I work in an office doing basically third party secretary work. In March 2020, they sent everyone home with their computer to begin wfh. This was only supposed to be for a couple weeks but fast forward to now, we are still wfh. Lately they have been trying really hard to push RTO. My job is made up of several small teams that each work for a specific client, and they all have very different needs. They tried to do a company-wide hybrid RTO plan that massively backfired when dozens of people threatened to leave. So they took a step back and gave the decision making power to each team lead.
Over the last 2 years, my team has experienced extremely high turnover and as a result, they have replaced almost every single local employee with remote workers in other states. Currently, 10 out of 15 of us are permanent remote employees. And they are still hiring remote people, just this Monday a new remote person started. They are now pushing a team hybrid work plan, and are using wfh as a reward. If your stats are 90% and above and you haven’t missed more than 3 days in a rolling 12 month period, you get a whole 2 extra wfh days a quarter. Woo hoo! We also have to maintain a certain expectation to “participate” in the hybrid plan, otherwise we are expected to work in office every day. They said eligibility will be reviewed on a quarterly basis.
I told my manager that it felt like they were punishing anyone that lives locally as none of these standards are being enforced on the remote workers, which again is 2/3 of the team. My manager gave some bs response about how wfh is a privilege. So basically if I move to another state, I can work from home permanently but because I live in town I’m shit out of luck.
It should also be noted that because of how our schedules line up (we are open 24/7) the most people there will ever be in the office at one time is 3 people. And they said our client wants us to remain wfh but because our managers are insisting on RTO, if they don’t approve the hybrid plan then local workers will all have to RTO permanently. I think all of this is incredibly unfair and stupid, and I think it will result in people leaving.
I guess I’m not asking for advice or anything I just wanted to vent and I thought this subreddit would be interested. I just don’t understand the giant push for RTO when your workers clearly are against it, and it only affects a small portion of the team. I don’t see the benefit other than managers feeling useless working from home and wanting someone to watch like a hawk and micromanage