- cross-posted to:
- globalnews@lemmy.zip
- cross-posted to:
- globalnews@lemmy.zip
Office mandates don’t help companies make more money, study finds::Three years after the coronavirus pandemic sent people to work from home in record numbers, U.S. employers are still struggling to get people back to the office.
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Companies likely lose money with more workers in the office. More electricity, more water, more supplies. More unhappy employees, more tired employees, more good employees looking elsewhere for WFH jobs.
Probably sunk cost fallacy with the lease. Building is paid for, why not use it and also be better able to micromanage your drones?
But management makes all the decisions and having everyone physically accessible to their need for control makes them feel better.
It’s also to do with the fact that most research looks at company profit. But if you follow the paper trails, most of the high level managers that insist on return to office are investors on commercial real state ventures and/or funds that invest in these downtowns and office spaces. It’s bad for the company, but it’s good for their personal wallets. The authoritarian high is a plus.
Forcing people back to office, firing thousands of tech workers… Yeah I don’t see why people don’t love working for these guys. Nobody wants to work!
Let’s all go to the office for the “collaboration” and team spirit. We are all a family here. :)
The Musk tells people to sleep on the factory floor, that’s how much he cares about people.
I think return to office mandates are silly. Regardless, it’s more about maintaining the office market values, right? So basically need to accept that’s where things are going and that will inevitably happen.
I’m not an economist, so I don’t know the full implications of it all, but I know things will be in for a ride.
I don’t know how this property values thing just became accepted knowledge, but it’s nonsense. Most companies don’t own their own office space, and for the ones that do, it’s a cost centre they’d prefer not to have on the books.
I’ve also seen absolutely no evidence that this is a factor in their decisions, and you’d expect at least one CEO to let the truth slip if this was the case.
And yet people keep parroting it.
Iirc a key problem is a lot of these companies used their office space as collateral for loans. They literally cannot afford to have the value of that office space degrade so forcing everyone back into the office seems like the only solution to them.
Nevermind that it’s not a sustainable tactic long term but smart business decisions isn’t something I expect from companies operating with permanent debt anyway.
Its an open secret that middle managers are trying to save their asses.
And also just laziness. It takes more effort in leading a remote team and initiating intentional communication instead of doing the good ol’ drive-by management and let communication and coordination up to “your in the same room, you figure it out”.
It’s about “butts in seats” people.
Big tech companies OWN not rent.
When you OWN an office building, and it is empty, you are LOSING MONEY.
It’s about the real estate, nothing else. Open your eyes
How? How are they losing money not having people in the office? Where is this money coming from?
Explain your reasoning.
I disagree that property value is the main driving force behind return to office mandates, but if they do in fact own their offices, then those offices depreciate in value. They also cost money in upkeep. Gardeners, janitors, window cleaners, security, power, maintenance, insurance. Even if nothing is happening, there are contracts with companies that provide these services. Either they’d have an agreed frequency of visits, or a retainer fee. They have managers that want their employees to make on site visits to justify their jobs. The AC and lights would need to be on for anyone onsite, including security, and that is a lot of power. Offices are expensive.
If nothing is getting done in those offices, then those offices are bleeding money. And if they’re empty and nobody wants to work (in an office) anymore, then you can’t sell them for anything like their old book value. It’s a huge loss.
That said, I suspect it’s more institutional inertia that drives most of this return to office stuff. Managers justifying their existence or just not being able to cope with the new skills they need. Plus selling or ending leases is a job that someone has to do, and you might fuck that up, so you’d rather not make the change. Plus they’ve got the offices now, what if they need them soon? Capitalist companies, especially corporations, are fundamentally conservative entities.
I missed your response, my bad, but I think others have touched on the major point with some pretty good analogies, but I will give you a full response since is a valid question. DISCLAIMER: I am a Software Engineer, not a real estate expert, although I was raised by a real estate expert.
Imagine you are Apple and own “Apple Park” in Cupertino, California.
Apple does not own the property “out-right”, they have a mortgage on the property and buildings similar to the average home mortgage, but much more expensive. When you “own” the mortgage, it is up to you who occupies the building, which often is done by contract. When you “own” a building for the purpose of giving your own employees a place to work, you often enter in a contract with “yourself”, but most often as a “subsidiary” signing a contract with a “parent company”.
