Will What Happened To This Company Become The Norm For Businesses Forcing Return-To-Office?

Return-To-Office Mandates have been getting a lot of coverage lately.

I myself have written a dozen articles on the subject so far.

From a Leadership perspective, it is something incredibly important to think about.

Should we force employees back?

From the data that I have been seeing frequently, the actual hard data, it looks like an extremely poor decision.

Looking at the reasoning that Executives have been giving to return, it appears that their reasoning is based solely on Idealism about how office work "should" work.

However, this Idealism is completely forgetting the actual Realities that we currently face in our In-Person workplaces.

How badly are these Idealisms missing the reality?

Let's take a look at the company Grindr for a minute.

The organization made a decision to force employees to return to the office.

Now, they are only requiring 2 days a week, which is actually extremely LOW compared to most other companies.

However, it is still not Remote friendly.

They gave 2 weeks for employees to make their decisions.

Do you know what the employees decided?

Well, 45% of their workforce decided that returning to the office wasn't worth it.

Can you imagine losing 45% of your workforce based on a single decision?

Most leaders can't, but that is just how Toxic our workplaces have become.

Nearly half of an organization would rather be LET GO than return to the office for LESS than HALF a workweek!

These employees also know that in this economy, they won't struggle to get another job - most businesses are struggling to get employees, and have been for nearly a year.

The businesses that are struggling to get employees the most?

The ones that require In-Office work.

So, not only has this decision eliminated nearly half of their workforce, but it will actively become a challenge to hire new employees because of it.

Not to mention that in the meantime, either the organization is going to get REALLY behind on all of its work, or the remaining 55% of employees will need to take on nearly DOUBLE the work to compensate for the losses.

If you had to take on nearly twice the work because the Executives of your company made an extremely unpopular decision leading to 45% of your colleagues being eliminated, would you want to?

Most people won't and will resent their Executives because of it.

This could quickly lead to more people quitting as they get fed up with the extra stress of being required to take on more work.

This extra stress is ON TOP of the extreme levels of stress employees are already facing.

80% of the workforce is already in Burnout, which means that their bodies are literally quitting and shutting down in the face of how much stress they already have.

What happens when you add extra stress on top of that?

More people quitting.

More people getting sick.

More people faking being sick because they don't want to deal with the problems

More toxicity spreads across the workplace.

It's a disaster waiting to happen.

The alternative is for the Executives to allow all the work to go to the wayside, but how long will customers accept that?

Well, most customers in today's world are extremely disloyal.

There's a reason that even though Streaming has become one of the most popular forms of entertainment, its levels are churn are extremely high.

Customers want what they want, and they are more than happy to leave and go to competition if they aren't getting what they want.

How many customers, and how much revenue, are you willing to lose over one decision?

So, when faced with an overworked workforce that is already extremely burnt out and on the verge of quitting, or Customers Leaving due to a lack of service (and taking their money with them), which would you choose?

For most businesses, this will become their reality if they force employees to return to the office.

Some businesses will be impacted "less" simply due to what having their name on resumes can do of course.

However, I'd estimate they would still lose at LEAST 20% of the employees they are forcing back - given the data that is an EXTREMELY generous estimate.

Plus, the employees who do return will not be dedicated to the goals of the company.

They will either be Disengaged, or worse they will be Actively working against the company from within it, both are bad for businesses.

If companies were wise, they would fix the real problem - Toxic Workplaces and Burnout.

If employees didn't HATE the actual office environments, they would likely choose to return without being forced.

But until those are fixed, the Reality of the workplace will make losses like this a common occurrence.