CBG just announced that Wednesdays will be anchor days, when everyone is required to be in the office.
How long do you think it'll be before our new CEO insists we all come back every day?
35 replies (most recent on top)
It is beyond frustrating to see how spoiled you all have become believing WYW is a right. Get back to the office, buy some clothes, stop napping on paid time and get back to reality. The ones complaining are beyond spoiled...how about the hard working employees that did not have the option to WFH and had to pay for gas, childcare while to all wiggled your mouse around. If you do not like it, then look elsewhere!!!!
Lab and Mfg should be in the office at least 40%. MT got cut because the results weren’t there, and WYW was and still is a contributor. This most certainly includes leadership all the way up.
There’s a decent chance the company would have more talent, not less, with these changes. Competent high performers are outspoken that they want to collaborate in person because they’re intelligent enough to see the value.
The rest of the world is moving away from remote work. Plus the plants never had it, and are sick and tired of the whining.
Lots of bravado here about how we need to cut the lazy slackers and get back to the good ol' days of innovation and productivity, which is why we need to end remote work and get back in the office.
Ever think that the best employees are going to demand the best benefits? If we want mediocrity, sure, let's flex that corporate muscle and demand that people start coming in every day. Talent will leave and we'll be left with the dead weight, who will be happy to come into the office if it means they still have a job.
Hope they don’t take away WYW before cabin and boat season.
“Anchor” days? Seriously? You’d think 3M would avoid maritime analogies when everyone knows the ship is sinking.
I honestly had almost as much freedom when i was in the office as i do now with the exception of having to dress nicely. Dr appt, gym visits, doing my bills in my cubicle, going home to take my old lady to pou nd town, it all happened and still will if we go back to the office. But i still get my stuff done so who cares!!
I know of people who makes excess of $20;000 pm while enjoying WYW. Besides only few hours meeting daily, the person is able to run own errands, take naps, freely. Company should have anchor 4 days , instead of just 1 day per week. Get them back face to face and revive that brainstorming teamwork hat.
As a retired lifer who spent many years, including nights and weekends, providing technical and on-call support for manufacturing and site logistics, Bill Brown has the last chance to save what's left of 3M. Time to make it mandatory for Mon to Thurs all anchor days. Friday WFH only with 2nd level supervisor approval.
Too many of you are watching The Price Is Right, walking the dog during conference calls whilst muted, taking one hour naps after lunch, etc.
Get back to work in the office whilst I enjoy my pension.
If any of you actually work for 3M (big if) you can go to 3M Go and search "anchor days" and find a few descriptions of what they are and how they are communicated. Looks like this concept has been around at least a year with no big mandate or concern. Chill.
Not a boomer here and I will state that your personal life is for you to manage and not a company's problem or coworkers. This is insane; needing clothes, commuting, weather too cold, daycare, etc., really? And who made those choices??? Then go into a different profession where you can wear your pajamas and walk to work and there is no winter season. If you can't manage work and kids, then either don't have kids or have kids and stay home. Life is about choices and there is NO SUCH THING as having it all - Bull$hit. Always was. If 3M is so bad to work for, then find employment elsewhere.
To the person complaining about have to buy new office clothes, lunch, commute, and find and pay for daycare, this could possibly be why WYW has some negative connotations. It seems it’s all about what fits the employee vs employee and company. My belief is companies need to take a stronger stance because some, not all employees have gotten way too comfortable in their bubble at home.
Stop with the boomer comments. You can have boneheaded decisions from any age group. Not every boomer wants to go to the office either.
Ugh, anchor days are the worst of both worlds.
Only one day in the office, so hardly any time to socialize or collaborate, but it's a disruption to the routine, noisy and distracting, without my cozy home office setup, requires buying new office clothes, commuting in and buying lunch, and finding and paying for daycare for kids.
And I still won't be working alongside my teammates from Canada or my boss from Germany.
Sure sounds like a great initiative, alright.
