#returntooffice

Can anyone who attended the provider data ops meeting speak to the segment regarding the expansion of RTO mandates in 2026? I’ve heard mentions of a phased approach nationwide, but would like some confirmation as I didn’t attend that meeting.

Has anyone gotten approved for medical exemption to not RTO?

Has anyone been able to not RTO due to a medical condition?

I got softly notified that more RTO is coming for big offices like Cypress, CA. Similar context to MN and DC RTO and it will be in effect Feb or Mar 2026.

NY/NJ region will be letting go of underperforming and non compliant RTO employees early in Q1

How strict has the 4 days in office requirement been?

Any rumors of the Irving campus going to 3 days a week in 2026? Mainly asking because we all saw the news of Tampa.

I go in to the office three days a week, I have a short commute and I don’t mind because the gym and stores are on the way so I just get errands done I’d do otherwise. However the office remains unchanged from my remote setup. I collaborate with my team in different time zones including India and customers scattered across various time zones . I’m an Eastern Time employee located in a hub location, my office is mostly deserted every day. People are coming in late and leaving early. Collaboration here is minimal; people are either too busy or stuck in their own silos, making it difficult for collaboration and I don’t think my Director would even want me to just start collaborating with other departments just to do it. We are already busy enough. I find it better to just collaborate with AI, which can be done from home.

But how can we measure success? I recall hearing about company savings when employees worked from home. Shedding costly Realestate. Do we have a measure for the success of the collaboration? In these though times for VZ, how much are we truly saving by having staff onsite? After all, we want to cut CapEx, right? I feel the leaner, scrappier, thing to do would just be to better monitor remote employees to save $.But maybe someone will show me the numbers proving how RTO helps the new strategy.

AT&T needs to look at the various test teams. They seem to have the testing being done by contractors, but the employees, since RTO, are now located time zones away and unable to manage them. The testing should be collocated with the engineering teams and be accomplished with our employees, instead of wasting money on contractors that don’t have any skin in the game and couldn’t care less what happens with AT&T. With the current moves that are happening they should move employees from the FirstNet, IoT, and development teams to Redmond, where the majority of testing is being done.

Anyone has to stay in the office when they come in for their full shift? Our leadership is pushing managers to make sure their staffs stay in the office for their full 8 hours of shift, especially in JAB. Those in JAB who's managers are in KC are also to video call their managers in non-JAB location every morning to confirm they are in fact in the office from start of their shift as well.

Hadn't thought much about RTO in last few weeks. I didn't get hit and neither did most who I work with directly. We're all pretty spread out, so not near one of the offices where RTO has happened so far. But sat through a client call this morning where the person leading the call was in office. It was horrible. That person is trying to have an important discussion with the client and we all hear people in the background the entire time. They weren't particularly loud or whatever. Sounded like they were also on a work related call based on the stuff you could clearly hear them talking about.

Poor colleague knew it too, clearly. They tried to use mute to mitigate the issue, but that only led to them being muted when they were trying to talk and not muted when they seemed to think they were. And for what? I know this colleague is not interacting with anyone at the office site that is involved at all with any of our work.

So stupid.

Prepare it is coming return to office more days

People needs to be ready to choose your parking spot and office next year.

Anyone else get the notice about TB at PDC? I want to know how whoever had it was contact traced; we don't have assigned desks. So was this person isolated or is Ford just allowing employees to be exposed to TB?

Another knock against 4 day RTO. I don't want to catch TB from the gross PDC.

Got a "first and final" warning about Connect Week attendance today, specifically time spent in office rather than badging in and out. And no bonus for me this year as a result. Pretty floored although I guess it's better than being fired with no warning? Am I the only one?

He correctly identified many of our weaknesses. That's half the battle--fixing all that won't be so easy.
And he did show that he has some common sense in getting rid of that ridiculous "hub or no promotion" policy. I'd say that bodes well for WFH going forward (perhaps that's wishful thinking).

So it begins.. more and more groups moving back to more days in the office. 4 days for all next…

Those in management circles what are you hearing about the quiet layoffs going on? Management seems intent on making things so bad for employees with the wirthless 4 days in office, benefits cuts and sheer arrogance from leaders. This American company doesn't care about America anymore. Can we outsource our CEO?

Herald square NYO colleagues have a 10 am update tomorrow. Anyone have the details?

Get ready folks, getting strong vibes this call will include back to office 5 days a week!

If it’s not in set stone writing by HR … how can they really even enforce this?

Also do we know yet how managers will be getting reports of employees coming into the office?

Is it by badge scans? By seeing if device is connected to building WiFi?

Just got word from my sources that corp risk 4 day RTO will start in April 1 and not Jan 1.

