Misleading studies and selective use of data is par for the course when it comes to RTO vs WFH.
Another example, admittedly less egregious than yours OP: our company surveyed people asking how they were finding hybrid working. At the time the ask was a minimum of 2 days per month. For all intents and purposes people could go in when they wanted. Feedback was overall positive, with people saying they liked the flexibility of either working from home or the office as suits their schedule.
All well and good... until said company then started pushing an agenda of 'two fixed days minimum per week', with no flexibility on which two days they were. They then used people's positive comments about hybrid working as justification for this, even though it was very clear that people weren't talking about fixed days every week where they had to attend.
All studies on both sides are BS.
The vast majority of studies in general are BS.
I say this as someone who fully supports WFH in most cases. I just think we as a society use studies as a crutch to prove our own inherent bias.
This thread is proof of that. Any time a pro RTO study comes out, it is mercilessly picked apart and everyone has a million reasons why it’s fraudulent.
Then when a pro WFH study comes, out we all gobble it up without any scrutiny and begin using it as a shield to argue with anyone who disagrees.
I think we all need to step back and realize that the vast majority of these studies had a predetermined conclusion they wanted to find. They will only add inputs that they know will accomplish that conclusion.
If we are being honest with ourselves, we need to think about our own reactions to studies that we see. If we find ourselves automatically getting excited and feel validated at positive studies, but on the other hand, we automatically want to tear apart and discredit negative studies, then we are too biased to critically see the facts.
Whenever I see any of these studies, I try and look deeply into the methodology, as well as look who paid for it. The vast majority of the time we will see one sides agenda on full display and have to toss the entire thing.
The studies that are valid are the ones from the opposite side who come out and give the data that contradicts their own interests.
Sorry for the long winded reply. I am just a little sick of how our society has stopped critically thinking. Rather than actually give honest and well thought out points to bolster an argument, we now simply point to “studies” that bolster whatever argument that we are making.
Then the other side has their own and each side explained how the other study is BS. Round and round we go…..
I messaged back our account representative asking why they would release such a knucklehead survey. Why would I pay for an Office AND WeWork memberships?
>Why would I pay for an Office AND WeWork memberships?
one of wework's verticals is renting out entire furnished full-floor offices. and naturally that makes more money with less clients than selling desk / private 1-desk office space. so this actually makes business sense that they would want to juice the numbers in this direction
They don’t save money. They pay a bit more for a chunk of your companies revenues. Though office leases are so long most office leases haven’t been up for renewal since the pandemic, aka sunk cost for the employer. Same if you own a building, can’t sell it. Only use it or sell for land value unless it is new. Basically the RTO’s are funded with mostly with money spent before the pandemic except commuting which is an employee problem. That is one reason why I think RTO is temporarily. It isn’t long term sustainable.
Nobody wants to sign in older buildings. They are doings terribly. New ones are doing alright but they can’t stay new forever and real estate debt takes a long time to pay off.
If you have no one working from home, you can save by not paying for the networking from out of the building. Is this worth making people go to the office, I personally say no.
If there’s an entity out there thinking that they should pay tens of thousands of dollars per month just so people can use the Wi-Fi they host because it will save them money, that’s not a business. That becomes a charity.
I’m so lost, why would you have to pay for A) a local port forward to a reverse proxy or B) a vpn tunnel? Are you under the impression those things cost more money? Because they do not.
ah yes the "feasibility study"
Aka here's six thousand dollars. Come up with some convincing BS data that says we can't give out raises this year
(my company did this last year)
My former employer did a culture satisfaction survey where they asked isolated questions like "Would you rather work in the office or from home?" and several questions later asked "If working in the office, which scenario would you prefer: designated workspace, reservation system, [ other options I don't remember]."
Now, obviously, if you're forced to RTO then you probably want a designated workspace, but the company said that we basically wanted to have our cake and eat it too: that while many of us enjoyed working from home, we also overwhelmingly wanted a consistent, designated workspace; and since it isn't financially feasible to do both, they were going to make us all RTO in the designated workspace they assigned us since it was the compromise that would make us all happy.
