AT&T gave an awful message with this” calling up into the office! story to people that don’t live near collaboration zones or are not in a realistic commuting distance. They sent them a message that the company doesn’t care about them. What are these guys supposed to do, sell their houses, get their kids out of school, relocate to a more convenient location so they can get to the office? They are supposed to make all those life changes, with the story behind the scenes that these changes are only a prelude to the layoffs of those very same people. Yeah right. Whoever, of those people, was a high performer ( and many of them were), is valuable to other companies as well is probably interviewing with some of them as we speak. What a stupid way to lose talent.
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Agreed, WFH is just an incentive to expedite pension eligible, high salary employees who embraced this perk to take retirement….layoffs will generally impact those not connected or networked regardless if high performer or not......EOY performance is a ruse.....everyone knows that anyone not well connected or networked ends up in the meaningful impact category regardless of their contributions....
What about these so called satellite zones? Will they eventually be nonexistent by 2020? How long do you think they will be safe, since they are not collaboration zone locations? Thoughts?
Collaboration and collaboration zones are a crock of sh-- and just an excuse to lower headcount, period! AT&T executives talk a big game about their employes but they are phony, arrogant id--ts! They have ruined the company with their foolish decisions (T-Mobile disaster, buying a dying DirecTv at a premium, Time Warner buy and putting Stankey in charge of it) and are simply taking it out on their employees.
AT&T does not need anyone. They could replace everyone today in US, and have not impact to the business, offshored teams are Strategicalky deployed, so stop whining, be glad you are employed.
As others have pointed out the suspension of WFH is mostly part of a larger corporate initiative to "incentive" long term employees to seriosily consider the buy out offers, and many will. This will likely happen through the rest of the year as a cost-cutting measure.
Of course it has nothing to do with collaboration that's just a cover story. The real issue is T need to reduce head count particularly among highly paid long term employees. Sure some high performers may be affected , but at the corporate level those have been taken into consideration.
And don't be quick to dismiss the possibility of exceptions to the WFH for certain folks , none of these policies are ironclad or universal.
I suspect after this period of "blood letting" when and if the numbers head in the right direction WFH rules will be relaxed and ultimately returned to how they were originally.