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The Return to the Office Has Stalled
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this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2023
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I recently switched from a hybrid IT job to fully remote. There were several justifications for return to office from my former employer, both the spoken: better communication/collaboration, better meeting attendance, information security - and unspoken: monitoring of newer or less trusted people, office space going unused, managers' feelings, etc.
There are technical solutions that could be implemented to address the spoken reasons, but the unspoken ones are the bigger drivers from a management perspective.
Your conclusion completely applies to my job. I work in a state funded non profit. We were fully remote during the whole pandemic and converted the whole workflow to work remotely. We were forced to return to the office full time 5 times a week and although the whole team hates it, the bosses argument is "yeah but We prefer it this way".
The truth is that weak leaderships benefit from everybody being in the office, because bullying and blaming isn't very effective through channels where they can be easily registered. Also, unnecessary commuting breaks people, makes them more numb and more obedient.
What drives me crazy is that - at least for my former team - having to move to remote work essentially overnight forced us to come up with new communication and reporting processes that were better than in-person. Which we still had to use when forced to go back to the office because not everyone worked at the same location. So there was no benefit to going back except to please the bosses and those few workers who claimed they actually wanted to return.