frequently drawn on social media to old footage, often colourised, of Britons walking the streets in the past. And it's heartbreaking not just to see how handsome our buildings and wide avenues were, and with the appropriate numbers of people and traffic, but how well dressed everyone was. No man is without a suit and hat, no woman without a dress, even the children are in jackets and trousers. Today, we are a nation of slobs, and the word dress doesn't even cover it, as many people's notion of clothing is not to dress at all, slouching out of bed to haul their sorry, often obese, forms onto the streets dressed in trackies and T-shirts. So let's use the return to the office as a watershed moment and consider that, as work is a professional endeavour, so we should honour it by dressing appropriately. Buy a suit, get a shirt, hell, you can even shove on a tie. And let's help the next generation get off on a good foot by scrapping mufti Friday. A headteacher I know says they dread Fridays because when the kids wear what they want, their behaviour worsens. She can't wait for Mondays when the kids turn up prim and proper and remember again to say, please, thank you, and to shake their teachers' hands at the end of the day. Research from Philadelphia's Temple University, published in the Academy of Management Journal in 2023, found that when we feel good about how we look, our productivity improves. If Britain wants to get serious, it needs to look serious. And while you're at it, shave off the beard and cover up all those hideous tattoos.
Fast Company
10 hours ago
- Business
- Fast Company
The hidden cost of RTO: Why forcing choice is detrimental to your business
Like most CEOs, I've been watching the return-to-office (RTO) trend closely. It's yet another wrinkle for the talent acquisition function, which is difficult to begin with. After all, the quest to hire and retain qualified talent is discussed at every board meeting, every leadership team offsite, and every yearly planning event. Entire books, magazines, podcasts, and conferences focus on this topic. Whether called a talent gap, the war for talent, or skills-based hiring, the essence remains the same: It's a struggle for every organization. So, why have I been struck by the most recent exodus back to offices? Because when you force choices, the results don't always land in your favor. Don't get me wrong—here at Employ, we have a great headquarters facility in Denver. Employees enjoy coming to work and collaborating in person. But there's a line between RTO as a productivity gain and it being the reason you lose qualified talent. According to 2025 research by Lightcast, remote job postings are down over 27%, hybrid postings are down 20%, and in-person postings are up over 17%. At the same time, companies that have publicly committed to a five-day in-office workweek are losing talent to employers supporting remote and hybrid working arrangements. It's a double-edged sword. The cost of an open role has direct financial implications on an organization, as well as less apparent indirect consequences. Estimates place the average cost of replacing an employee to be six to nine months of their salary. Other financial costs range from the expense of recruiting qualified candidates to onboarding and training. If temporary workers are needed to backfill open roles, the financial loss escalates. And the longer roles go unfilled, business objectives are derailed and productivity falters. Unfilled positions wreak havoc on the existing workforce. Critical projects might be delayed, and workforce planning questioned. Employee morale and engagement stand to decline, especially if employees are overworked. When the topic of it being time to hire qualified talent becomes water-cooler conversation, rest assured that unfilled roles are being noticed. YOUR CURRENT (AND FUTURE) EMPLOYEES EXPECT YOUR TRUST Clearly, some jobs cannot be done remotely. A job candidate applying as a labor and delivery nurse knows they will work onsite in a hospital setting. A hospitality worker seeking flexible hours at a quick-serve restaurant understands it's in person. The job location is well defined in the job description, and the candidate chooses to work on site. For other roles, workplace flexibility isn't an optional perk—it's brand equity. Forcing a one-size-fits-all policy not only damages internal trust but dilutes the company's external talent brand, which is particularly damaging in an already tight labor market. In the case of roles that do not require an in-office presence, pressuring a return to an office can have cataclysmic effects. When teams have operated remotely with success, especially when a robust employment brand has been built on a work-from-anywhere culture, confidence in leadership erodes when a change is decreed versus suggested. The move from remote or hybrid working arrangements to return to office is perceived punitively. Researchers at Gartner have observed that high-performing employees react to a return-to-office mandate as a trust issue, resulting in a 16% lower intent to stay. 'High-performing employees are more easily able to pursue opportunities at organizations that offer hybrid or fully remote policies,' said Caitlin Duffy, a director in the Gartner HR Practice. 'Losing high performers to attrition costs organizations in terms of productivity, difficulty in backfilling the role, and the overall loss of high-quality talent available to fill critical positions.' THE REALITY OF THE WORKPLACE Speaking of losing valuable talent, the return-to-office mandate can be a deal-breaker for those balancing childcare, eldercare, or other requirements with their career. In many cases, this falls on women in the workplace; however, it can affect any worker at some stage in their career journey. Upwork's research said that nearly two-thirds (63%) of C-suite leaders whose companies have mandated an office return of some sort say the policy has led a disproportionate number of women to quit. Gartner's research also showed women's intent to stay at 11% lower with strict RTO mandates. It's a fact that retaining an employee is less costly and disruptive than losing them. Having flexible working policies can help counterbalance care responsibilities and ensure that valuable skills remain in the workforce. QUALITY OF LIFE, QUALITY OF HIRE Apart from those roles where being in person is required, hard-and-fast rules about returning to the office make it harder to recruit. From a technology standpoint, talent leaders are continually seeking to source new candidates and drive efficiencies in their hiring systems, such as using AI-powered interview intelligence to speed up time to hire. According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, labor force participation is off by two million people from the February 2020 levels, impacting industries in every state. And, if you compel people to choose between their family and their career, the former will win every time. To be an employer of choice, offer choice. If you can't offer remote and hybrid work arrangements, offer flexibility. It will be the difference between engaged employees and those planning to leave.
