Return To Office Is Corporate Gaslighting! They Want You To Quit So They Don’t Pay Severance!

DANIEL: According to the University of Chicago, Microsoft lost 5% of senior employees after they announced a return to office. SpaceX lost 15%. Apple lost 4%. Now let me ask you: those people that are leaving, do you think those are the people who are more senior and have lots of options, or the people who are more junior and have less options?

DANIEL: So what's your take on coffee badging? Good thing, bad thing, depends thing? What's your personal stance on it?

RYAN: I hate the fact we have a term called coffee badging. And I hate the fact that employees have had to come up with a means to cheat the system — show up, get a cup of coffee, and leave — because of stupidity in the business world. I'm not against return to office mandates. I'm against return to office mandates for stupid reasons.

DANIEL: When is return to office a legitimate business strategy, and when is it just corporate gaslighting? But there are times when I do think it makes sense. So when does it make sense, and when does it not?

DANIEL: So Monday morning, you're stuck in this situation. You've just received an email over the weekend that your company is mandating return to office in the coming months. You don't know exactly what day it is yet. You know it's coming, but you know that you're going to have to start making that commute. Monday morning, what do you do?

ANNOUNCER: Welcome to the Make Work Not Suck podcast.

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THE BIG WHY

DANIEL: Ryan, I got a question for you. If working from the office doesn't improve productivity, and the data proves that it doesn't, why are companies willing to lose some of their best people over these return to office mandates?

RYAN: That is a phenomenal question. Say more.

DANIEL: Well, according to Gartner, these return to office mandates are having zero impact on productivity. But they're becoming more and more popular. More and more organizations are announcing that everyone's got to come back to the office. And so what you're seeing now is this trend called coffee badging, where people will show up for work just to swipe in, get a cup of coffee, and then go home, because they get more work done at home. So they've technically shown up at the office, but they're not really sitting at their desk and engaging. They're there just enough to swipe the badge and get credit for it, show some face time. And yet it's not having any value to the organization.

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BY THE NUMBERS

DANIEL: So I got something for you. 93% of CEOs demanding return to office don't even go to the office themselves.

RYAN: That's awesome.

DANIEL: They're taking the Zoom call from their house in the Hamptons and then demanding that everybody else go to the office.

RYAN: Well, and this is the crazy one, right? We love creating loopholes. There is an Amazon employee that discovered that if he scans his badge at the loading dock at Whole Foods, it counts as showing up at the office.

DANIEL: Oh, that's great.

RYAN: And then you've got the CEO of Amazon that's working from his third house in Maui while he's mandating everybody return to the office and the importance of in-office collaboration. So why do we have the top of the organization demanding people return, and the average person in the organization finding creative ways to scan their badge to show that they showed up? And yet you still got corporate real estate at 51% capacity. So they're still underutilizing those assets.

DANIEL: So here's one angle, spicy take for you. According to the Federal Reserve, 25% of executives openly admit that they are using return to office as a stealth layoff strategy. They want you to quit so they don't have to pay severance.

RYAN: I believe that, especially in the publicly traded world.

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SPICY TAKES

RYAN: But I've actually seen where return to office has been a good thing. And I've seen it where everybody's happy and glad to go back.

DANIEL: I would love to hear an example of that, because I've got a lot of examples to the contrary.

RYAN: One of the companies I work with — now, we still are hybrid, it's not in the office five days a week — but I can tell you, the days we are in the office, we are way more productive, way more collaborative, the culture's gone up. And the times that we've been in the office versus the large gaps where everybody's traveling and whatnot, we come back and, man, we miss being in the office. But I will tell you, it's not a return to office mandate. It's done for collaboration. It actually is productive and collaborative, because we show up in the office to hold strategic meetings and then go about our way. I think where the return to office mandates are, and we're trying to force productivity, is we want butts in seats for the sake of butts in seats.

DANIEL: Yeah. It's a red line tactic.

RYAN: Yes.

