Glassdoor’s Post

🏢 Return To Office (RTO) policies are key where 🧠 innovation and 📈 growth are central to the company's DNA 🧬 ⚠️ Disclaimer: The author's views are her own, however Lily Rodel also happens to be my fiance. I might be slightly influenced 🤷♂️... and proud ... ☺️ ✅ Pros of a RTO policy (from my personal experience): 👉 Innovation and productivity shouldn't be conflated ‼️ Productivity and firm performance doesn't improve with RTO according to some studies, but what about innovation? 👉 Innovation requires weak ties (connections between people) and the proverbial cooler chats ❄️ Zoom calls are no substitute. 👉 Growth requires a stream of new talent that are able to get onboard with the firm culture and ways of working asap. Surely this is impossible to do as effectively remotely as it is in person - new talent pick up so much more by physically being around their colleagues. 🤔 Risks of a RTO policy (also my personal views): 👉 Presenteeism culture driven by people staying late in the office and waiting for the boss to leave. Mitigants include leading by example (forcing leaders to leave the office on time), and linking performance to Key Results rather than amount of work done. 👉 Increasing the Motherhood penalty (making it harder for parents). I believe the state needs to support new parents better with more accessible public childcare provisions, but an option for leaders is to allow flexible working times within the day to enable parents to do school/nursery runs and work around this. Do you agree? Do you have strategies to mitigate risks around RTO? Charles Mindenhall Manoj Badale Conrad Withey Sam Carter Sam Kemp Laura Keith Tim Baker Jasper Joyce Jonathan Painter Sam Lawson #returntooffice #futureofwork #innovation

Pleased to share some thoughts on the return-to-office policies we've seen draw many workers back into the office in recent months with Institute for the Future of Work. In the continually evolving post-pandemic landscape of work culture, return-to-office mandates highlight an ongoing grapple for power in the labour market. The time is ripe for a reassessment of who benefits from which working arrangements, and who, as these policies continue to take hold, is at risk of being left at a disadvantage. The question remains: is there a way to balance the value of in-person work with the flexibility of hybrid working policies without risking the access to full-time and meaningful work opportunities for workers with care responsibilities? #hybridwork #returntooffice #futureofwork

Has your workplace rolled out a return-to-office plan? For working moms - a record 70% of whom flooded back into the workforce after the height of the pandemic - these new mandates may be prove to be especially challenging. In today’s episode, Emilie Aries, SPHR reviews the latest data around these RTO mandates and what they could mean for women’s workforce participation: #remotework #remotejobs #workingmom #womenintheworkplace

In this Forbes article by Caroline Castrillón she highlights the real impact of return-to-office mandates on productivity, especially for working mothers. With companies like Amazon and Boeing enforcing full-time office attendance, the article explores how this approach disproportionately affects women, particularly mothers who rely on flexible work options to balance caregiving responsibilities. Studies reveal that many women would need to quit or reduce work hours without flexibility, and this loss of female talent has led to significant productivity declines. For working and ambitious mothers, this conversation is crucial. The push for traditional office mandates risks not only burnout but also the loss of valuable talent in leadership and high-performing roles. Flexible work is no longer just a perk—it’s a necessity for creating an inclusive and productive workforce. 💡 Key points: ➤63% of companies saw more women quitting after enforcing return-to-office policies. ➤38% of mothers with young children would quit or reduce hours without flexibility. ➤Return-to-office mandates often lead to disengagement, reduced productivity, and higher turnover. Check out the full article to understand how this trend is affecting mothers in the workforce and how flexible work policies can benefit both employees and companies. 👇 Have you or anyone you know been affected by these policies? 🤔 #WorkingMoms #CareerProgression #WomenInLeadership #WorkLifeBalance #FlexibleWork #WorkingMoms #CareerGrowth #WomenInBusiness #WorkLifeBalance #FlexibleWork #WomenInLeadership #AmbitiousWomen #RemoteWork #InclusiveWorkplaces #ProfessionalWomen #CareerSuccess #EmpoweredMothers https://lnkd.in/gprNwq77

