Thread regarding AT&T layoffs

I'm a management employee who will be impacted by these changes in the next year. I've been told there will be no paid relocation and I'll need to relocate myself. I work in an area of the business where we colocate with our customer, but for the last two years I have worked from home because the customer I support is not in the city I live in. This isn't about return to work. AT&T needs to cut a ton of jobs and I've been told this is the mechanism that will be used to achieve it. At least employees impacted will be paid severance per the usual package offered for XX amount of paid time for XX amount of years service. My sources for this info are 4th/5th line executive management, BTW. Also, this is totally driven through C suite and HR, not any individual business units. The expectation is this move will result in around 15-20K people leaving AT&T.

Be grateful you got to work from home. Many thousands never got that privilege.

Sorry that your skills didnt allow u to work remotely.

as far as collaboration how is the move away from q to teams working out

Be grateful you got to work from home. Many thousands never got that privilege.

“Why is a AT&T, a company that promotes home-work life balance, now diminishing said home-work life balance?

Because being at home for years isn’t what I’d call balanced.

What’s unbalanced about leaving your house for the office 2 or 3 days a week?

Being in the office is normal. Hence the name “return to work” meaning go back to your normal desk this is not anything unusual it’s the way it was before Covid that’s all.

Dude. Nobody Cares.

Government has requested RTO for economic growth. T is abiding to keep their CEI as high as possible.

The bigger question is why T, a company that makes tech that facilitates remote work and collaboration across time-zones and hemispheres, pushing it's workforce into a archaic model?

Oh, never mind. It's T. They never make sense

The answer to the OP's question is Blackrock.

Not the OP and this is Not really proof of targeting aged workers but it is definitely those workers who are probably the most impacted or have the toughest decision to make.

Based on what I know before I left in 2021. Those that are forced to relocate or leave have been working in their same location since they were hired. Some have offices even COs where they work. Many are within 5 years or less of MR75 eligibility. I'm no longer there, but I personally know 10 people in the Midwest(IL, IN, OH, WI) and probably 20 more in STL and San Ramon, FL and all have 20+ years of service. These are managers(mostly individual contributors) in non-customer facing roles.

If you force relocation for folks near pension eligibility, and they don't go - well, they are saving some money in addition to their salaries/benefits because their pension benefits will be significantly less. I'm not sure I would say that was considered with this, but is definitely another benefit of the savings they hope to achieve.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/05/17/att-return-to-office-worker/

Excerpts from WAPO:
The company declined to discuss the decision with The Washington Post. AT&T chief executive John Stankey said Tuesday in an interview with Bloomberg Radio that 85 percent of the company’s corporate employees already live within commuting distance of one of these locations. For the remaining 15 percent, “if they want to be a part of building a great culture and environment, they’ll come along on these adjustments and changes,” Stankey said. “Others may decide, given the station of life they are in, that they want to move in a different direction.”

AT&T has “generous” relocation services, Stankey told Bloomberg, a benefit that has been on the rise as companies seek to bring workers back to offices more frequently. But employee willingness to move for a job is minimal, according to data from Challenger, Gray & Christmas. The firm has been surveying workers on relocation since 1986. In the first quarter of 2023, just 1.6 percent of workers said they had moved for a new job, the lowest rate the survey has ever found.
Return-to-office mandates are usually accompanied by declarations from executives about the need to be together for collaboration and a strong company culture. But mandates don’t necessarily achieve these effects on their own, according to Cali Williams Yost, a flexible-work strategist.

“It actually doesn’t solve the fundamental, underlying problem, which is, how do we plan the in-person interactions that actually have meaningful impact on the business and people?” Yost said. “Just defining the days you need to come into the office does not do that.”
Some things must “be done sitting side by side,” Stankey told Bloomberg. “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.’”

The return-to-office mandate will take effect at the hubs in July and apply to other offices — including Los Angeles, Seattle, St. Louis and San Ramon, Calif. — by Sept. 4.

“ The RTO initiative is extremely heavy handed and will cause the company serious issues within the next 1-3 years.”

This will no longer be a problem for those so opposed su RTO! Consistent accountability is needed.

What's your proof that RTO targets aging workers?

Well said!

Are you really surprised? They. Don't. Care.

I wouldn't be surprised if executive leadership already has their hands on the rip cord for their golden parachutes.