RTO Office Mandate

You could refuse and see what happens. It does create an interesting situation, while the employer isn't breaking any particular law by having this rule in place I do wonder how successful they would be in trying to enforce it through disciplinary action to those who aren't abidding by it.

Discrimination by itself isn't illegal. If a company wanted to only hire people who prefer cats to dogs (for example), they're perfectly entitled to do that. As above, there are nine specific grounds which you can't discriminate - everything else is allowed (except where used as indirect discrimination for one of the nine grounds). There's no legal argument there.

That doesn't mean there's nothing you can do. If there's twenty of you involved, and 15 say with one voice that you're not going to go back to the office, the company may well take the view that allowing you to work from home is less painful than hiring 15 new employees. If there's two or three of you, they may prefer to just get rid. There are a lot of variables involved, and nobody on here is going to have as much insight into the situation as you

Generally (and I've moved jobs twice this year), people will leave if there is mandated RTO. Some companies use this to avoid paying redundancies as it increases natural attrition at the cost of morale.

3 yrs later. Oh yeah its the remote working lol.

That they are making this major decision based on distance. Which has nothing to do with "effectiveness". Says all you need to know right there.

So why do you think the employer is asking people to come in?

100% of the time that I have seen this enforced over the past year or two, it's because of middle managers not having the power they used to. People were so used to acting like schoolteachers, hovering around desks/offices, checking up on all the perceived minor indiscretions, trying to catch staff out on X, Y or Z technicality. Busybodies, whose sole job was to keep everyone else in line, who now realise that their entire role is redundant, because people can be (largely) trusted to do their job and those that can't get found out quickly.

The top brass don't give a monkeys once the work is done. The guys in the middle are panicking, because if you the staff at the coalface don't need to be managed then they don't need managers. WFH has gladly been the death knell for the micromanagers and the mini-Hitlers who ruled with an iron fist and who've seen their empire crumble to dust before them. The fight to get everyone back to the office has ALWAYS come from someone who realised their necks are on the chopping block.

And I honestly mean 100%. Multiple grades, from all manner of firms/companies/departments, from all walks of the professional life. One example.....

A newly-promoted guy in my last job threatened to put a colleague on a PIP because his out of office wasn't set properly. He wanted your man to be back in the office 100% of the time for three months because of it, adding 4 hrs to his workday every single day.

Turns out, it was the promoted guy's manager (who was also his predecessor) who was driving all of this, and told the new guy that this was a great way to keep everyone on their toes, show upper management that he was a ball-buster and it would be a great example of how he had disciplined an underperforming employee and rectified the situation, even if it didn't need rectifying in the first place.

He accidentally copied the 'underperforming' employee on the email, who left and sued for constructive dismissal. Both managers were fired.

If the company wasn't performing well because of remote working, it would have been identified well before now. Nobody waits three years to see if it's an anomaly. They are either trying to whittle the numbers down or it's someone who has come to the conclusion that their job is fecking meaningless and they're gonna start chopping off heads before theirs gets chopped off.

We're there any press reports of the unfair dismissal case?

Remote working is a lot more effort for middle managers: they have to do a lot more checks to make sure that not only is the work getting done, but the company and industry compliance requirements are met.

If anything, they want people back because it makes their job easier.

What checks? If the work is getting done then why does anything need to be checked?

Most companies now want folks back in offices due to an existing lease, which can be seen as a liability to shareholders if it is sitting empty. Others are just following the trend being set by bigger companies (who again, have large leases).

It obviously isn't for the sake of productivity. That has long since been proven otherwise.

Is it not very naive to convince yourselves that all these successful companies want a return to offices simply because they are big dumb dumbs?

Like, think that if you want, but just because some want to sit in pyjamas all day doesn't mean that a hell of a lot of business owners aren't allowed to have a different opinion.

I think a lot of you live in some IT bubble where everything is cliche middle managers and HR departments. Fact is, there are a lot of businesses out there that see tangible benefits to having people in office and have decided that if they are paying for everything, then thats what they want to happen.

Leave them and go elsewhere if you disagree, that is your right, but it is foolish to just assume that they are stupid and wrong.

If someone actually described valid use cases where you need to be there in person, instead of bumbling example of ineptitude they wouldn't get lambasted. Perhaps you might have a point. But mostly they don't. Same with nonsensical HR policies. If it looks like a duck, its probably a duck.

RTO office is simple, its either in your contract or it isn't. If you don't like it, vote with your feet. It will either cause a retention issue or it won't.

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Your point is valid but only in companies with robust training policies and an inclusive environment where knowledge is absorbed and passed on to new hires is evident. But what about people who just dont like each other or toxic workplace cultures where zero knowledge is passed on shared? In such places, being in the office has no tangible effect whatsoever because when you ask for help or more training, you get ignored or scowled at. Many, many workplaces are like this and the whole "everyone works better face to face and collaboration thrives" is complete bullsh!t and nothing but an excuse for companies to force people back. There are arguably lots of reasons such as renting premises etc why people have to go back but this whole "its better to learn in person" is rubbish because that doesnt apply in many jobs...

An easy example is compliance with the Organisation of Working Time Act.

With a few exceptions (junior doctors, some hotel staff), employers are legally required to make sure that everyone averages less than 48 hours /week, and has 11 hours off between shifts, and has minimum breaks.

One way to do this is to make everyone use timesheets with occasional audits and penalties for people who tell lies. But that's horrible, and widely hated. Another is on-site working and limits on access hours eg the office is closed 8pm to 7am, you cannot be in outside those hours: by definition this gives 11 hours between shifts). With WFH, those natural check aren't possible. So managers need to think about what kind of checks are suitable for their industry, and carry them out. Whatever they choose to do, it's either more work for manager, or the risk of being fined for the company.

There are many other laws and industry-requirements which require checks, process steps etc. There are also things like CPD hours requirements: I know a couple of people presenting these courses who've had to adopt far stricter checks to ensure people who are virtually attending courses were engaging with the material It's all possible of course - but more, not less, work for the middle managers.

Everything you're talking about can be done remotely and automated.

Obviously some people are locked in a mindset to do things in obsolete and inefficient ways. It's busy work.

That's just one example of a legislative requirement. I never said that it requires people to RTO. Just that with WFH it makes more, not less, work for middle managers.

Sure an automated report can track employee activity - but most people would say its not right to use an AI-bot to decide what to do if an employee's work patterns break the law.

I don't know what universe you're in, but last did a timesheet when I was working thru an agency in 2019. Sure I completed it online, but at the end of each week I had to print it out and get a wet-ink signature from the client.

And if your staff have a four hour commute -you've got the wrong staff. Hire local and support your own economy.

An automated report is not AI. There are digital signatures these days. Signatures are not unique to remote working. This not extra work.

You must have hated when they invented the phone.

Time sheets are not unique to remote working. They are just part of normal working and billing.

Agreed. Doesn't matter if they're paper based, online or cloud based, they absolutely are in regular use.

But according to the aptly-named Yeah Right

Nobody has used timesheets in a quarter of a century.

as a manager of online resources (headcount in a task delivery system) I developed reports that allocated different tasks to different people/s or group/s based on skillset and sla. You don't need a middle manager to micromanage task assignment or "what to do", all the time. It can absolutely be automated. In a lot of cases.

Could be looking to cut back on staff - easy way to shift a few people on.