DANIEL: It's the appearance of progress without actually having to do the work of progress.

RYAN: Well, I do think — again, if you look at it in the means of truly making the business more proactive, more productive, and building culture, if you look at it through that lens and you do the right measures, I've actually seen cases where it increases the culture. There's something about getting people in a room together, you just collaborate more. I can't explain it, but it's so hard to collaborate on a Zoom call with 16 people in it, 50 people in it, 10 people.

DANIEL: Right. Yeah, it's impossible.

RYAN: Versus having a large group of people in the room, especially when you get on a Zoom call and everybody's got their camera off.

DANIEL: Oh yeah, that's the worst. But I think we've all been in both kinds of these meetings, right? The really good meetings, where it's electric, where you've got a couple of people — it's usually not a large group, it's a smaller group — they're passionate about the subject, they're invested in it, they care about the outcome. And that meeting is like, man, I would do that all day. That's awesome. And we've had the opposite experience where it feels like a hostage situation, and it's like, dear God, when can I get out of this conference room? Both of them are in person, or at least in my experiences, I've had both of those in-person experiences. So it isn't about whether or not we're in a room together. What is it really about?

RYAN: You're exactly right. It's being in the right setting for the right reason.

DANIEL: Yeah, I would say maybe even with the right people.

RYAN: With the right people. Yeah. If you're forced into a meeting — and I think we see this a lot, especially with visionaries or small business CEOs, they've got the mentality of bring everybody in the room and we're all going to work this problem — and 40% or 60% of the people in the room don't really need to be there. And they're checked out. And I think that is waste, right? That's when these mandates are stupid. And really — this probably sounds horrible — I think to some degree there's an ego trip there, right? Like, I want everybody in the room, and that's a level of control. And then I think there's the other ones that are just that collaborative, that they think everybody being in the same room is going to drive all these magical outcomes. But you've got other problems.

DANIEL: Yeah, it's probably something that extroverts love to do, right? The more people, the better. Let's just all get in a room and great things are going to happen. And extroverts tend to think that way. Introverts hate that about extroverts.

RYAN: I think it's when people think they're great at running meetings. I think you can bring extroverts and introverts into a room, but everybody's got to have a purpose, everybody's got to be willing to contribute. And you know what, I've even been in successful meetings where we've said, hey, we're all going to be in the conference room, we've got these varying topics that we need to cover, and you can zone out when it's not you. I've seen those be very successful. I've been a part of them. And I've even been one in the middle where I'm writing emails, I'm working on other things, and then I get a reminder — oh, it's one thirty, we're switching topics.

DANIEL: All right, we're ready to switch.

RYAN: Yeah, we're ready to switch. And then I'm engaged with all the people. And some people check in, other people check out. And it can work like that. But it's when you bring everybody in to talk about a topic that they don't have input in, or they're not really a value-add. To me it's like when you bring developers into the pre-sprint scrum meetings. They're either there out of fear that you're going to do something stupid, or they're just there to listen, and you're wasting their time. So I don't think it's the return to office mandate that's really the issue. I mean, don't get me wrong, that is the issue, I'm not trying to glaze over that. It's how we're executing it. It's the intent behind it. It's that we think just putting everybody in a room is going to instantly produce results. And that has been a problem even before COVID. All we're doing now is exposing it and accelerating it.

DANIEL: Yeah, I think this whole return to office thing operates on a couple of different assumptions, and I don't think any of them are true. That presence equals productivity — not true. That innovation requires proximity — you know, the closer we are, the more innovative we're going to be. And that culture can't exist virtually. And I think over the last five years since COVID, we've seen that all three of those have been disproven. I know organizations that have been very innovative, that have had very healthy cultures, and that are super productive, that have never gotten together in person. So those assumptions, I think, are driving this game of return to office chicken, where we're just going to see who's willing to blink first and call the bluff of either the employer or the employee.

