Thread regarding Wells Fargo & Co. layoffs

Umm hello - this was clearly expressed in the FAQs on the RTO site. Has been there for months.

RTO is going to be used to punish people that managers don't like, who otherwise would WFH just fine.

@1xbl - Not at Wells. It’s all RTO all the time.

Now they are asking new hires to choose one of the two options.

WFH - Work From Home (100% Remote)
WFO - Work From Office (Flexible Model)

RTO will be fun to watch managers earn their keep. They were largely outed as having little utility during the pandemic. Now they can wrangle with the wasteful headache of corrective-action-or-not for RTO, while buying time to actually learn the ropes and execute what their soon-to-leave team members already do.

Grab your popcorn, this will be good!

@lqh+1fOwwDxt I’m also manager of small team of individual contributors. This is what I did for two people who have an office closer to where they live and no other people on our team in the office they were assigned: go into Guardian and set them up in the closer location as an alternate work location.

I don’t know if I’ll get slapped for that but I don’t need people who do good work so stressed out. If I have to take lumps for trying to help my team maintain some work/life balance - we all put in long hours - then so be it. We’ve already made a pact that if forced to go to the assigned space, we’re all going to start looking and helping one another to get out of here.

They are really pushing the in person events and volunteer time too. I don’t even want to sit near any one at the office let alone spending a day with a wider group of strangers. No thanks! Ask in a decade or so - maybe. We have another wave coming and people are barely masked at the office. Everything is dirty. I’ve got kids too young to vaccinate and I will not risk their health for any reason. I avoid human contact with people not in my bubble as much as possible and will for a very long time.

In my team the Manager stated during a team meeting that the requests by some of the team members to continue to work from home, and not return to office, were still being considered and in process. Just wondering why they have a considered exemption from RTO when the other employees on the team also wish to continue to work remotely. Why can some team members be exempt from RTO while forcing the other team members to take their long drive time commute to be in the office?

@1bzy+1fOwwDxt

Re: Favoritism. That's why I left- I wasn't a favorite despite producing. There were other reasons too. I just read the room & knew that based on how the manager doled out projects, accolades, who they listened to/didn't listen to, it was just a matter of time. I discreetly asked team members in passing conversations where they stood (knowing they were far from the office), and their responses or lack of response showed me how this would play out. Transparent my a--.

@1hzs - There are some who need or want to go in to the office and that is just fine. If they want to go in 1 day or 5 days a week, that is also fine. Whatever works best for you should be allowed.

However, there are many of us who are 10+, 20+ years into our careers who know how and where we work best. Some old dude in New York City doesn’t get to dictate that to me in the name of some bu-----t “better together” slogan. He can kiss my a-s! If he doesn’t want my skills and talents, he can instruct my Manager to fire me. So be it. His loss.

Being a big spoiled bully doesn’t make him a leader. It makes him a big spoiled bully. Great example for his daughter. Not!

Let's face it, there's no way they were going to flip a switch and get everyone back day 1. I think they should just leave it open ended for the next 3 months. People can come in if they want. People need time to adjust, after the last 2 years all of need time to heal and remember what its like going in the office. I went in and found myself looking off into space and feeling sick. I imagine it takes some time. People should start trying to attempt to go back in for 1 day a week for their own good for muscle memory.

Liar

@1bzy+1fOwwDxt
Your probably right about that. I’ve already seen hints of favoritism in play around RTO exceptions.
This is ripe for abuse and will probably lead to a lot of lawsuits for discrimination against protected classes. They don’t really have any good options at this point though. Like I said they’ve backed themselves into a corner with their overreach and rigid one size fits all approach to RTO out of the gate. They have no one but themselves to blame for the situation they’ve suddenly found themselves in.

@1hza - “Failure of leadership!” If the Board doesn’t see this already, they are willfully blind.

@1hza+1fOwwDxt

It sounds like they are already modifying the verbiage. The new verbiage gives them extra leeway. If they want to terminate someone, they can use RTO as a reason. If they want to keep someone, then they will be more lenient.