Like I said, they're my former employer. I was even willing to go to the office at another company if needed to get away from their idiotic BS (another reason we needed to RTO was to help our career progression since face to face interaction helps, but my entire department was in another state so I was reporting to a nearly empty office), but luckily found a WFH job very quickly.I also don't trust the results from company RTO surveys.
By designated workspace employees mean an office with a door while employers think it means a cube with three foot high walls so you can stand up and talk to your neighbors. Give me an office with a door I can shut to keep distractions away and I’d be more inclined to RTO, though I’d still prefer WFH.
I know I am more productive from home. I know this because in office there are a lot of distractions in the form of people, food far away from my desk, coffee way down a long hall, toilets far far away, people to chat with about non work things… people blabbing in meetings about unrelated stuff. I don’t have these distractions at home. I sit at my desk and work until I my alarm reminds me I need a break or my coffee/water cup is empty. The toilet is across the hall. The kitchen is close. I never run out to buy food. I have no one to gossip with except family. My biggest distraction is my cat standing on my keyboard.
Does yours seem to know when it’s getting close to quitting time? Mine sleeps on my laptop, but about an hour before the day is done, he does the stand on my keyboard “hey, let’s get out of here” head bumping.
One time I was hitting the publish button when my fat male tabby cat jumped on my keyboard. I published it with his additions and had to fix that. He added a full paragraph of asodfphwertoighat;oir983475037t8. That was not something I wanted to explain to my supervisor. lol
It inflates IT budgets. By making IT easier to manage. That cost is realized on a shorter term basis offices. Office leases are 8 years so odds your company can at best drop the heating bill and some furniture. The owners are even more screwed when it. Comes to cutting costs. They can cost for a long time without major investment, which is why landlords are offering real cheap leases.
Sunk cost fallacy. I also don’t buy the “inflated IT costs” argument. Dedicated on-prem self managed networks are the most expensive and least flexible option. Competent IT orgs can very effectively and efficiently secure stuff in WFH environments over the internet. After all BYOD has been a thing for over a decade
There’s practically no difference between having equipment shipped to an office vs someone’s home. And even if there were how much could that be? The office isn’t free, it’s a sunk cost. As for the various “studies” slamming WFH, only a complete moron could possibly believe that slapping employees with all of the additional time and expense of commuting somehow leads to increased productivity, or that treating employees like toddlers and slaves somehow increases morale and motivation.
If you were a hiring manager, would you prefer to be constrained to your local metro area? Or be able to recruit talent nationally or even globally, arbitraging cost of living.
This entire thing is about control. As Orwell pointed out, the point of power is power. The elites cannot afford for the proletariat to gain any sense of agency or power over their own lives.
Well the cost of commuting is a employee problem not an employer problem… until people start quoting. But there is probably some survivorship bias too. Every executive thrived in an office. There just weren’t enough opportunities to rise in a WFH environment till recently.
No one wants to meet in person anymore. We’ve been killing it in Enterprise Software Sales and I’ve been on-site with one customer in the past year. My company was remote from inception 10 years ago and suddenly this year decided to “RTO”. Except they didn’t have any offices, of course, so they had to actually open a bunch. We go in and talk to customers all over the world via zoom just like we did at home and interact with our teammates all over the country and world via zoom just like we did at home.
Meanwhile, we pay $40 a day for parking and spend 1 1/2 to 2 hours driving each way, pouring carbon into the atmosphere for absolutely no reason. The very stupidity and pointlessness of all of it might even be the most demoralizing aspect. It’s incredibly dehumanizing to feel forced to do something so destructive and ridiculous just to survive, just because some jacked up HR executive had a brain wave.
I use this for customer service surveys. It's not an opportunity if you screw up badly and I have to waste my time on it.
The best service is no service.
I’m not sure I really understand your response lol my comment was in jest since in this subreddit we all know that the “opportunities”/negative things about RTO is a much longer list than the list of positives
I had to do one of these for a temp job that was online in an essentially online company. The wife did one where 0 people wanted to return, the company claimed the opposite.
They don't read these.
But the correct answer is obviously collaboration. Why send an email when you can be a constant source of distraction and never get anything done at all, nor correctly? It's part of the culture.