RYAN: Absolutely. You know, it's interesting, what you're saying made me think — part of return to office that makes it easy is when everybody's in the same area. You're breathing the same air, you're seeing the same things, you're in the same environment. You're just using more of your senses. And how much of communication is nonverbal? Like 80% of communication is nonverbal, because it's your facial expressions, body language, tone, and stuff like that, which gets lost, especially when nobody has a camera on in Zoom. But I think you're right, culture can be built online. And I've been part of companies that have failed to build culture remotely, because they're too much of an introverted company. I've been part of companies that have been great at building culture. And everything in between.

RYAN: What I find interesting is there are companies that I've worked with that have built great online working cultures. But what I've noticed is they tend to be track stars as opposed to teams. And if your company is set up where track stars or individual contributors can work in pseudo-silos, I think it works really well. But in circumstances where you need to be highly collaborative, I actually think it's more context switching than if you're in a common office. Because how many times throughout the day can you just be like, hey, Bob, you check this for me? You can just do those quick little things. Somebody's getting up from their desk — hey, can you check this real quick while you're walking away? There's just things you can do with those natural cues. Versus you'd be in the middle of work and Bob needs something from you and you're getting a Slack message or a Teams message, and it's interrupting, it's disrupting your concentration, right? Or you stop what you're doing and go back and forth. I mean, don't get me wrong, it can happen on both sides. But I think there's actually less context switching when people are in a common environment than there is in a remote environment. And I think it's a lot harder to be continually collaborative in a remote environment versus in office. And then again, if your business is set up for individual contributors where 80% of their work is in a silo, or they don't really need to collaborate, then I think that's why we're seeing return to office not be so popular, because those individuals can be more productive at home. And they're going to be less productive because they do have to drive into an office and disrupt their schedule and yada yada yada.

DANIEL: They've got to wake up, put pants on.

RYAN: Yes.

DANIEL: Yeah. So I like the distinction you're making there — that not all work is the same. And for people who need more collaboration to be successful in their role, return to office probably makes more sense than for people that have more of a siloed, individual-contributor set of responsibilities. I think that's a really good insight. I think there are other things going on here too, though. I think one of them is probably the optics — just the ability to see that people are doing what they say they're doing. I have a friend who is currently holding down two full-time remote jobs and juggling both of them in less than 40 hours, because they are able to work asynchronously. They respond to a couple of emails, a couple of Slack messages, but they're holding down two full-time jobs at the exact same time, and neither of the employers know that. So for that individual, if their manager knew what was going on, they would probably mandate a return to office, because it's real hard to work for another company when you're sitting in the office of company A.

RYAN: That's happening. And that's happening a lot. Whether it's full-time or part-time, there's a lot of folks juggling their full-time gig and their part-time hustle.

DANIEL: So I think there is something to be said for the optics of face time and being in the office where you can be seen, and the accountability that comes with that.

RYAN: I would agree with that. And I think that's where, in the small business world, it's a lot easier to navigate the dynamic. It's in the Fortune 500 when it's just sweeping mandates.

DANIEL: Yes.

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WORK RECEIPT

RYAN: Even in my former Vistage groups, organizations that appeared to have adapted well to being remote — what they learned is their culture was eroded away. They had a very unified culture. Everybody was on the same page, productivity was through the roof, people were happy, things were moving. And now what they're seeing is they have 20% more people than they had before with the same throughput of productivity. And the culture's sliding. And what they're looking at is, you know what, we didn't have this problem when we didn't have remote work. And so here comes the return to office mandate.

DANIEL: Yeah. Is that a large company?

RYAN: Small company. 600 employees.

DANIEL: That's a good size.

RYAN: Good size. One of them was 200, 300. The other one's 600, 700. I would say it is coming from the top down. The difference here is it's not the top mandating people come back for productivity. The top leaders are also in the office every single day with the team.

DANIEL: That's good.

