What does it say when you have to force 5-day RTO and then build a new HQ loaded with golf, tennis, pickleball, kayaking, basketball, bowling, shopping, a nail salon, daycare and a mental health clinic?
With all these distractions, how exactly is this supposed to improve productivity? 😂
I thought the whole argument for RTO was that people were “stealing time” while working from home… Apparently that was the problem. Now you can steal time on prem, surrounded by every possible distraction, while still getting credit for being physically at work.
Here’s the question I’d really love to see answered… If every Plano employee were given a completely free choice between working from home or coming into this new HQ, how many would actually choose the office?
I’d bet the overwhelming majority would still choose WFH and that is incredibly telling.
You can build the most elaborate office in the world. You can put a fu--ing country club inside it. You can force people to badge in five days a week. But you cannot force people to actually want to be there. People value flexibility more than corporate playgrounds.
Most people just want to go in when there is a reason to go in, get their sh-t done, and go home. They don’t want to spend their evenings hanging around the office because AT&T installed a bowling alley or a pickleball court.
This is the part leadership seems completely incapable of understanding. The problem isn’t that the office isn’t nice enough. The problem is that people don’t want to be required to be there five days a week anymore.
You can force attendance. You can build the amenities. You can spend whatever you want on the building but you can’t manufacture buy-in.
And forcing people into an office they don’t want to be in while spending a fortune trying to make that office more appealing is about as backwards as it gets.
We are still trying to solve a 2026 workforce problem with a 2006 answer.