This, just days after the strib article, https://www.startribune.com/work-from-home-working-for-you-feel-free-to-keep-doing-that-3m-says/600353886/, shows what a mess 3m is.
From the article: "While thousands of 3M manufacturing employees and researchers need to work on-site, for those who can do their jobs remotely, the Maplewood-based company says don't worry about coming into the office. " and "Managers can certainly ask teams to come on site, but it needs to be purposeful, moments that matter,"
Wednesdays always matter, apparently. Sounds like yet another insecure boomer decision.
CBG anchored and sink into the bed of sea hahaha
CBG is an anchor…
Anchor days are not required, get it straight. I for one miss going into the office and hanging with the colleagues at least once per week.
Drive past the Maplewood campus quad on a regular workday and see the parking lot and new parking ramp 95 percent empty. There’s your rooftops.
My guess is between the job eliminations, voluntary departures, and people that have moved to another part of the country (after all they said people could do that), there’s probably enough space under the roof.
Call me silly, but how can you RTO when the roof space has been eliminated, do we sit in a public park and claim some grass (to sit on, not smoke 🥴) and reminisce about the past whilst pondering the future 🤣
"Anchor days". Now that is an interesting image. Does everyone realize the definition of "Anchor"?
Anchor is "a heavy object attached to a rope or chain and used to moor a vessel to the sea bottom, typically one having a metal shank with a ring at one end for the rope and a pair of curved and/or barbed flukes at the other".
Yes, can we have more heavy objects attached to a chain day which makes us sink to the sea bottom? We want more of that. Bring it on. More barbed flukes please.
Perhaps we should stop laying people off, brainstorming d-mb ideas and start to grow this company.
I remember joining 3M in the mid-2010s and being sold on all of the growth opportunities from all of the boomers due to retire. The figure thrown around back then was 60% of employees reaching retirement age by 2020. Nothing was mentioned about layoffs, not backfilling people, and offshoring everything else to Costa Rica.
Boomers? Outside of the management ranks, not many boomers left at 3M well at least not in the groups I work with. Most have retired or been let go. Why would they want RTO, or the management they benefit from WYW as much as anyone. I don't give a rip where anyone works at or from. But please let our sales and tech people visit customers again, travel.
Anchor days aren't even mandatory. Don't get this twisted. It's just postering to appease the boomers. Boomers gonna bo-m. Still can't believe these people would take a bullet for this failed company. Remember, you are just a number in a spreadsheet.
Return to office works, only if you return the jobs to fill those offices
You can call into the GSCs from a 3M office on Wednesday’s, then from your home the rest of the week? RTO only makes sense if the jobs are in the same locations and you can get more done by being together. 3M cut and offshored so much, RTO doesn’t make as much sense. In fact WYW may be a way to mask how much is already gone.
Mmm or whatever will be called can no longer afford the luxury of nonproductive employees. So hopefully more action by mgmt
That will fix nothing! WFH Mon and Tues, but Wed needs to be in person for some reason, but Thur and Fri go ahead and WFH again. Sounds like another failed leadership initiative that nobody questions.
Everyday should be Anchor Day! The majority of the company's headcount is either in manufacturing or the laboratories. How on earth are these functions able to be productive when WFH? IMO, lab and manufacturing need to be onsite every day!!!
SIBG has already implemented anchor days. They aren't mandatory, but sure, go ahead and keep peddling this narrative that WYW is breaking everything.
Horray! Anchor days / return to office is here to save all our woes.
For those insistent that WYW is the cause of all the problems, brush up on your 3M history. Lawsuits, continued cost cutting year over year, and lack of investing in new technologies and innovation seem to be bigger issues than where people choose to call into meetings from.
That said, the leadership has made stupid decisions to get us to this point. Why change course now?
Not sure why we're trying to force employees to be on site in MN when it's obviously cheaper to replace everyone with offshore GSC teams.
Thank god and kudos to CBG for taking this bold step. Anchor days should be 3-4 days a week. Enough of this WYW
But they are NOT required to be in person.
WYW was a bad idea, obviously.