RYAN: I will also say the leaders of these organizations are phenomenal leaders. And so they're in the trenches with their people, they're working alongside them, they really do care about the people and the culture. And what they noticed is they weren't being able to take care of their organization as well. The organization is healthy, still very successful, don't get me wrong, but it wasn't as healthy as it was. And it really got to the intrinsic side of the equation. Whereas now — let's get everybody back together, let's build the culture back up, let's keep building the empire. In this particular company that I've got in mind, they're actually the small fish. And I think their culture is what was giving them market share in their space. And that started getting eroded away with the online world.

DANIEL: I think it'd be interesting to do an analysis of what return to office feedback is by company. If you've got leaders that are really committed to the culture and are leading by example, my gut says people would be more open to a return to office than with leaders that are disengaged, that aren't in the office themselves, that are so far removed from the people that they don't really understand the implications of their decisions. I can see people just smelling BS there and getting a little bit disenfranchised with it.

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THE SUNK COST PROBLEM

DANIEL: I think the other thing that is going on here is just the corporate real estate, right? Many of these organizations, whether they bought the building, bought the land, or are just leasing it, they're in long-term contracts that are costing a lot of money that they're just throwing away if people never show up to the office. And so that has to be driving some of this as well. And that's just something that I'm sure top-of-the-house leadership is going to know, but maybe the average employee doesn't recognize how expensive that is.

RYAN: Well, and this is one where I don't know if I really have a stance, I haven't thought through it enough yet, but I get it conceptually. You're paying for this resource, you're not using it, so you want to force everybody back to the office so you can feel like you're getting an ROI on that. That to me sounds like a red line — perceived high value, right?

DANIEL: I'm pretty sure they call it the sunk cost fallacy.

RYAN: Sunk cost fallacy, there you go. But if it's already a sunk cost and your company's performing — I guess unless you're going to say, hey, we want to use this resource, we think it's going to add more value, we can get an ROI on it, and you go through that whole thing and share it in a respectable, appropriate way, sure, maybe that'll work. But to your point, the sunk cost fallacy — just because you're spending the money on it doesn't mean it's going to work just by mandating everybody back. Plus, if you think about it, technically — and I know subletting space now is probably harder than it was years ago — but technically then you've got wear and tear and higher utilities. Wouldn't that actually create a higher operating cost, on top of the rent and on top of the dysfunction that you're creating in your business? Isn't this a negative ROI at this point? Further negative ROI?

DANIEL: So you've got a couple of factors there, right? One, you've got higher air conditioning bills, higher heating bills, water bills, all that kind of stuff. You've also got disgruntled employees and the productivity impact of people who show up but they're pissed about it. And then you've got the whole forced attrition.

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THE ATTRITION NUMBERS

DANIEL: There's some statistics here. According to the University of Chicago, Microsoft lost 5% of senior employees after they announced a return to office. SpaceX lost 15%. Apple lost 4%. Now let me ask you: those people that are leaving, do you think those are the people who are more senior and have lots of options, or the people who are more junior and have less options?

RYAN: It's interesting, because I'm reading the spec here on SpaceX. SpaceX lost 15%.

DANIEL: Yep.

RYAN: Except they built a freaking space complex on the Texas-Mexico border, and people moved from wherever they were in the country to be on site. So I struggle with that one a little bit, because that's also the extreme side of it. These people are part of a major project, they moved across country to be in the middle of nowhere, Texas.

DANIEL: It wasn't return to office. It was return to the desert.

RYAN: Yeah, the swampland desert in Texas and Mexico. So I think you've got a mix of both. I think you've got senior people that don't want to deal with it, kind of set in their ways. And I think you've got a lot of entry-level or low-level or in-the-masses groups. But again, if you look at Apple, if you look at Microsoft, you look at SpaceX — Microsoft's not missing the 5%. SpaceX is not missing the 15%. Apple's not missing the 4%. Have you seen the performance of those companies? They're killing it. So did they really lose the top talent? They may have lost some good engineers or some good people, don't get me wrong.

DANIEL: That's an interesting take, because I would have assumed it's usually the more senior, talented people that have the options. But oftentimes the more senior people are more committed. They've been there for longer. They like what they're doing.

