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Is the ”office-first” policy doomed to fail?


Henrik Ståhl
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Hey operations leaders!

I wrote this story on Medium about a Swedish company that demanded a return to office and subsequently lost 4% of its IT workforce: 

https://medium.com/codex/they-demanded-a-return-to-office-and-lost-4-of-their-it-workforce-48f795ad2d7a

What do you think about these kind of policies, are they doomed to fail in our new hybrid world?

Was it helpful?

4 replies

Michelle Murphy
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All I have is anecdotal evidence, but it seems to me like offering a hybrid model is the minimum here. Everyone I know who was forced to go back into the office full time got a new job. It’s interesting to me though that at the beginning of the pandemic we surveyed our employees and they all wanted fully remote, but now 2 years later they are asking for an office to go back into part time.


Henrik Ståhl
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  • Author
  • Miro Hero
  • 739 replies
  • June 11, 2022

@Michelle Murphy I agree, hybrid is here to stay. Will be really interesting to see future studies on this!


Kiron Bondale
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  • Volunteer Community Moderator
  • 3040 replies
  • June 11, 2022

@Henrik Ståhl -

As usual, it depends. If the nature of work is tangibly improved by being “in person” and if it is a balanced or employer-weighted labor market, then it may be acceptable to most, but if there’s no reduction in productivity by working remote or it is a candidate-weighted labor market, it will create challenges for staff acquisition and retention.

I’m interested in seeing how Musk’s requirement for Tesla employees plays out. Sometimes folks might choose to put up with the pain of in person work if they are sufficiently inspired by what the company does…

Kiron


Michelle Murphy
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Thought this Medium post from Prof G was interesting on the topic, especially the comments!

https://medium.com/@profgalloway/work-from-office-8e41d28c1b7c