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(Trends Wide) — If you’ve organized your life around fully remote or even highly flexible hybrid work for the past three years, you may be upset if your employer decides to change the rules on remote work and require or enforce more workplace assistance. .
When that happens, employees are faced with a difficult decision.
In May, AT&T announced that it was reorganizing its offices and requiring managers to come in at least three days a week, according to a Bloomberg report. That decision meant that some managers who live near an office that is closing will have to move or resign.
“If they want to be a part of building a great culture and environment, they will be a part of these adjustments and changes. Others may decide, given where they are in life, that they want to go in a different direction,” said AT&T CEO John Stankey.
Meanwhile, the new CEO of Farmers Insurance Group has told employees that he no longer wants them to work remotely full-time; rather, he would like most of them to be in the office three days a week. This, despite the company having previously told employees that most of them would be working remotely full-time, according to The Wall Street Journal.
And this week, Google — which unceremoniously fired 12,000 employees in January — indicated it might treat an employee’s persistent failure to report to the office three days a week as a strike in its performance review. Additionally, according to CNBC, he also said he hopes employees who work remotely full-time will consider working a hybrid schedule if they live near a Google office.
Unpopular policy changes can come at a cost
The reasons most CEOs offer when calling for more face-to-face time in the workplace is the need to maintain culture, encourage collaboration, and better mentor young employees.
Even if data-driven research backs up those claims — it doesn’t — those arguments may have no effect on employees who have been doing their jobs well since they began working remotely full or part-time in 2020.
“There’s a big paradigm shift that’s hard for many leaders to accept because that’s not how they grew up in the world of work,” said Caitlin Duffy, director of human resources research at Gartner Consulting. “If you take away flexibility and do it for reasons that don’t make sense to the employees or the business, they won’t give you their best and it can hurt their trust in you.”
Gallup issues a similar warning.
“We’ve seen some employees feel like their employer changed the rules of the game when they expected more remote flexibility than their new policy provides,” said Ben Wigert, director of research and strategy for workplace management at Gallup.
In that situation, upset employees may leave, if not immediately, then sooner than they otherwise would.
“Remote work policy changes can certainly create significant risk to employee retention and engagement, depending on how drastic the changes are and how effectively managers execute them,” Wigert noted.
What to do if you are faced with a difficult decision
Some employees who oppose their companies’ new requirements for in-person work may protest or unionize.
But for pragmatic reasons, many won’t do any of those things. Instead, they will see the new edict as an unwelcome option with which to decide: comply or renounce.
If you find yourself in that situation, career coach Octavia Gordema, author of “Prep, Push, Pivot: Essential Career Strategies for Underrepresented Women,” suggests taking a break before making a decision.
She says try to find out two things. First, what is in the best interest of you and your family? And second, can you make the case to your boss why both you and the company could benefit from being allowed to continue working more flexibly?
“Use your business intelligence and your emotional intelligence,” he said.
To find out what your true non-negotiables are in this situation versus the nice things, Gordema recommends asking yourself a series of questions:
What does it represent for your current job?
Given everything that has changed in your life since 2020, is your role still the right fit for you?
How long have you been at your job?
Based on the feedback you’ve received, how would you rate your performance?
What do you need to do your best work?
Is your current job a springboard to something else?
Are you the main breadwinner in your home?
What are the best and worst case scenarios if you comply with the new policy? What if you quit?
Is there an intermediate result?
How is your employer doing financially?
Is there a chance that the company will embark on a merger or cut costs and lay off staff in the coming months?
If you don’t want to quit, talk to your bosses. They will know better which of their responsibilities can best be accomplished remotely than on siteDuffy explains. They can also learn how much leeway each division of the company will have in applying the new policy.
Armed with that information, make a proposal that benefits the company while allowing you to enjoy some or all of the flexibility you’ve enjoyed up to now.
“Present solid arguments focused on your efficiency, productivity and results. Focus on work,” says Gordema. “As with anything, it’s always smart to be a problem solver. Make it a positive conversation.”
– Trends Wide’s Catherine Thorbecke contributed to this report.