@yes+1fOwwDxt
You should probably take another look at the info on Our Workplace because it does not say that failure to RTO will be treated as a voluntary resignation. It says that employees that are required to report to the office and don’t may be subject to corrective action up to and including termination of employment.
In other words you’ll have plenty of notice before it happens.
It’s actually kind of humorous in a way. Their disconnect from reality and willful ignorance has kind of backed them into a corner now. If they double down and use threats of termination to try and te--orize enough people into compliance in hopes that only a small group will be brave enough to continue to resist it could backfire spectacularly. It’s a big gamble for them… based on the enormous levels of noncompliance seen this week, if even a fraction of us stand firm they won’t be able to follow through on their threats and will have to walk back their threats. At that point they will have lost all credibility and control, they won’t be able to move the rest of their agenda forward, and Charlie and the entire operating committee will likely get pushed out by the board due to failure of leadership.

Executives are willing to keep playing this game of chicken even though they lost the first round?

LOL

I came in twice the first week i saw ZERO so called "leaders" in the office. Heck the floor was only 10% full, and those 10% all talked and said they were stupid for showing and not showing ever again. RTO was a mega flop.

Leaders and managers are about to get presssure to “set the right example”… then the rest of us.

@cwb, As a manager (small team of individual contributors), I can tell you that WF’s hard stance on RTO has put us in a really rough spot by removing much of our discretion. I have an excellent employee of 20+ years who’ll probably end up retiring earlier than planned because he’s been moved to a different office and now has to endure a much longer commute for zero benefit - our team is spread all over the country and none of our business partners in other groups are in his location. So if he said he wasn’t going to RTO, or wasn’t going to do the full three days, I probably wouldn’t say anything to dissuade him. As a manager, I feel I have to do the three days but I’m not going to pretend to love it and I’m not gonna parrot the “Better Together!” nonsense when every member of my team is in a different region of the country. For managers of high-performing, independent employees that aren’t colocated, RTO will only decrease productivity and increase attrition. What manager wants that?

@ypm+1fOwwDxt
The FAQs say that if a person doesn’t comply, it will be viewed as a voluntary resignation.

My manager chose to be silent every time I mentioned that I will not rto. Like literally no response at all. Not sure what to make of it.

If they fire us all, maybe the execs will have to start doing some work.

I have a feeling things are going to get very messy soon. There’s mass non-compliance with RTO. Everyone I’ve talked to on every call I’ve been on this week (including senior lead managers and directors) was still working from home, and if the company brings down the hammer and starts threatening termination it will destroy what little moral is left. They’ll end up with mass resignations and/or minimally compliant minimally productive miserable staff who intentionally do just enough to not get fired until they can find a job at a less sociopathic company. Or best case scenario, maybe just maybe, it will finally mobilize us to unionize and push back to negotiate true flexibility through a collective bargaining agreement. No matter what happens it will be interesting to see how this plays out.

@gzm - One option is for us to leave voluntarily. They have never been clear about whether they will fire people or not. Even Managers don’t have this guidance yet.

they’ve said that from the beginning, they listed all the options and one is for you to leave. So buh bye

Charlie and Scott, your posts are getting so lame at this point.

@mgx+1fOwwDxt
Not a single person In my group voted for him or anyone in his party. We know that we are far more productive when remote so that’s why we aren’t going back.

@qhd+1fOwwDxt - Shifty, ever changing job requirements.

Plus, no where in my job description does it say “Your bu-t must be firmly seated in a random cube at location X for 3 out of 5 days each week, or else!”

Yes!! Please take me out of my misery!

Still won’t make me go back.

How many people have refused rto? My guess is probably not that many so I don't doubt that Wells will fire a few holdouts.

Well duh. Called insubordination & not following job requirements. Not rocket science

Well if the carrot doesn't work, better go with the stick! I mean seriously RTO is about as appealing as eating a bunch of raw carrots.

Valid reason #1: Never worked at the office in the first place. Don't intent to start now.

Which street, exactly?