RYAN: Are they? I mean, this is the problem with Boeing. Boeing fired all of its innovation and kept all of the engineers and everybody that was fat and happy from what they did in years past. And then they started crashing airplanes and having things fall off. So at what point are those senior individuals more coasting? And I'm not saying they're lazy or they're checked out, but if they've reached a stature in their career where it's time to pass the torch, you probably got some younger, hungrier people that are willing to step into those shoes because they're looking for a shot. So how much of this is you're giving opportunity to the more hungry, younger crowd?

DANIEL: I do know that there are organizations that have turnover that is too low. They're not shedding unproductive employees at the rate that they should. And that's a cultural problem. And I know of a couple of companies specifically that wish they had higher turnover, because they continue to just kind of promote from within, and they end up with the problem you're talking about — a lot of people at the top coasting. That doesn't seem to be SpaceX or Apple. Those places seem like they're pretty hard-charging. But you're right, it could be some of these organizations have a little bit more dead weight at the top.

RYAN: And a lot of companies I go into when I'm doing these turnarounds, when I'm doing the interview process and the discovery — if it's been one of those "oh, we've operated flat for three, five, eight years," whatever it may be, and you're right, the attrition's low. One of my first things is, we're going to have to turn over 30% to 40%, maybe 50%, to get this thing moving again. And they're like, well, no, we want to do it with our existing people. If you were able to do it, you would have already done it. Now, there is some variance in there, right? You bring in new leadership and you bring in new vision, and people rise to the occasion. And that also doesn't mean we walk in the door and just fire 30% of the staff. For the people that want to do something different, want to take a different career path, we help them find other jobs. We don't leave a man behind. But to your point, there's a lot of times we walk into these companies and fresh blood is what's needed in the door.

DANIEL: Yeah, especially in a world that's changing this quickly.

RYAN: Well, and to your point — is return to office, like you said in that earlier stat, 25% of CEOs admitted that they used it as a forcing function?

DANIEL: The other thing about senior employees is they tend to be more expensive, right? So if you're going to lose a couple of people, losing the people that are being paid 20, 30, 40% more, probably not a bad move, especially if they're a negative culture impact.

RYAN: Oh, absolutely. I mean, that's the early retirement package, right?

DANIEL: Right.

RYAN: And you and I both know dozens upon dozens of people that have had the option come up and they made it their opportunity. Oh, I can take this package and I can start a business. Or I have the opportunity because I want to switch industries. People get stagnant in life and want change, and those packages offer those solutions, right? They're there for a reason.

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COFFEE BADGING

DANIEL: So what's your take on coffee badging? Good thing, bad thing, depends thing? What's your personal stance on it?

RYAN: I hate the fact we have a term called coffee badging. And I hate the fact that employees have had to come up with a means to cheat the system — show up, get a cup of coffee, and leave — because of stupidity in the business world. I'm not against return to office mandates. I'm against return to office mandates for stupid reasons. And the fact that we've employed stupid reasons and now we have a term for people to cheat the system — we didn't make work not suck. We made work suck with hoop jumping.

DANIEL: Right. I think it's a sign that work sucks. If coffee badging exists, then work sucks.

RYAN: I mean, I guess on a positive note, you get some free coffee, right?

DANIEL: That depends on where you work.

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STRATEGY OR GASLIGHTING

DANIEL: When is return to office a legitimate business strategy, and when is it just corporate gaslighting? If we're going to tell you that we're all coming back to the office because we're going to be innovative, but then the senior leaders never show up — that's clearly gaslighting. But there are times when I do think it makes sense. So dig into that for me. When does it make sense, and when does it not?

