While readers of accounting profession news have been getting hammered by headlines about dire talent shortages, a dry pipeline, and firms bleeding qualified staff with years of experience, another phenomenon has been quietly at work behind the scenes. To explain the phenomenon I’m talking about, let’s pull this excerpt from a May 2023 article about a CNBC interview with EY Global Chairman and CEO Carmine Di Sibio:
He also discussed hiring, saying they’ve been seeing a slowdown in hiring across the board (he means outside of the firm), “particularly in professional services” (so, in the firm). He then talks about how consulting firms, including EY, have begun pushing back new hire start dates due to the state of the economy. “It really has nothing to do with ChatGPT…YET,” he said. “It has to do with the fact that many companies were hiring based on attrition rates that were much higher a year ago, a year and a half ago post-Covid, you know, people were leaving, The Great Resignation. Those attrition rates, for example for ourselves, went from 20, over 20 percent, down to 12, pretty suddenly.” This tracks with everything we’ve been hearing surrounding layoffs and layoffs-that-aren’t-layoffs (a.k.a. Death by PIP), firms are seeing much lower attrition rates than they budgeted for AND a slowdown in client demand, leading to cuts.
“So therefore a lot of companies, including ourselves, have found ourselves with more people than we need at this point in time,” he continued.
It was around this time that firms started launching soft return-to-office guidance (not to be confused with hard return-to-office mandates) to which many said “if they require in-office, I’ll quit!” Well, sure. That’s what they want. They knew you’d quit. See: In Shocking Blow to Pro-Office Leadership, People Will Quit If You Force Them Back Into the Office about a Deloitte financial services survey that indicated 66 percent of FSI leaders would quit if their company required them to return to the office five days a week.
Now a new survey from BambooHR confirms what we all suspected: executives and HR managers used RTO to pump those turnover numbers up. At least among the 1,504 full-time salaried employees — including 504 HR professionals with a manager title or above — surveyed.
Nearly two in five (37%) managers, directors, and executives believe their organization enacted layoffs in the last year because fewer employees than they expected quit during their RTO. And their beliefs are well-founded: One in four (25%) VP and C-suite executives and one in five (18%) HR pros admit they hoped for some voluntary turnover during an RTO.
Bad news for them though:
By using RTO mandates as a workforce reduction tactic, companies are losing talent and morale among their employees. Nearly half (45%) of the employees who have experienced RTO report significant talent loss within their organizations—talent that was highly valued and wished to be retained.
Moreover, the discontent with return to office policies is strong among employees, with more than one in four (28%) stating they would consider leaving their positions if subjected to such mandates. This level of dissatisfaction could lead to a further drain of talent, affecting not just morale but also the stability and innovation potential of the workforce.
So the obvious problem here is that unlike targeted layoffs, RTO mandates don’t put only the unwanted castoffs out to pasture but also risk the talent companies want to keep. But duh, they should have known that would happen too.
There’s more in the survey if you want to check it out:
THE NEW SURVEILLANCE ERA: Visibility Beats Productivity for RTO & Remote
Voluntary turnover is a side benefit, but I don’t think it’s the main reason driving companies to force employees back into the office. The main reason is control and dominance. In recent years, employees have had a lot of control in the employee/employer relationship, and employers are sick of it. There are no scientific studies that conclude that working in the office leads to better work product, higher morale, more collaboration, etc., yet companies assert these things as fact anyway. It’s all a bunch of bullshit. It’s about controlling the employees.
Personal note: I was forced back into the office earlier this year, along with all my co-workers, after being WFH for almost four years. I’ve been in the office everyday for about four months now, and I can literally count the number of times I’ve seen my CEO, who’s office is just down the (short) hallway from me, on one hand.
I was already working hybrid for a few years when this all happened. Nothing changed for me, except we got more work while many other professions who already worked less got an extra break or two and got more rested and recharged.
Remote and hybrid work can have its challenges for some but it’s also an easy scapegoat for lack of productivity, which has many variables, imo. Lack of motivation and engagement were already issues that were cropping up pre 2020.
Look at some articles from 2019 and back a little. Burnout was being written about more and more, especially in our profession. It was only exacerbated during those years.
The key to remote work is still getting the same amount done, all other variables being equal. Imo, hybrid works better in our industry as client contact and hands on training of staff is often best in person. But some business owners just can’t get past preferring to see people lining the halls, and the traditional logistics that went with that.
Yes, with all the studies that are being done about WFH vs. hybrid vs. full-time in office that rarely get to any demonstrable conclusion, maybe there should be a study on the psychology of the CEOs and business owners who think that seeing employees in the office means that the employees are working harder? I think there could be a lot of interesting info to come from such a study. What in their psychology makes them willing to lose high-quality employees so that they can force all of their employees into an office that they don’t want to go to, and there’s no hard evidence supporting that it actually increases productivity, teamwork, collaboration, etc.?