Will These Mandated Return to Office Work This Time?

Google has come out and told their employees who haven’t received approval to work from hom that they will have to spend at last three days a week in the office. The Verge posted part of the Google internal memo which read, “We know that a number of people moved to fully remote work for many good reasons, as we all adjusted to the pandemic. For those who are remote and who live near a Google office, we hope you’ll consider switching to a hybrid work schedule. Our offices are where you’ll be most connected to Google’s community. Going forward, we’ll consider new remote work requests by exception only.” CRN 6/8/24   In the Seattle Times After more than a year of requiring employees to work from the office at least three days a week, Amazon is now considering a minimum number of hours per day to meet that mandate, according to screenshots from the internal messaging app Slack shared with The Seattle Times.  The crackdown, the messages say, seems to be focused on “coffee badging,” a term coined in a 2023 report by the videoconferencing hardware company Owl Labs. “Coffee badging” refers to workers who pop into the office to grab a coffee and then head home, allowing them to skirt in-office requirements but still clock the appropriate number of badge swipes.” Salesforce has a “return and remote” policy that has most workers coming in three days a week but allowing product and engineering teams to work remotely most of the time. The SF Business Ties ran a multi-page article on Salesforce discussing how the company had given up around one million square feet of office space in San Francisco. There was also a revenue chart that had 1014 sales skyrocketing…interesting combination of less employees and higher revenue?