RYAN: I think it's when you've aligned the company vision, you've built a strategy or a journey to align the culture to produce results. If you can come up with a plan of why it's needed and the benefit it's going to provide to the people, the customers, and the business — all three have to be in balance. It can't be just for the hopeful profit increase. It can't be just to squeeze the employees for the customer. And it can't just be for everybody to hang out and not be more productive, right? It's got to be in balance of all three. I think if you can have a strategic plan and it's followed from the top to the bottom, it can be successful. And I think you've got to share that plan and you've got to communicate that plan. I don't think people really generally have a problem with return to office in general. I think they have a problem when it's just demanded of them with no reason why.

RYAN: Now, I think there are some exceptions to the rule. If you've had remote work and let's say you used to live in Dallas-Fort Worth and you moved to Denver, and then your company says be in Dallas Monday morning or else — you got a problem. So I think there are people that have made lifestyle changes expecting this to stay, and that's where those mandates get screwed. But I also think that's where hybrid environments come in. And if you're a good, smart business owner, leader, executive, you will take those into account to make sure those people are successful too, without being unfair. You might have to fly some people in every now and then. You might have to let people work from home. But if you can mandate an office return that is successful for everyone included, you will thus be successful. If you red line this, it's no wonder we have this topic.

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THE GENERATIONAL BREAKDOWN

DANIEL: All right. So let's think about it from a generational perspective, because I bet that's going to be an interesting breakdown. Stat here says only 38% of baby boomers have coffee badged, compared to 63% of millennials. So almost twice as many millennials as baby boomers.

RYAN: I think that makes sense, though. I think baby boomers are more used to an in-office culture. Let's be honest, they never left the office to begin with. They're the person that's still showing up to the office even when no one else is there.

DANIEL: Right. Yeah. Even with their masks and their personal protective gear on, they were coming back to the office. They were committed.

RYAN: Down here, they didn't even do that much. They just showed up to the office without the mask and this, that, and the other. I remember.

DANIEL: All right, Gen X — 54% admit to coffee badging.

RYAN: That fits Gen X.

DANIEL: Right. Which I think is interesting. It's quiet, non-compliant, but not openly rebellious. Gen X was the rebellious generation. How is Gen X not rebelling in this?

RYAN: Yeah, but now they've got kids and mortgages. So it's a passive-aggressive move.

DANIEL: Okay. Yeah. I think millennials are probably one of the leaders in this. I think they're more comfortable with remote work. They probably collaborate better over digital platforms and probably feel like being turned off is a move backwards.

RYAN: Oh yes. A move into ancient history. I mean, we created the remote work culture. We were the first generation of work-life balance. We could actively work while actively doing something in our personal lives. Going back to my twenties, I'd be video gaming with friends while working on IT tickets and servers for clients, right? Around the clock. So this to us is definitely going backwards, as opposed to — we know how to do this going forward.

DANIEL: Yeah. I think that's probably where most of the resistance is going to come from. And then your Gen Zs — man, most Gen Zs right now are just lucky to have a job. 43% admit to coffee badging, but 57% are considering just quitting.

RYAN: So here's my take on Gen Z. A lot of Gen Zs right now are in their mid to late twenties, right?

DANIEL: Agree.

RYAN: There's enough of them in the workforce — tens of millions of Gen Zs in the workforce right now. But the thing is, they're at that collaborative age. They're pre-kids, they're hanging out with their friends, they're going out. And so I think they're less resistant to it, if they've got a good work culture and a good vibe going on. But at the same time, if they see this as a career regression, or as something preventing them from climbing the ladder — because we've talked about this several times, Gen Zs just want to be at the top of the ladder as fast as possible, where the rest of us know we've got to climb that ladder one rung at a time. And so it doesn't surprise me that they may not be coffee badging, but they're just going to outright quit if they see it as a regression.

DANIEL: Yeah, and go look for their next opportunity.

RYAN: Yep.

DANIEL: Which generation's actually winning here?

RYAN: The boomers.

DANIEL: How come?

RYAN: Because as we know, the boomers are still predominantly the in-charge generation. They're the ones that didn't really leave the office in the first place. They're also the ones that are far enough in their career that it's do as I say, not as I do. You know, I've put my 20, 30, 40 years in, I'm going to go on my vacations, I'm going to work from my second home because I've generated this wealth for me and my family. But I want the productivity like it was back when I was in the office every day. So make everybody else go back to work.