News.com.au
2 days ago
- Business
- News.com.au
‘Entirely unsurprising': Issues with return-to-office mandates coming to light
Late last year we saw a huge increase in companies issuing strict return-to-office mandates, with many requiring staff to be in the office five days a week starting in 2025. Among the businesses that have issued these types of orders are Amazon, JPMorgan Chase, Tabcorp, AT&T and Dell. Now, a few months on from many of these mandates being in force, it seems things may not be going as smoothly as decision makers would have hoped. In the case of technology giant Dell, a new report from Business Insider has suggested the company is dealing with significant issues in the return-to-office rollout. In March 2025, Dell began requiring all employees who live within an hour from an office to return to in-person work five days a week. An internal memo stated all employees that met this criteria would be expected to do a 'regular working day in the office', though there would be 'flexibility as needed'. It has been over three months since staff were ordered back to the office, with 10 Dell employees painting a very varied picture of how things are panning out. Business Insider reported the degree of enforcement very much varies between managers, with some employees saying they were in eight hours a day, while others seemingly coming into the office to show their face and leaving soon after. One employee, a program manager, said the lack of blanket enforcement was causing 'lots of in-office politics', with this 'haphazard' nature leading to friction among employees. 'So much of this is dependent on leaders,' they said. A recent internal FAQ obtained by the publication laid out examples of when employees may be approved to work from home, such as a temporary medical condition, needing to provide temporary care, or adjusting in-office hours to avoid peak traffic. However, of the five employees who claimed they sometimes work from home, none said it was due to any of the reasons listed above. 'I personally have not been adhering to eight hours a day,' one employee said, claiming they were aware they may be breaking the rules but have not yet been corrected. Another said that, while their team was in the office full time, they usually only work about half the day in person before finishing the rest of their shift at home. One staff member claimed they had intentionally been coming in less as the new policy made them feel like they were being 'treated like a child'. Speaking to Rebecca Moulynox, ANZ General Manager of Great Place To Work, said the issues we are seeing arise from widespread return-to-office mandates were 'absolutely predictable'. 'Our data couldn't be clearer – when employers mandate work location, whether remote, hybrid, or onsite, productivity drops, retention plummets, and relationships with managers deteriorate,' she said. 'We found that employees who can choose where they work are three times more likely to want to stay with their company. 'When companies ignore this data and impose mandates anyway, the outcomes we're seeing at Dell and elsewhere are entirely unsurprising.' Dell is far from the only company experiencing return-to-office issues. Earlier this month, a leaked internal memo from JPMorgan showed morale had taken a hit in the wake of the RTO mandate. Every year, employees are asked to complete a survey that asks them to assess aspects of the company culture, such as internal mobility, work-life balance and health and wellbeing. An internal memo from CEO Jamie Dimon and Chief Human Resources Officer Robin Leopold, obtained by Barron's, revealed the company's health and wellbeing scores had dropped, with leaders attributing this to the return to office. 'Health and wellbeing scores remain favourable, though they dipped slightly year on year,' the memo stated. 'We know return full-time to the office has been an adjustment and one that not everyone agrees with, but we continue to believe in-person is how we do our best work and how we foster connections and mobility opportunities.' Elsewhere, there have also been complaints of companies introducing RTO mandates but actually not having the capacity for everyone to come back. Telecommunications giant AT&T required staff to come back to the office five days a week from January 2025. In the wake of the return, several workers from the company's Atlanta offices told Business Insider that there was a shortage of available desks and the parking lots had become overcrowded. There were also claims of increasingly long wait times for elevators, leading to the company posting signs with 'motivational quotes' encouraging staff to use the stairs. Ms Moulynox said one of the key drivers behind the issues we are now seeing is a 'fundamental disconnect' between executive decision making and employee needs. 'The specific issues like desk shortages and inconsistent enforcement stem from companies trying to force a one-size-fits-all approach without understanding why employees value flexibility in the first place,' she said. 'When you mandate where people work without recognising that employees need flexibility for things like picking up children from school, managing family responsibilities, or avoiding toxic office dynamics, you're bound to face resistance and practical failures.' Neal Woolrich, Director, Advisory in the Gartner HR practice, has also noticed that, not only are organisations struggling with unclear policies, there is also a lack of guidance for how leaders are meant to be applying the policies. 'So there's that lack of consistency, and that leads to feelings of inequity or unfairness,' he told Mr Woolrich said some companies are also running into issues because they haven't established in advance how they are going to enforce the mandates. 'What we've seen over the last few years is that, where organisations have set a target for in-office attendance, on average, most organisations are just not getting close to that target,' he said. This means that companies are now in the position where they have to get serious about their enforcement mechanism and how strict they want to be. Mr Woolrich said the 'logical extension' is that not meeting in-office targets becomes a performance issue that could then impact promotions or pay rises. On the extreme end of things, companies may be having to decide whether they exit people from the business for noncompliance to RTO mandates. 'Different organisations are taking different views to that. Some are using return-to-office mandates as a bit of a Trojan horse, and using it just as an excuse to exit people from the business quickly,' he said. 'Others don't necessarily want to go down that path, but then that might be where it leads to if they really want to be strict about in office attendance.'