Congrats fellow coffee badgers

Question was posed at this quarters fireside chat where Demchak essentially "hinted" that 5 day return to office will be required following a flowery rant about how while WFH "benefits employees" it "harms the company" and that he is trying to imagine a world where "he is asking you to do your job".

Good luck everyone in Pittsburgh, I would not plan on a cost of living adjustment or a commute benefit coming down the pipeline while Ol' Bill claims his 2026 stock award of the tens of millions.

Can you belive this? Before long there will be no companies offering remote work, unbelievable!

Do we have sufficient seats ? any news ?

Letting people work from home for the month would be a much needed reset from the weekly he-l of commuting five days a week. Most employees will be on vacation anyway, so how much real collaboration will happen? Offices will be sparsely populated, it’s dark and cold, and seasonal illnesses are everywhere.

Closing the offices for a month would also save a huge amount of money. For a company of AT&T’s size, one month of office expenses: utilities, cleaning, security, and overhead likely runs into tens of millions of dollars. That money could go toward employee bonuses instead of forcing people into empty offices. Employees get relief, morale improves, and the company saves money. Win-win.

It’s common knowledge amongst the Leadership that Federal approval for the Frontier deal had a condition attached for Verizon to get staff back into the office…Hammocks video was a smokescreen. It has nothing to do with collaboration and everything to do with keeping the US Government on side

Saw a few of these posts about 5 day RTO in January and there’s supposed to be an email coming out soon. Anyone have info on this?

When are we going to call out this company for doing small layoffs to stay under the WARN number to keep it quiet and implementing RTO to make our lives miserable so that the EC gets the attrition they are looking for? Rick said no plans to change RTO in 2025 because he knew he was going to change it for 2026 and no large scale layoffs because he has a bunch of small scales ones planned. He doesn't want to be called a liar like Walt was but I'm tired of them not being transparent about what they have planned. This place used to care about employees but now its the same corporate McKinsey nonsense we see everywhere else. Executives getting insane amounts of stock compensation and trying to make it sound like we are getting a good deal getting less than three percent raises and an extra 10 percent bonus. 100k comp is comparable to 54k 20 years ago

Many are doing factory or punch clock, 8 hours and done. Innovation, extra items, change or update nope 8hrs , no 10plus hrs, no nights, no weekends why because those that had to did it and never complained. I see many in the office that I agree need to be there, but I also see what are they doing (nothing) since not in meetings throughout the day, one group is the so called (ACC monster) The mess up is they bundled the do’ers the ones that they know have gone above repeatedly to keep things going and in react mode when needed at anytime and never complained with the groups that can work 8hrs be done until the next day, those never are accountable. YES SIR that is where leadership sc--wed up, since without those that do the actual support and now 8hrs will unfortunately reflect in these RTO metrics missing just like the missing Employee survey that went missing a few years ago. Something leadership to date has never recovered as in TRUST ( PLE Class) with their managers. I think many that read this agree!

When was Toast’s current hybrid work policy for North America first introduced? The one with different requirements for on-time work for employees living within 25 miles from an office location. Also, is this policy actually enforced for those employees?

Let's vent in this thread. That's it, that is the message.

Currently, quite a few fully remote workers are still with the company. Once they got rid of promotions/job growth for remote employees, it seemed like layoffs are imminent. What are the chances that remote employees are let go once RTO 2.0 starts in Feb?

I guess we need it every once in a while. It so su-ks.

And push as many of us out as they can along the way. Anyone who thinks this is about anything other than maximizing profits by getting rid of people on the cheap is being naive.

It seems everyone comes to this site to complain, but I am here to celebrate. Our new CEO has announced that 3 day RTO is here to stay. This is wonderful news and proof that Srini trusts his leadership team and all of us to do our jobs! Thank you Srini! you are awesome!

Does anyone have reliable information on planned changes for RTO - are we going to be expected in office more days soon?

The issue with big corporations is that they have a one-size fits all approach to their employees, which lets face it - it's the least effective model. The responses from this post is proof of this. Good companies, take the time to take a macro look at what works for each department. Sure, it makes sense that creatives and productive teams would benefit from being in the office 5 days a week, but so many other departments, finance, legal, etc., would probably do well with 2 to 3 days a week. Their deliverables do not depend on staff being in the office every day. Companies that employ RTO is not really about collaboration or bringing everyone together. It's a tactic. To force people out (called a backdoor layoff - you can look it up) and to create a controlled office labor. Check out those companies that have done this in the last few years - isn't it odd, those announcements come with public admission of issues in the company, along with huge layoffs?

Good post. Putting it up for visibility.
OP: @am+1kakpjk0y

If it’s true that a full RTO mandate is coming in January, that’s what will really hit us. They’ll 100% set the requirements so they’re impossible, or near impossible, for a lot of people to meet, fully aware that everyone will bend over backwards to comply given the job market. RTO will just become another way to push people out without calling it cuts.