It does not surprise me companies are making people go back to the office. Not just in Australia but around the world. There are a lot of people abusing the situation. It sucks but I saw this was going to happen when work from home first started getting rolled out back at the beginning of Covid.
The companies are going to use what ever means and reasoning they need to. But at the end of the day all that matters dollars. If they would have seen more productivity with people working from home and if the company made more money, the people would be allowed to continue to work from home
There are some companies the productivity went up. There are some that it has gone down.
At one company that I personally know of: the manager will message an employee via the internal messaging program in the computer (sorry I’m being vague but I need to because of how I found out) … anyway she will message the employee and get no response. Half hour later she will message again… no response… try again and again… she will email a few times… two to three hours later finally get a bull shit response of “oh I’m so sorry I didn’t see your message”…
If that happens once, ok fine I get it. Continuously from most of the department? Yeah bull shit they weren’t at their computer. It will show they are busy but yet no response.
She is about ready to tell everyone back in the office full time.
So I get why some companies are saying get back in the office.
I remember when Covid first started that there was post after post of people asking how do I make myself look busy on the computer when I’m not. Doesn’t take much to put two and two together.
I know that studies have shown that when a company says get back in the office people quit. So I do see that side.
Is it good that your company the productivity went up when you did work from home? Well yeah it’s good. It’s just not true every where.
For the banks… well let’s be honest… if their people are more productive at home and they are still saying get back in the office AND the company knows if the employees are told to get back in the office they will quit… well then maybe the banks need to figure out a better way.
Sounds like someone who disrespects and/or underpays their employees and is seeing the rightful consequences of it.
To be fair, that sounds like poor people management. The first time it happened there should have been a email sent round reminding people that they’re expected to be promptly available during work hours and those that aren’t will be pulled up on it.
And there needs to be a WFH policy that states reasonable responsiveness. If on a break, set you chat status as such.
Of course there are workarounds, like just carrying you phone with chat app.
Then it really does boil down to people management.