Professor Basset sent us a really interesting article earlier today about Dell’s hard push for their employees to return to the office. The fact that Dell has pulled a hard 180-degree turn on their stance of working from home is honestly quite confusing to me. Dell used to be one of the biggest supporters of remote offices, and so this punishment for working from home full time is really odd.
The article suggests that the flip may be due to a desire to save money on Human Resources without having to lose employees. Dell directly says that in-person communications are required to advance in “today’s global technology revolution.” Either way, I just can not see this being a benefit to the company. Clearly, Dell employees do not want to return to the office if they are having to be enticed by a threat to their job advancement. So what is the point of forcing a return when employees have no desire to?
I do understand that some people (and corporations) did actually want to return to the office for many reasons. Maybe their homes were not suitable work environments, or they, as an individual, need that office environment to get their work done properly. I can even understand some of the implications of working from home if we were to apply this to the legal profession because some clients will want that in-person meeting. Even then, for those that are just as effective, if not MORE effective at home, the force back to the office just does not make sense to me.
Not only would the company have better morale, as the companies are letting the employees work how they are the most comfortable, but honestly, they would probably save more money. There is less office space to pay for or rent, fewer office resources to have to pay for, and more. I do understand that some of this may not be as applicable to as large of a company as Dell, but Dell is far from the only company trying to force a return to the office.
The end of the article explaining Dell’s new RTO initiative even ends with the fact that a study found that forcing a return to office hurts employee morale and doesn’t boost company finances. What does everyone else think? I just cannot see this having a favorable effect on office environments.
I agree with you in that I think forcing everyone to return back to the office will have a negative impact not only on the company as a whole, but on their employees morale and work product. Something I've seen as a compromise to this forcing everyone to return back to the office is for companies to purchase a small sharable work space for people that do want to be in the office and making it option to go in person, but then having certain mandatory days that people need to be in the office. I think this is a reasonable compromise that should be considered by more companies like Dell who want people to be back in the office.
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