Let’s say that a subsidiary is “renting” the entire building, but also, 90% employees work remotely. Although you, as the subsidiary, are still “paying rent to” the parent company, you as a subsidiary are losing money by paying for an office space that is mainly unused. So sure, it could be said that the parent company “isn’t losing money”, however, the subsidiary is since the office is unused and still being paid for. The subsidiary can’t just stop renting the office, since they are in a legal agreement with the parent company. This pushes parent companies to enact “return to office policies” so that subsidiaries are paying rent on “required office space”. Having “butt’s in seats” also helps with maintaining building value as one can prove “hey look, my office building is in demand”, even if simply artificial demand through subsidiaries.
Most office buildings, especially if for tech, cost in the hundreds of millions depending on location. If you think tech companies buy them outright rather than mortgage them with the company and assets as collateral, that is incorrect.
In other words… If you have a mortgage on an office building with no one in it, the “market” looks negatively upon that, which brings the building’s value down, but not your mortgage payment and interest. Therefore, you are paying more on your mortgage than the value of the building. Similar to buying a car with a car loan, using the crap out of it, and then not touching it for 5 years and expecting it to increase in value. (Car is a bad comparison as 99% of them lose value the second they leave the lot, but is easiest to compare)
Amazing how when the argument is coming from the bottom up you have to have evidence, facts, numbers, etc. But when it comes from the top down “just knowing” and “a feeling” is more than enough.
Or how they always ask for feedback from people down the chain only to ignore it when taking decisions!
Its not about money. It’s about power and control. Corpos only care about one thing, and thats power. What good is money if you can’t use it to lord over someone?
It’s several things.
- They believe people work better when they have team mates around them
- They believe there are synergies from water-cooler conversions
- They believe managers need to see their staff to know they’re working
- They believe people in the office are best for teaching new starters
- They believe that since they are paying so much for office space it would be a waste to not use it
Probably more than that.
Some of it’s true.
They don’t understand what it costs. They don’t understand that people resent having to commute to do the same work they could have done at home.
I used to have a manager that would micromanage everyone and come and stand behind you and make comments usually asking why you weren’t working on X. X was always something other than what you were doing, he was never happy.
Now he can’t do that anymore. Unsurprisingly productivity increases when an overbearing idiot can’t stand behind you.
This is probably going to be an unpopular comment, but I wanted to present the view in favour of what I call WFW (working from work). I’m sure it’s always going to be different for specific cases, but I do see benefits of WFW. We have an open plan office and a lot of casual conversations between us turn into serious conversations about projects and sometimes they have important outputs. Sometimes you overhear a conversation that you realise you know something about and you make a valuable contribution to it. None of this happens when people are WingFH. I’m lucky enough that my only line report is a hard working person, so I let them WFH probably a bit more than other managers let their reports, but I still like when they are WFW because of the contributions that they make to those conversations I mentioned above.
I’m an introvert, so I totally get the argument of being able to focus better when you’re not surrounded by people and their conversations, but at the same time I honestly noticed that my productivity decreases when I WFH. I’m sufficiently honest with myself to notice that and feel bad about it and this is actually the main reason why I do commute for an hour every day just to WFW, even though our company policy says that we can WFH 3 days a week and my job is 95% desk based.
I think it’s often has to considered for individual cases because as I said, my report does 110% whether they WFH or WFW, but I know from other managers that some of their reports really stuttered and stumbled when they were asked “so you WedFH yesterday, what did you do exactly?”
I’m not trying to say “everyone should stop WFH”, but it seems to me that most of the comments in this post are aligning with “just let your employees WFH!” and I wanted to present the other point of view, from the perspective of a non-senior manager who also has some non managerial responsibilities himself.
this is a flimsy argument I keep hearing office- enthusiasts grasp at. there’re other variations to the random, impromptu conversation/not-meeting but they all share the argument that “one may accidentally contribute something to unofficial meetings”.
how often does that happen? is overhearing and joining random conversations a business plan? is this such a common occurrence and the outcomes so beneficial and so pronounced that they balance out the very long list of demonstrable and concrete arguments against working from work, such as time lost in transit and CO2 emissions from the pollution of transit?
if something needs more planning and discussion, or reconsideration, then schedule a proper meeting.
is overhearing and joining random conversations a business plan?
That really made me laugh. No, of course it’s not a business plan. I was just trying to make a point that there are benefits to people being together in the office.
