Using a throwaway for this one…
I work in IT for a large insurance company. We started doing work-from-home in March 2020 like everyone else. Despite their desire to have a large number of employees return to the office since covid has waned, they were met with a lot of resistance so they begrudgingly allowed full-time remote work.
Fast forward to yesterday. We received an email about an upcoming “Town Hall” event. It's a meeting that happens every so often so our CIO can address the entire staff. These meetings have been virtual for two years. The email stated, “Looking forward to seeing you all at our virtual Town Hall Meeting next Thursday!” Keyword being virtual.
This morning, however, my team got an email from my direct supervisor saying, “This is an example that will test our employees 'flexibility and willingness to come in office when requested'. I suspect a low turn out will likely sway the flexibility stance we have seen to date! The expectation is that everyone will be attending in person from my teams.” (Emphasis added.)
Turns out a lot of other employees got similar messages from their supervisors, so it's not just my boss who expects my team to come into the office. But it gets better. We get another email from my boss after some people on my team griped about the expectation. “Yes, the meeting is ‘virtual’ because there is no justification to rent a space for 700 attendees when 75 show up. Yes, you will probably be sitting at your desk on the meeting virtually. I have no idea if [main speaker] will be at home on video! My point is, I think this is an opportunity to be here for the meeting and lunch. I’ll lighten my ‘expected to’ to ‘recommended to’ I’m happy to book a conference room if you want to attend from there!”
So in summary:
- The company advertises this as a virtual meeting
- Implies in some way to the management layer that a low physical attendance number will impact their willingness to continue work-from-home flexibility, resulting in managers asking their teams to come in
- They are not getting a space to hold these employees, and we are therefore expected to sit in some random spot in the office (we no longer have assigned seating since nearly everyone works remotely and the floors have been redesigned) and use our laptops to watch people speak who may not even be in the office themselves
- If we don't go into the office, it's unclear what the response will be from my direct manager (with their “recommendation” to come in) or the company in general
I'm not sure whose idea this was, but it all feels like a big childish game.