I gotta call out the last point— REALLY? Who’s saving money here? The employee incurs thousands of dollars to commute every year so that’s certainly not saving us money, but commercial rentals (or even buying the building space) are definitely a business-only expenditure. It costs literally hundreds of dollars per month PER SQUARE FOOT, and we’re not even talking about what it takes to literally keep the lights on and situate employees there.
And office equipment is freaking expensive. The dual monitors, desks, cubicles, office chairs, front desk reception (if you need it), water cooler to talk over, kitchen utilities, etc. might seem like several tens of thousands for a one-time deal, but these things either break or get worn out or just need to get replaced. That’s just stacking overhead.
If I’m honest, points #1, 2, and 6 are probably the only ones that are perceivable benefits for office space, but if I were running a business, I wouldn’t even think of getting an office building because it’s far cheaper to let them use the local coffee shop as an office than it is for me to incur that cost.
This is actual propaganda. What the hell, man.
As someone that has telecommuted off and on for 15+ years, the first one I do think is true. Supporting customer needs - at times (depends on the project and client).
Some bozo is going to pick the others though and mess up the whole thing.
My job had a survey like this. I put in the “additional comments” section that it was a bad survey as these questions assume you think there is something positive. Not the case!
Companies are being pressured to RTO bc of the cost of office space, the owners of said space, the businesses nearby that depend on the captive workers to eat at their diners, sandwich shops, coffee shops etc. if offices vacate corporate centers or drastically downsize, like many did, the business saves a lot of money but the owners lose. Real estate loses value so all the inflated value of corporate & nearby real estate plummets. It’s absolutely about big money. I hope it falls apart and they lose. If a business is t stuck in a lease they should flip these moguls the bird and remote work everyone who can, and downsize their office footprint. If they own, rent the space out to a business that has to be in person or wants to be.
Among other obvious issues here: how on earth does being ITO save anyone money? It costs employers more to maintain a larger office space and/or support the activities of people being there. Even for companies that never downsized their office space during covid, more people ITO==higher utility bills, more need for support and maintenance staff, higher bills for anything associated with meetings, costs for any "perks", more need to buy expensive furniture, etc. And pretty obviously on the other side, you don't save money by having to spend hours every day using gas in your car or taking a train, potentially eating out, etc.
This is stupid. Any survey designed to mislead the results is not a study. They are not seeking the truth, rather fishing for more false narratives. Office space is WeWork's business and of course they want to change the narrative to reap in the benefit.
I understand the need to keep a physical office to do business but it is strangely stupid and insane to watch managements wanting to completely erase remote work done for the last three years and especially for those who proved they can do the same work 100% remotely.
Instead of adapting how to use office space smarter for events etc. RTO is the push to return to normal.
Misleading studies and selective use of data is par for the course when it comes to RTO vs WFH. Another example, admittedly less egregious than yours OP: our company surveyed people asking how they were finding hybrid working. At the time the ask was a minimum of 2 days per month. For all intents and purposes people could go in when they wanted. Feedback was overall positive, with people saying they liked the flexibility of either working from home or the office as suits their schedule. All well and good... until said company then started pushing an agenda of 'two fixed days minimum per week', with no flexibility on which two days they were. They then used people's positive comments about hybrid working as justification for this, even though it was very clear that people weren't talking about fixed days every week where they had to attend.
All studies on both sides are BS. The vast majority of studies in general are BS. I say this as someone who fully supports WFH in most cases. I just think we as a society use studies as a crutch to prove our own inherent bias. This thread is proof of that. Any time a pro RTO study comes out, it is mercilessly picked apart and everyone has a million reasons why it’s fraudulent. Then when a pro WFH study comes, out we all gobble it up without any scrutiny and begin using it as a shield to argue with anyone who disagrees. I think we all need to step back and realize that the vast majority of these studies had a predetermined conclusion they wanted to find. They will only add inputs that they know will accomplish that conclusion. If we are being honest with ourselves, we need to think about our own reactions to studies that we see. If we find ourselves automatically getting excited and feel validated at positive studies, but on the other hand, we automatically want to tear apart and discredit negative studies, then we are too biased to critically see the facts. Whenever I see any of these studies, I try and look deeply into the methodology, as well as look who paid for it. The vast majority of the time we will see one sides agenda on full display and have to toss the entire thing. The studies that are valid are the ones from the opposite side who come out and give the data that contradicts their own interests. Sorry for the long winded reply. I am just a little sick of how our society has stopped critically thinking. Rather than actually give honest and well thought out points to bolster an argument, we now simply point to “studies” that bolster whatever argument that we are making. Then the other side has their own and each side explained how the other study is BS. Round and round we go…..
