Google and JPMorgan have each told staff that office attendance will be factored into performance evaluations. The US law firm Davis Polk informed employees that fewer days in the office would result in lower bonuses. And Meta and Amazon both told employees they’re now monitoring badge swipes, with potential consequences for workers who don’t comply with attendance policies – including job loss. Increasingly, workers across many jobs and sectors appear to be barrelling towards the same fate.
In some ways, it’s unsurprising bosses are turning back to attendance as a standard. After all, we’ve long been conditioned to believe showing up is vital to success, from some of our earliest days. In school, perfect attendance is often still seen a badge of honour. The obsession with attendance has also been a mainstay of workplace culture for decades; pre-pandemic, remote work was largely unheard of, and employees were expected to be physically present at their desks throughout the workday.
Yet after the success of flexible arrangements during the pandemic, attendance is still entrenched as a core metric. What’s the point?
I feel like way too many folks forget that employment is a 2-way street. I have a skill that my employer needs, and I give them my skill and time in exchange for my compensation (salary plus both hard and soft benefits). It is not my responsibility to make sure that the company is at its most successful regardless of my own personal comfort and happiness, my only responsibility is to perform the duties stated in my job description.
When (as is happening all over my industry) a large number of employers decide that something like remote work is now a high priority for them, then it really does stop mattering whether or not it’s best for the company, because all the employees with any bargaining power (which is to say, the good ones) will just leave for companies that do offer remote work.
Think about it this way, it’s absolutely in every companies best interest to pay minimum wage and/or offer no health insurance, 401k, etc (at least where allowed by the law) . So why do companies that need skilled workers offer those things? Because if they didnt then they would never be able to hire talent.
Whats best for the business is getting the best talent, and you only do that by being cognizant of what the most talented people in your industry want. And in most industries where remote work is possible, remote work is increasingly becoming something people want. And COVID proved that whether or not there are slight disadvantages to collaboration in remote work (I’m not personally sold, and the research so far is contradictory), it does work, so companies have increasingly fewer excuses to drag everyone back to the office