Bitcoin News Australia

THE BIG IDEA

Return-to-work mandates are struggling

Many US employees became accustomed to working remotely amid the pandemic, while some employers began ditching office space they no longer needed.

Now, however, some companies are calling workers back — and the results aren’t great.

Take AT&T…

… which, per Business Insider, kicked off its five-day RTO mandate on Monday. Employees said there weren’t enough desks, parking spaces, or working elevators at its Atlanta offices — though there were motivational signs suggesting employees take the stairs.

Meanwhile, Amazon has experienced delays in its RTO mandate as its offices lack the space to accommodate employees. Per Bloomberg, workers who did return cited limited desk, conference room, and break room space.

The AT&T workers who spoke to BI — as well as some experts — suspect some companies may be using RTO mandates to reduce head counts, hoping frustrated workers will quit.

If that’s the case…

… it might work — a survey on job review site Blind found 73% of corporate Amazon workers would consider quitting over its RTO mandate — but perhaps not in a beneficial way.

• A University of Pittsburgh report found that companies with RTO mandates experienced “abnormally high turnover,” especially among skilled, senior, and women employees, and took longer to replace them.
• The same report also noted that tech and finance companies that enacted RTO mandates lost top and senior employees, whom they later struggled to replace.
• Another report from workforce analytics firm Revelio Labs found remote and hybrid companies are able to grow faster.

And then there’s “coffee badging,” when workers rebel against mandates by showing up briefly, then leaving.

Bottom line?

People who can work remotely prefer it. Buffer’s 2023 State of Remote Work report found that 98% of respondents want to work remotely, at least some of the time, for the duration of their careers.

And while studies may show they’re 10%-20% less productive than their in-office counterparts, productivity is hard to quantify and doesn’t account for the costs a company might rack up in real estate, retention, or recruitment.

Either way, nobody’s gonna be productive in a packed, noisy office.

🔗

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NEWSWORTHY NUMBER

New year, new job? Not for the workforce’s newest hopefuls.

In 2024, 55% of hiring managers said they had to fire a recent college grad, according to a recent survey of 1k US hiring managers by Pollfish and Intelligent.com. Now, one in eight plan to avoid hiring the office freshmen altogether.

What’s made them unemployable? Hiring managers say they lack work ethic (33%), motivation (28%), and communication skills (20%); are entitled (29%), easily offended (27%), and lazy (17%); and don’t handle feedback well (25%). Yikes.

Fortunately for deserving young jobseekers, there are some easy ways to beat those biases, like by making eye contact and dressing appropriately for interviews — the two most common interview challenges among recent grads. 

Oh, and maybe leave the parents at home: 8% of hiring managers said that’s been a problem. Nothing says “ready for responsibility” like bringing mom to a job interview.

AROUND THE WEB

🎶  On this day: In 2001, Apple debuted media player iTunes.

🧩  Game: A logic puzzle with cats.

🎂  How to: bake a fluorescent cake.

🌜  That’s cool: An interactive website for learning all about the moon.

🦌  Aww: Babies meeting babies.

HOT TAKES

Yesterday, we checked in on where you stand — literally and figuratively — on the return-to-office debate.

It was a fairly even split: 37% of readers said they’re hybrid while 33% work from home and 30% are in the office full time.

Opinions were also divided, with 39% saying working in the office is slightly better for productivity, 31% saying it doesn’t help at all, and 30% saying it absolutely does.

The only conclusive thing about this debate is that readers feel passionately about their stances:

• “I will never in my life work an in-office job again. It is a dealbreaker for me.”
• “Spontaneous ideas can’t happen alone at home if your work is ‘collaborative.’ Water cooler talk, y’all.”
• “Stop the RTO nonsense — it’s noisier, more germy, and only suits micro-managers who like seeing themselves rule over their empires in order to serve their egos.”

Ultimately, this reader settled things: “Would rather not work at all, but those bills have to get paid.”

SHOWER THOUGHT

Marsupials are the only animals that can be pickpocketed. SOURCE

Today’s email was brought to you by Juliet Bennett Rylah and Sara Friedman.
Editing by: Ben “Team WFH” Berkley.

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