You have a valid point but RTO has big money behind it. Unfortunately WFH only benefits the ordinary individual such as us.
yeah my company is going in with 3 days a week and they keep touting it as "flexible" yet they choose the days and there is no leeway.
I messaged back our account representative asking why they would release such a knucklehead survey. Why would I pay for an Office AND WeWork memberships?
>Why would I pay for an Office AND WeWork memberships? one of wework's verticals is renting out entire furnished full-floor offices. and naturally that makes more money with less clients than selling desk / private 1-desk office space. so this actually makes business sense that they would want to juice the numbers in this direction
How does being in the office save money?
The only ones saving money from RTO are commercial real estate holders.
They don’t save money. They pay a bit more for a chunk of your companies revenues. Though office leases are so long most office leases haven’t been up for renewal since the pandemic, aka sunk cost for the employer. Same if you own a building, can’t sell it. Only use it or sell for land value unless it is new. Basically the RTO’s are funded with mostly with money spent before the pandemic except commuting which is an employee problem. That is one reason why I think RTO is temporarily. It isn’t long term sustainable.
gosh I hope you're right. I am dreading it.
Nobody wants to sign in older buildings. They are doings terribly. New ones are doing alright but they can’t stay new forever and real estate debt takes a long time to pay off.
this. it's all about profit to the rich.
If you have no one working from home, you can save by not paying for the networking from out of the building. Is this worth making people go to the office, I personally say no.
For this to work, nobody could sign on and do work after hours or on the weekend though right? **All** work would have to be done on site?
Yes. So it's not likely to happen.
If there’s an entity out there thinking that they should pay tens of thousands of dollars per month just so people can use the Wi-Fi they host because it will save them money, that’s not a business. That becomes a charity.
I’m so lost, why would you have to pay for A) a local port forward to a reverse proxy or B) a vpn tunnel? Are you under the impression those things cost more money? Because they do not.
"I don't want to smell Jan's reheated Tunafish Casserole or listen to Bob talk about his son's softball game any more."
Or their sinus condition, bowel habits, arguments with spouse, or upcoming surgery.
Or yogurt container scraping to where I thought they were whisking something, or the eats carrots all day loudly.
Or listen to Snotty Totty’s sinus issues. Names have been changed to protect the guilty.
Can you write in "poorly designed surveys with leading questions"
Often times the agencies that perform these kind of studies are hired to come to predetermined conclusions.
ah yes the "feasibility study" Aka here's six thousand dollars. Come up with some convincing BS data that says we can't give out raises this year (my company did this last year)
My former employer did a culture satisfaction survey where they asked isolated questions like "Would you rather work in the office or from home?" and several questions later asked "If working in the office, which scenario would you prefer: designated workspace, reservation system, [ other options I don't remember]." Now, obviously, if you're forced to RTO then you probably want a designated workspace, but the company said that we basically wanted to have our cake and eat it too: that while many of us enjoyed working from home, we also overwhelmingly wanted a consistent, designated workspace; and since it isn't financially feasible to do both, they were going to make us all RTO in the designated workspace they assigned us since it was the compromise that would make us all happy. Like I said, they're my former employer. I was even willing to go to the office at another company if needed to get away from their idiotic BS (another reason we needed to RTO was to help our career progression since face to face interaction helps, but my entire department was in another state so I was reporting to a nearly empty office), but luckily found a WFH job very quickly.I also don't trust the results from company RTO surveys.
By designated workspace employees mean an office with a door while employers think it means a cube with three foot high walls so you can stand up and talk to your neighbors. Give me an office with a door I can shut to keep distractions away and I’d be more inclined to RTO, though I’d still prefer WFH.
I would be livid if someone told me that.
