Google and JPMorgan have each told staff that office attendance will be factored into performance evaluations. The US law firm Davis Polk informed employees that fewer days in the office would result in lower bonuses. And Meta and Amazon both told employees they’re now monitoring badge swipes, with potential consequences for workers who don’t comply with attendance policies – including job loss. Increasingly, workers across many jobs and sectors appear to be barrelling towards the same fate.
In some ways, it’s unsurprising bosses are turning back to attendance as a standard. After all, we’ve long been conditioned to believe showing up is vital to success, from some of our earliest days. In school, perfect attendance is often still seen a badge of honour. The obsession with attendance has also been a mainstay of workplace culture for decades; pre-pandemic, remote work was largely unheard of, and employees were expected to be physically present at their desks throughout the workday.
Yet after the success of flexible arrangements during the pandemic, attendance is still entrenched as a core metric. What’s the point?
This reason doesn’t really make sense to me. The company pays the same for the office whether there are people in it or not. Forcing people into the office isn’t saving them any money, in fact they probably pay more when you factor in utilities.
They do pay more. The issue comes in because many executives are really doing two jobs. Job one is the company exec. They want to save money and downsizing office space is kosher with that job. But their second job is being landlords for commercial office space. Their portfolios will be negatively affected by companies (including their own) getting rid of office space.
They are choosing to prioritize their personal wealth (commercial real estate investments) over the health of their company.
Modern business is full of this type of stuff. The priority is always personal benefits over the health of the company. Run it into the ground while extracting as much as you possibly can and walking away from any consequences.
The great Neo-liberal grift.
42 years and the only thing to trickle down were two skyscrapers and half the smaller bridges in the country.
And the middle class down the social ladder
I fucking hate neoliberalism.
It’s responsible for the vast majority of society’s problems at this point.
If you pay for a building that can house 100 workers, but only 20 come into the office and the other 80 work from home, you have way more space than what you need. You could probably rent a place half as big for half the price and still have room.
Would you rent a 5 bedroom, 4 bathroom house with a 3-car garage as a bachelor? I mean you can but you’re paying for way more than what you actually need.
When that’s all they build, do you really have a choice?
It’s an interconnected issue where the value of real estate is dependent on people having a use for it.