Irish Times
2 days ago
- Business
- Irish Times
HSBC considers ordering all staff back to office 3 days a week
HSBC is considering a global mandate to force employees back to the office at least three days a week, as the bank seeks to reconcile a patchwork of policies across its sprawling operations. Chief executive officer Georges Elhedery has discussed a group-wide return to office policy with executives across the bank's businesses, according to people involved in the deliberations, with some managers expressing frustration that many employees are still mostly working from home. Discussions are ongoing and no decision has yet been made, said a person familiar with the talks. HSBC declined to comment. HSBC, which employed 211,000 full-time equivalent staff at the end of last year, is an outlier among large global banks, most of which have already introduced more stringent hybrid working requirements in a drive to get employees back into the office. HSBC employs more than 400 people in the Republic. READ MORE At HSBC, policies about how often employees are expected to be in the office have so far been determined by the senior management for each different line of business. HSBC UK has already told employees they are expected to spend at least 60 per cent of their time either in the office or with clients, or risk having their bonus cut. If adopted, the new rules would align HSBC with other UK lenders such as Barclays, which introduced a minimum office attendance requirement of three days a week earlier this year. [ Working from home is here to stay despite what some bosses think Opens in new window ] But they would stop short of the harder line approach adopted at Wall Street banks, including JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, which have demanded that all staff go to the office five days a week. While senior bank executives have been eager to return to pre-pandemic work life and bring employees back to the office, the mandates have contributed to a desk shortage that for HSBC runs into the thousands. Hybrid working was initially seen as a positive by HSBC's former chief executive, Noel Quinn, who said a reduced property footprint would cut 40 per cent from its global head office costs. Will rent reform make building apartments viable? Listen | 40:12 The bank announced in 2023 that it would leave its headquarters in Canary Wharf and move into a building with about half the space near St Paul's Cathedral in the City of London. HSBC originally planned to move all employees into its new headquarters in 2027, including approximately 500 staff located at Queen Victoria Street, according to a person involved in the plans. It also planned to downsize its Mayfair office, which houses HSBC's private bank and is among its most expensive leases, by giving up several floors. But HSBC may end up keeping those offices as it tries to find desks for thousands of employees, the person said. The bank is also in the process of further job cuts, which will help reduce the number of desks needed, they added. HSBC is also considering renting office space in Canary Wharf at 40 Bank Street, an option that has raised eyebrows internally after the bank's announcement that it would leave the area. 'Having cut the umbilical cord, you kind of want to go,' said a senior executive. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2025
E&E News
09-06-2025
- Business
- E&E News
Interior employees may get extra month to return to office
The Interior Department has sent a reminder to employees that they must return to work at the office on June 16 — unless there's not enough room for them. The department promised in an email to staff Friday they'll be granted up to a one-month reprieve — until July 16 — from the return-to-office order the agency issued in April if space cannot be found for those employees by next Monday's deadline. The email noted that the department is 'diligently' working to find a 'workstation' for each returning employee. And when a location has been found, regardless of whether it's at an Interior building or at another agency's, 'the employee must accept it,' according to the email viewed by POLITICO's E&E News. Advertisement The email, which wasn't signed by a specific Interior official, is the latest in the administration's ongoing effort to force federal workers to return to the office in accordance with an executive order President Donald Trump issued in January. The order targeted telework and remote work for federal employees.