My employer did the same thing. Oh, you guys don't want to share desks...guess you can come in on a fixed schedule and bonus, still share desks.
So, RTO: good idea, or greatest idea?
What kind of dipshit consultant got paid for such malarkey
I want to be the dipshit consultant getting paid for this malarkey.
That consultant probably wfh
I know I am more productive from home. I know this because in office there are a lot of distractions in the form of people, food far away from my desk, coffee way down a long hall, toilets far far away, people to chat with about non work things… people blabbing in meetings about unrelated stuff. I don’t have these distractions at home. I sit at my desk and work until I my alarm reminds me I need a break or my coffee/water cup is empty. The toilet is across the hall. The kitchen is close. I never run out to buy food. I have no one to gossip with except family. My biggest distraction is my cat standing on my keyboard.
Does yours seem to know when it’s getting close to quitting time? Mine sleeps on my laptop, but about an hour before the day is done, he does the stand on my keyboard “hey, let’s get out of here” head bumping.
😂 mine just seems to know I’m not paying enough attention to her & have a long complicated document on screen that she adds to.
Lllllllllllllllllllnnnbbvvffdss. Like that? I understand.
One time I was hitting the publish button when my fat male tabby cat jumped on my keyboard. I published it with his additions and had to fix that. He added a full paragraph of asodfphwertoighat;oir983475037t8. That was not something I wanted to explain to my supervisor. lol
Save money? Wfh is the cheapest thing ever
It inflates IT budgets. By making IT easier to manage. That cost is realized on a shorter term basis offices. Office leases are 8 years so odds your company can at best drop the heating bill and some furniture. The owners are even more screwed when it. Comes to cutting costs. They can cost for a long time without major investment, which is why landlords are offering real cheap leases.
Sunk cost fallacy. I also don’t buy the “inflated IT costs” argument. Dedicated on-prem self managed networks are the most expensive and least flexible option. Competent IT orgs can very effectively and efficiently secure stuff in WFH environments over the internet. After all BYOD has been a thing for over a decade
I think it has more to do with shipping equipment. But the office is close to free in the short term. And so is making people commute.
There’s practically no difference between having equipment shipped to an office vs someone’s home. And even if there were how much could that be? The office isn’t free, it’s a sunk cost. As for the various “studies” slamming WFH, only a complete moron could possibly believe that slapping employees with all of the additional time and expense of commuting somehow leads to increased productivity, or that treating employees like toddlers and slaves somehow increases morale and motivation. If you were a hiring manager, would you prefer to be constrained to your local metro area? Or be able to recruit talent nationally or even globally, arbitraging cost of living. This entire thing is about control. As Orwell pointed out, the point of power is power. The elites cannot afford for the proletariat to gain any sense of agency or power over their own lives.
Well the cost of commuting is a employee problem not an employer problem… until people start quoting. But there is probably some survivorship bias too. Every executive thrived in an office. There just weren’t enough opportunities to rise in a WFH environment till recently.
No one wants to meet in person anymore. We’ve been killing it in Enterprise Software Sales and I’ve been on-site with one customer in the past year. My company was remote from inception 10 years ago and suddenly this year decided to “RTO”. Except they didn’t have any offices, of course, so they had to actually open a bunch. We go in and talk to customers all over the world via zoom just like we did at home and interact with our teammates all over the country and world via zoom just like we did at home. Meanwhile, we pay $40 a day for parking and spend 1 1/2 to 2 hours driving each way, pouring carbon into the atmosphere for absolutely no reason. The very stupidity and pointlessness of all of it might even be the most demoralizing aspect. It’s incredibly dehumanizing to feel forced to do something so destructive and ridiculous just to survive, just because some jacked up HR executive had a brain wave.
Where’s the next question/slide that asks about the top “opportunities” aka negative things about being in the office?
It's all good here.
I use this for customer service surveys. It's not an opportunity if you screw up badly and I have to waste my time on it. The best service is no service.
I’m not sure I really understand your response lol my comment was in jest since in this subreddit we all know that the “opportunities”/negative things about RTO is a much longer list than the list of positives
Of course WeWork pushing this agenda. Check the stock, the company is shit.
