The largest U.S. telecommunications company, which has operations in all 50 states, will consolidate into nine core offices with its corporate headquarters in Dallas and Atlanta as main hubs.
Dallas-based AT&T Inc. is reducing its office footprint and requiring managers to show up in person at least three days a week, a move that could prompt some people to quit, Chief Executive Officer John Stankey said in an interview with Matt Miller on Bloomberg Radio.
The largest U.S. telecommunications company, which has operations in all 50 states, will consolidate into nine core offices with its corporate headquarters in Dallas and Atlanta as main hubs. The other locations are Los Angeles; Seattle; Washington; San Ramon, Calif.; St. Louis and two New Jersey locations Middletown and Bedminster.
The return-to-office mandate, which starts in July in Dallas and Atlanta and will be implemented everywhere else by Sept. 4, will apply to more than 60,000 managers. Stankey said 85% of those people live near one of the offices.
As for the remaining 15%, "many will make decisions that are appropriate to their lives," he said. "If they want to be a part of building a great culture and environment, they'll come along on these adjustments and changes. Others may decide, given the station of life they are in, that they want to move in a different direction."
The company has "generous" relocation services, Stankey said. "We've been reconfiguring our workforce for a very long time."
Stankey said the company will "probably be down 15,000 employees from last year to this year, when it's all said and done." It had about 160,700 workers as of Jan. 31, according to regulatory filings.
AT&T has an ongoing $6 billion cost-cutting program.
Many companies have been struggling with getting workers to come back to the office after initially offering flexible work-from-home policies during the pandemic. Only about 49.3% of workers go into the office now in 10 of the largest US business districts, according to recent data from Kastle Systems. JPMorgan Chase & Co. last month told its managing directors that they now must be in the office every weekday, ending a hybrid-work practice.
International Business Machines CEO Arvind Krishna said in a recent interview that being a remote worker can be hazardous to one's career, and that those who didn't come into the office would be hard-pressed to get promoted.
AT&T's attendance mandate applies to managers involved with operations and not in consumer-facing roles like union members in customer service, retail or field technicians. AT&T is also creating two categories of management employees, office and virtual. The three-day-a-week minimum attendance policy applies to most managers. About 10% of them will be "virtual" and will need to be in the office one-to-five days a month.
Stankey helped lead the phone company into media and entertainment, and then reversed course two years ago, spinning off the WarnerMedia business to Discovery. The strategy flip is intended to return AT&T's focus entirely on selling services over fiber and wireless networks. As the company scaled down, Stankey said the pandemic proved that flexibility is good, but that employees need to work collaboratively to create "a highly dynamic culture."
Isolation isn't healthy, he said, and some things have "to be done sitting side by side."
"When we started to ask ourselves what kind of work we need to do and how people needed to work with one another, the management team, the leadership sat down and said 'this is what we think needs to happen,'" Stankey said.
Scott Moritz, Bloomberg
17 replies (most recent on top)
This applies to all corporate employees, not just managers. And there is no relocation package. That's a lie.
Complete BS. Stock is in the toilet. AT&T is desperate to please Wall Street. What is the biggest expense on the books? Payroll! How to we get rid of 15k employees? Force them to move. How do we do it without paying severance? Make it a company mandate.
AT&T is an empty husk of its former self. How in the modern world does the guy who ran it into the ground still have his $29 million a year job? The Board and Sr Leadership should all be replaced. Call it a stockholder mandate.
Dallas had 5.6 million people 10 years ago. That's a little city?
Lots of money to make south Dallas a place to visit. It would be a waste if no one went there. More of the public visit than employees. You missed the opportunity to move to Dallas years ago. It was a little city 10 years ago. Now it is booming and costs a lot more to live there. Traffic sucks too.
Thankfully no one has said when you go in you have to stay 8 hours. I bet if you paid a janitor $50 to $100 a month, they'd swipe your badge for you, so you don't have to go in. LOL. Be creative here. Outsmarting Stankey isn't hard.
So Tampa and Miami is screwed, WTF?
What about Charlotte or Raleigh North Carolina? It’s also big hub for medical and universities. Chicago was out a long time ago. Ouch, basically the good old boys in Dallas Texas who get to decide where YOU and tour families will live. Basically cutting jobs city by city using the old “hub cities”- heard this one before. Bunch of cornholeos!
Ever see a wfh person at 4pm? Look likes they been asleep
John Stankey and his leadership team only care about shareholders. They don’t care about employees or customers. That’s why AT&T is behind T-Mobile and Verizon in the wireless market, and AT&T leadership has no real plan to increase share (aside from the typical dog and pony show reflected in this article).
The only reason this is happening is because of the election and a need to make our cities temporarily not look like wastelands.
Everything ties back to politics when the system is wholly corrupt. Any businesses that survive will be with the government's permission. This will become more obvious as time goes on, since we're very close to the point where they stop pretending that we still have rights (important to note that both sides are 100% corrupt). Keep an eye on the banks. They'll be leading the way as far as the thinning process.
I'm sure remote work will return once they're ready to resume the controlled demotion of our cities. Hang tough and good luck!
This was done 5 years ago and that worked so well. NOT
JS is full of shhh he gets constantly triggered by seeing an empty office - he is an old leader that has taken AT&T down!! He needs to go!
On paper AT&T has a generous relocation package. It won’t be approved at least for L1-3.
The only ones that get a relocation members, and that’s only because it’s in the contract. If it wasn’t, they wouldn’t give them a dime either.
What relocation package? That is completely false information and a straight up lie on his part.
The “generous relocation package “ was said for PR. There no relocation.
This all designed to get people off payroll by “choice” so no severance is paid.
What am I missing? I did not realize at&t had a generous relocation package.
My understanding was that at&t would not pay for relocation associated with this new RTO policy.
There is no justification for returning to office (queue the “here come the tears” boomers with their bullsh-t). Step back and think. Returning does nothing for productivity, nothing for morale, nothing for your “visibility”, nothing for collaboration, and nothing for teamwork. At the end of the day what’s the point of doing this? Look, if people want to work from home just let them, you think because they are in office you’ll, and here we go with the stupid fu----g corporate speak, “be more agile, win, collaborate, foster innovation”? Give me a break. Get your tongue out of the shareholders proverbial a--hole and actually manage your business. Wonder why your NPS scores suck? A mirror is $1.99 at Walmart you id--ts.