Has anyone here been fired for ignoring in-office mandates?
Most of the banks in Toronto are forcing staff back into the office a set minimum number of days per week, ranging from 2-4. None are mandating 5 days/week, as far as I know.
I have heard that full compliance is low but don't have any data to back it up.
This peer was typically evaluated as a high performer during performance reviews, but was denied for their request to remain remote, and they decided to ignore the order and accept the consequences.
The organization is also actively monitoring and blocking bonuses and promos for those who are not fully ignoring the mandate but are not meeting the full expectation.
USA based financial institution.
That's what they're saying, at least. My easiest promotions have all been from changing companies; to give up a job because I (hypothetically might) get offered another is a luxury I can't afford right now. And, I'd bet better than even money that there's going to be a lot of "not in the budget" syndrome going around near the holidays.
In other words, them saying that they're actively monitoring, blah blah, might actually be a subtle and distant crack of the whip. The real story is that the job market for highly paid professionals is still absolutely fucker. Employers, of course, know this, and will take any opportunity to capitalize on it, even at the expense of their best workers. It's not 2-3 years ago, when people could peace out at the drop of a hat, because a job would roll in soon enough just by making a LinkedIn post and sending out a handful of resumes.
I'm convinced the back to office mandates come from people who thrive in office environments. Those people succeed, get promoted, become leadership, and then assume everyone else works just like they do. It's absolutely not the case.
That's without going into the many, many studies of office environments which provide empirics disproving common myths about office work, such as the oft-repeated lie that open offices encourage collaboration. Those facts just don't compute for people who love working in those spaces, so they ignore them and repeat happy lies instead.
There are two ways of working, remote or in person. Hybrid is a swan song of bullshit where you get the worst of both worlds and few of the advantages. So organizations need to make sweeping changes one way or another: either restructure towards remote-first or return to pre-covid paradigms by not only getting people back to the office, but also teams back in the same office. Both require some pretty sweeping changes to get there, and it's understandable (if maybe not defensible) that a majority of established organizations don't want to reinvent themselves.
At the end of the day, if in-person is the final vision, yes you should be fired if you don't comply with it. Almost everyone is replaceable, including even the top levels of management. Keeping employees who are actively hostile to (remember, not just disagreeing, but actively disregarding) a core organizational standard doesn't help anything --- regardless of their performance.
All that being said, I find it amazing that companies were presented the opportunity to use a new remote paradigm on a silver platter and decided to scoff at it rather than embracing all of its advantages, but maybe that's why I'm not making those decisions.
It was quite odd. My boss told me to come into the office. I explained how I didn’t want to do that because of personal and professional reasons, I think a pretty rational case. They gave a vague reason “leadership wants it.” I was friends with their boss so I asked the superboss and they said they don’t care.
I never came in. My boss never said anything. Not sure if they didn’t notice. It’s quite possible since I rarely interacted with anyone in person even when in the office. After six months of that, I moved to a new position in my org that is remote friendly.
I think this worked because I’m a “digital worker” who basically just shells into stuff and write code and attends meetings. I don’t actually do anything in person.
It’s also possible (I’d say - likely) that your boss knew, and had no desire to do anything about it.
Yeah, that part of the GP's comment stood out. To even imagine that "bosses" don't notice that their employees are not showing up to the office is pretty far fetched especially for the length of time described. At some point, even the other employees will start talking about it.
I tried to use conditional tense a lot in there because none of this is set in stone. If management only kind of wants people in-office and has higher priorities, maybe y’all will get away with it. But if they’re really dead set on it and you don’t have a union fighting for you, expect to either return to the office or get fired eventually.
Five years ago, I probably would have had my pick of 3-5 offers after about two weeks. This time it was a month for one offer. Definitely a bummer, but the offer was still an upgrade, and so far the new company is working out well, so it’s fine.
If you mess with your people badly enough, the only ones who will stick around are the ones who can’t get a better offer.
He said no. Got fired.
My guess is that they wanted a reason to fire your guy anyway, and he gave them one.
Rest assured their goal is full return to office despite the current "hybrid" model they are pushing, and you are not important enough to them to keep your job while being civilly disobedient.
Big banks, in particular, want to make a big, public show that "we're all going back to the office" in order to, at a minimum, delay the inevitable collapse of commercial real estate concentrated in major cities. On the inside, they're willing to quietly make exceptions if you fit the right profile (key talent, DEI quotas, political buddies, etc.). If you're a regular, high performing employee with no reason to be in an office, go pound sand.
Source: I'm that person. We lost a LOT of good people because of this over the last few years.
Others go in, have lunch (free canteen), then go home. Having ticked the system for enough days in. Then do their work from home because the office is such a disruptive place to get anything done.
Most managers don't care so long as the work is getting completed on time.
Long term, I'd be wary though.
No need to fire everybody. They just laid off some of the workers and called it a market adjustment. Now the job market is flooded with desperate unemployed. Current employees will be more likely to adopt corporate policy, so they don't have to compete with the masses of job seekers. Job seekers will accept whatever terms they can get, because it's rough out there.