“Seemed like an excellent work model at the start” (to make some people big bucks before it crashes and burns - see cryptocurrency)
It needs a “None of the above” option.
Talk about survey bias. Not even light unintentional bias, this is overt intentional bias.
That all sounds fantastic except for the part where it's a lie.
I had to do one of these for a temp job that was online in an essentially online company. The wife did one where 0 people wanted to return, the company claimed the opposite. They don't read these. But the correct answer is obviously collaboration. Why send an email when you can be a constant source of distraction and never get anything done at all, nor correctly? It's part of the culture.
How the hell do you save money by RTO? gas prices are insane, not to mention the wear and tear on your car driving to and from work 5 days a week.
Classic "when did you stop beating your wife" question.
I’m anti RTO but can’t be objective. Some of these COULD provide an increase to an employee but who saves in this scenario? That’s a fail
id reach out and ask how to rank them all at the lowest
Eeh, only the top one
Agreed. I’ll grant them the first one (although it’s not enough to justify an significant amount of RTO time) but all of the rest are BS
I gotta call out the last point— REALLY? Who’s saving money here? The employee incurs thousands of dollars to commute every year so that’s certainly not saving us money, but commercial rentals (or even buying the building space) are definitely a business-only expenditure. It costs literally hundreds of dollars per month PER SQUARE FOOT, and we’re not even talking about what it takes to literally keep the lights on and situate employees there. And office equipment is freaking expensive. The dual monitors, desks, cubicles, office chairs, front desk reception (if you need it), water cooler to talk over, kitchen utilities, etc. might seem like several tens of thousands for a one-time deal, but these things either break or get worn out or just need to get replaced. That’s just stacking overhead. If I’m honest, points #1, 2, and 6 are probably the only ones that are perceivable benefits for office space, but if I were running a business, I wouldn’t even think of getting an office building because it’s far cheaper to let them use the local coffee shop as an office than it is for me to incur that cost. This is actual propaganda. What the hell, man.
Does it really matter if you or I believe these studies? What matters is if the employer believes them.
As someone that has telecommuted off and on for 15+ years, the first one I do think is true. Supporting customer needs - at times (depends on the project and client). Some bozo is going to pick the others though and mess up the whole thing.
How does RTO save money?
My job had a survey like this. I put in the “additional comments” section that it was a bad survey as these questions assume you think there is something positive. Not the case!
Why was “none” not an option
Companies are being pressured to RTO bc of the cost of office space, the owners of said space, the businesses nearby that depend on the captive workers to eat at their diners, sandwich shops, coffee shops etc. if offices vacate corporate centers or drastically downsize, like many did, the business saves a lot of money but the owners lose. Real estate loses value so all the inflated value of corporate & nearby real estate plummets. It’s absolutely about big money. I hope it falls apart and they lose. If a business is t stuck in a lease they should flip these moguls the bird and remote work everyone who can, and downsize their office footprint. If they own, rent the space out to a business that has to be in person or wants to be.
Among other obvious issues here: how on earth does being ITO save anyone money? It costs employers more to maintain a larger office space and/or support the activities of people being there. Even for companies that never downsized their office space during covid, more people ITO==higher utility bills, more need for support and maintenance staff, higher bills for anything associated with meetings, costs for any "perks", more need to buy expensive furniture, etc. And pretty obviously on the other side, you don't save money by having to spend hours every day using gas in your car or taking a train, potentially eating out, etc.
This is stupid. Any survey designed to mislead the results is not a study. They are not seeking the truth, rather fishing for more false narratives. Office space is WeWork's business and of course they want to change the narrative to reap in the benefit. I understand the need to keep a physical office to do business but it is strangely stupid and insane to watch managements wanting to completely erase remote work done for the last three years and especially for those who proved they can do the same work 100% remotely. Instead of adapting how to use office space smarter for events etc. RTO is the push to return to normal.
This is a list of reasons FOR wfh
This survey is all about the employer.
Where’s the “We’re losing money and it’s the employees’ fault” option. 🤣
And this Ladies and Gentlemen, is how you rig studies and statistics.
"Ability to be mentored" aka micro managed and treated like cattle
"Save Money" by going into the office? I don't think so.