Is AT&T's five-day return-to-office policy really about collaboration, or is there another reason behind it?
13 replies (most recent on top)
It's to stop time theft which costs millions.
@bh Well said!!!
Be sure that with all the distractions at the new Plano location there will be plenty of AI cameras watching you, timing your movements away from your desk - determining who is next on the cut list to reach that 80K or less employee number. The number of planned parking spaces in the new Plano office says it all.
Here is my honest assessment. I come to the office, to sit on my no desk desk and immediately put on my noise cancelling headphones. I dont talk to anyone, my team is scattered all over the US, and I dont make eye contacts. I attend teams several times, do my work and leave. Its no collaboration, but a hostile design to make you psychologically break so you leave, and you lose your severance and unemployment.
“ RTO is here to stay
Get your gas station coffee on the way
Maybe 2 doughnuts to boot
Whelp, see you on the commute!“
F
Not coherent, clever, or amusing in any way.
And who “sees” anyone on a commute? Tired. Not funny.
RTO is here to stay
Get your gas station coffee on the way
Maybe 2 doughnuts to boot
Whelp, see you on the commute!
This question is still being asked? Crazy.
It is, of course, all about control. Instead of management, you know, managing people and dealing with low performers, RTO was about theoretically giving management an easy tool to weed out the low performers. In a way, it worked. The truly lazy wouldn't actually come to the office and got fired. But the creatively lazy just come to the office and find other things to do than work, making them compliant and still lazy.
Meanwhile, everything the Stank preaches about "market-based" employment is a bold-faced lie.
Are you a high performer providing great value to the company but in a non-hub location? Let go.
Are you a high performer on a team that is deemed expendable? Let go. Not kept and put on a more valuable team to use you skills (which would be market based employment). Just let go.
Are you a lazy low performer "working" in a hub location with good statistics on the presence report? You get kept.
And for the "and yet you are still here" Stankey a$$ kisser, yes, I'm still there. Don't know for how long because, yes, RTO is getting old. But they keep paying me when I show up, so I keep showing up. I actually have a good manager, good team and good work, so while I can't stand Stankey, and I hate RTO, there's enough to keep me showing up.
The main priority has been getting employees much closer to working a minimum full-time schedule. When more advanced activity reports were developed during the pandemic era, it was observed how low productivity was on average. Many employees were regularly following a “2 & Thru” workday routine.
“ You cry about RTO every day
And yet you STAY“
You are so pathetically BORING.
GFY.
RTO was supposed to allow the young ones to learn from the graybeards. (never mind the fact that the people who WOULD learn from graybeards can do it over Teams. cause they are smart).
The funny thing is then they introduce AI so rather than giving a grunt task to a newbfor them to learn, the graybeard tosses it into copilot. Gets the answer immediately. Doesn't have to wait. Doesn't have a bunch of back and forth correcting the young one.
so where is the mentorship that was supposed to happen with RTO?
on the pickelball counts.
At the car show / trunk-or-treat.
at the food truck.
not really.
I just wonder. they cited 'less patents' as a reason we needed to be in the office. So in between fighting it out for space with other teams, we collaborate, have some brilliant idea and file a patent.
has the number of patents gone back to pre-covid norms?
or was that a ridiculous reason to RTO.
nevermind. i know the answer.
You cry about RTO every day
And yet you STAY
I’m sure face-to-face time helps when your team is actually in the same room. But plenty of people are driving in just to sit on Teams with coworkers in other cities. See @OP+1m0tna9gf. And @OP+1kygpwqmf describes a five-day mandate without enough desks.
My guess is this is also about getting people into hubs and tracking who complies. If some decide the commute or relocation isn’t worth it and leave, I doubt leadership minds. Nobody here can prove that’s the plan, but calling every one of those office days “collaboration” is a stretch.
@OP Are you kidding??! Of course it’s 5% collaboration (at best) and 95% force reduction and senseless control and monitoring