DANIEL: All right. Who's losing the most with this return to office mandate? If boomers are winning, who's losing?

RYAN: I'm going Gen Z. Gen Zs.

DANIEL: Okay. Why Gen Z?

RYAN: Higher burnout, higher turnover. They just have less of a context for traditional office work. If you're early in your career, if you're 28 — how long did you work before COVID? Not much. You might have no framework for this. And if suddenly you're being forced for the first time in your professional career to get up, get dressed, put on grown-up clothes, drive 45 minutes to an hour to an office just to sit there and type emails — I'd be pissed too if that was my life experience.

DANIEL: Yeah. I guess it just depends. I agree with you from that standpoint. I do think there's a level of collaboration that, as long as they're working with people they like — they're trying to climb the ladder as fast as possible, right? So if they see this as career progression, they're none the wiser, because they didn't really have pre-digital work-life culture.

DANIEL: I think the ones losing the most — I mean, I got to put them both together. It's the Gen Xers and the millennials.

RYAN: Really? How come?

DANIEL: I think they're getting the short end of the stick, because they knew what work was like before, when everybody was in the office every single day and that was the culture, and they got the digital life. And we did have remote work pre-COVID. It wasn't as common, but I think they're the ones that have evolved since then. We understand how yesterday was, we know what today is, and we know we can progress further. And I think they're the ones losing the most out of this. They're also the ones — you know, the Gen Zs are young in their career, they'll just say screw it, I don't like this job, I'm going to go somewhere else, I'll job hop around. Versus what do we call the Xers and the millennials, the sandwich generation? They've got older parents to take care of, younger kids to take care of, and they really don't have the opportunity to put up with it without potentially costing their job.

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EVIL GENIUSES OR BAD MATH?

DANIEL: All right. So here's the debate. The executives that are making this decision, the return to office mandates — are these people evil geniuses? Are they just playing 4D chess, two moves ahead of everybody else? Or are they destroying their companies?

RYAN: I think they're genius. I think it is working for them exactly the way they want it to. They are weeding out the people that they don't feel are a culture fit. They're saving on severance costs because the people are resigning, so they don't have to fire them and pay six months of severance, sometimes even more. They're getting asset utilization up because people are going back into the office. So it makes them look like they're productive. They feel like they're having an impact, whether it's a good impact or a bad impact. They just feel like they're having an impact. And there's a sense of pride — not in a bad way, but just a sense of pride of being able to walk around the halls and see people working. So I think it's working more than it's not. Not that there isn't collateral damage here and there, but I think for the most part, return to office mandates are probably working for most large organizations.

DANIEL: I would agree with that. They're doing by design what they intended to do.

RYAN: Okay. They're weeding people out. They're putting people back in the office. They're getting people to work together. And I think we're in the cavitation period, right? All the surveys are saying it doesn't work, it's not working. I don't think we've had enough time to prove it works or doesn't work. I think we're measuring the cavitation and making premature judgments.

DANIEL: Here's the spicy take that nobody wants to say. I think return to office mandates are like an IQ test for executives. The smart companies — Shopify, Airbnb, others — they went permanently remote and they are just gobbling up all the talent. And their competitors are measuring badge swipes and think that they're winning because their best people clocked in for a cup of coffee.

RYAN: Yeah. I mean, that goes back to what I said earlier, right? Full remote, full return to office, hybrid — if you have a strategy behind it that works for the customer, the employees, and the business, it will be successful. And calling out Shopify and Airbnb, who went permanently remote, they had a strategy for it. To your point, the dumb companies that are measuring badge swipes thinking they're winning, they didn't have a strategy. They're pushing results. And we know what the red line does when the actual value catches up.