😵 Total lack of common sense or logic, hypocrisy, and even... discrimination. Yes, this is what many renowned and valued brands are doing to their own employees. 👎👎👎  🚩 RTO mandates disproportionately impact women and caregivers, leading to gender discrimination. SHAME ON YOU!!! 😱  🚩 Office mandates exclude remote workers from getting promotions - this is actually MIND-BLOWING! 😱  🚩 RTO mandates impact workers who moved during the pandemic, being assured they could keep working from home. STOP BRAINWASHING PEOPLE! 😱  🚩 RTO mandates hurt low-income workers, especially those who moved to more affordable areas when they could work remotely. BUT...WHO CARES? 😱  🚩 Pushing for office-only work basically means that companies won't hire from a wide range of places and backgrounds. In other words - NO DIVERSITY. 😱 But who cares?👀 The truth is that most companies don't care at all. They will just sugar-coat the sad truth of not giving a s**t about their own people, claiming it's all about "collaboration", "better well-being", and "great things happening" when everyone is squeezed in an open space with no fresh air every single day. 😂😂😂 (crying through tears) Please. This just makes me... 🤮 Oh, at the same time, most of these companies outsource work to developing countries... In this case, distance doesn't matter. So simple!? 😏 ... If you're going to say: "We ask people to to work from the office because WE SAY SO" - shame on you but you're at least not a hypocrite so I'll respect your decision. But if you're covering up your real intentions and narrow-mindedness with silly, shallow statements and you have NO plan to make any of your mandatory office meetings truly meaningful... I won't stay silent. 😶 #rto #returntooffice #backtowork #backtooffice #workfromanywhere #remotework #hybridwork #futureofwork #workfromhome #work #diversityandinclusion #diversity #dei #deistrategy #peopleandculture

Thanks to Wendy Tuohy at the Age for giving me the opportunity to comment on Return-to-Office Mandates being imposed by many large companies in Australia and worldwide, and their disproportionate impact on working people with caring responsibilities, especially working mothers who take on a larger proportion of childcare duties, and those from low-socioeconomic backgrounds who tend to live further away from the city. Although I recognize the benefits of being more present in the office, forcing non-customer facing staff back to the office for 4 or 5 days a week is likely to backfire in the long-term. Research suggests that flexible work supports the career growth of women and minority groups in the workplace and that 90% of women want the option to work remotely or in hybrid arrangements. It aids in the retention of staff and contributes towards closing the gender gap. Please see recent reports on the benefits of flexible work: https://lnkd.in/g84auHHd https://lnkd.in/gtxFhCAK Reducing the number of days in which employees are required to commute to work is also good for the development of outer-suburban and regional economies as people spend money close to where they live, and reduces carbon emissions and congestion on our roads. I call on CEOS to consider prioritizing hybrid and flexible working arrangements where possible. I'm glad to see the debate this has led to in the comments section of the article.

Nearly five years into a global remote work experiment and a pandemic that has touched so many lives, more and more data is starting to come in. This article shared really struck me this week -- talking about a string of reports showing the outsized, negative impact of RTO on women and how RTO has also tanked productivity. Many studies already found that remote work enabled a more diverse, and often more productive, workforce. But why have we collectively not learned this lesson? ‘The system is not working for women’: Companies with return-to-office mandates are hemorrhaging female talent, via Weekly Workforce.

A recent MITSloan article by Brian Elliott discusses the “Return-to-Office Mandates: How to Lose Your Best Performers.” As many CEOs are facing pressure to increase productivity, RTO policies are emerging and it’s not providing the expected outcomes, according to several recent studies. “RTO mandates do have an impact — and it’s pretty much all negative. The same study that found that RTO mandates have had no impact on the financial performance of the S&P 500 did find one enduring effect: significant declines in employees’ job satisfaction…Who’s most likely to leave? Women, caregivers, and other historically underrepresented groups at work, to start. The same Future Forum research found that 59% of working mothers want to work from home three or more days a week — as do 47% of working fathers.” Elliott goes on to present the “Doom loop,” which is a perpetuated loop depicting an employee’s loss of engagement which consists of a “combination of executive anxiety, monitoring, a lack of trust, and having employees perform to the metric of being in the office all contribute to lower performance.” The solution to this would be the “Boom loop,” which focuses on the performance outcome of an employee regardless of being in person or remote. You can learn more in the full article below! #staffingindustry #staffingtrends #executivesearch #leadershipsearch #returntooffice #remoteworking

More and more companies in the Bay Area are asking people to come back to work in the office. It is an interesting trend but what I am seeing is more #hybridwork than full time in office. What is your company doing to maximize collaboration while maintaining flexibility for your workers? What is the North Star for employee experience? I found this article interesting as once again women are getting called out. No one writes articles about how men are missing emotional connections with their families because they miss out on seeing them. My take away, identify what matters to your employees and build a culture around that.

I somehow missed this report when it came out, but it's sort of a scary headline: CEO survey predicts full return to in-office working by 2026. On the one hand, predictions are notoriously hard to get right. But on the other hand, as Drucker said the best way to predict the future is to create it, so these CEO predictions might be less about "the future we expect to find" and more about "the future we plan to create." Why scary? Because a complete return to in-office work "will disproportionally hurt workers with disabilities" and because "women reap fewer benefits from working on-site than men do." So this would be a big step backwards in terms of equity, which isn't the kind of future I want us to be creating. We've got an opportunity to do better, if we choose to. (quotes from this report: https://lnkd.in/eRHFc8qr) https://lnkd.in/eUK74hED