DANIEL: Yeah. To your point though, a strategy is vision, journey, culture, and results all aligned together, right? They could say, well, our strategy is to reduce headcount by 5%. I would argue that's not really a strategy. That's just the pursuit of a result. If you're truly aligned across why we exist, how we work, who's involved, values, and result — if all of those are tied together, then yes, I think return to office could become a boost to your organization. But not if it doesn't make sense.

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MONDAY MORNING FIX

DANIEL: So Monday morning, you're stuck in this situation. You've just received an email over the weekend that your company is mandating return to office in the coming months. You don't know exactly what day it is yet. You know it's coming, but you know that you're going to have to start making that commute. Monday morning, what do you do?

RYAN: I don't know, because I'm not in that situation. I mean, the obvious answer is you suck it up and go. And if that kind of thing empowers you, you're going to be excited. And if it doesn't, you're going to be updating your LinkedIn profile.

DANIEL: If I was an executive in a company that just announced that, I would go back to the leadership team. Assuming that you're sitting near the top of the organization and you have a voice that is heard at the senior table, I would go back and make sure that before we follow through on a return to office mandate, that we really have thought through the vision, journey, culture, and results of that decision. Why are we returning to office?

RYAN: And that sounds fantastic, but that's only 1% of the people that listen.

DANIEL: Sure. Sure.

RYAN: Most people are just stuck with the decision that's made.

DANIEL: Right. So if you're a manager, if you're mid-level in your career — yeah, I just think you've got to weigh the pros and cons. How bad is that commute? How much do you love or hate your coworkers? What does your next best option look like? And yeah, make a call. How much money do you have in savings?

RYAN: Well, and I hate to sound cliché, but it is what you make of it, right? If you go into this being negative and taking all the negatives out of it, then you're going to be miserable. Versus, to your point, if you like your coworkers or you get along with people, sometimes it's nice to get out of the house. You might be surprised at how much you didn't realize you weren't leaving a 200-foot radius of your home.

DANIEL: I'm hoping most people are getting out more than that.

RYAN: I hope so too. But I think that's one of those, it is what you make of it. And if it's not for you, then start looking for a new job. But give it a shot. You might be surprised.

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THE LAST WORD

DANIEL: Here's what I'm seeing, Ryan. Here's my wrap-up, my conclusion. I think there's a continuum here. On one end, return to office mandates are just about power and control and red line, right? Wanting to get to results as easy as I can with as little work as possible. And on the other end of the continuum, return to office can actually be, for some organizations, a very strategic productivity move that is beneficial to the employees, to the customers, to the culture, to everyone. I think the question is, depending on who you work for, where is your organization on that continuum? Is this just a power play, or is this really a strategic productivity move?

, Fortune: 1000

DANIEL: I was going to guess three to four years.

RYAN: And so if my job is to try to squeeze profits as much as I can, then I'm going to make these whiplash moves. I'm going to get the quarterly earnings, I'm going to get my bonus, and then when it backfires on me, I'm going to bounce or get fired. I'll just do it again somewhere else. So yeah, I believe it's about the power and the control and not about productivity and collaboration.

DANIEL: Yeah. Here's what I would say many executives need to understand: you can force bodies into the buildings, but you can't force engagement, innovation, loyalty, commitment. And this return to office mandate is potentially creating a generation of workers who just are not going to trust the decisions that corporate leaders make. Again, if it's one of these red line, results-only, not-really-strategically-aligned decisions, I think it's going to do damage to the culture. It's going to deteriorate the trust between the employees and the employers. And then when the companies wonder why in a couple of years they can't innovate or retain talent, they're going to blame everything else except the most obvious answer, which is that they chose control and power over capability and empowerment.

DANIEL: Closing question. Are you coffee badging right now? And more importantly, what's your exit strategy when they catch on?

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OUTRO

ANNOUNCER: Make work not suck. Our podcast talks about exactly that: our process — vision, journey, culture, and results. We present real-world business solutions that make the difference. Our goal is to make work not suck. Hosted by Ryan Hodges, co-host Daniel Steer. Join us each episode, and make work not suck.

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