Companies ‘overstep’ the mark as they force staff back to office

Global executive says tech companies most likely to force remote staff to come back to the office

Renu Upadhyay, VMware.

Tech companies, which are generally well-equipped for remote work, are among those pushing the hardest for their employees to get back to the office, according to a senior executive of a global cloud computing firm. And those tech workers are among the most resistant to the return after years of working from home.

The irony of digital companies keen to revert to physical space is not lost on Renu Upadhyay, vice-president, product and technical marketing, end user computing at VMware.

“They’ve invested a lot in the free food, the campuses, campuses that are just sitting there in very prime real estate,” she says.

“It was quite attractive: I’m just out of college, my meals are paid for, I can do my yoga, I can do the massage chair, I can even live there. So that was a trend for the technology companies, that was a value proposition (for) why you would want to work with us. So, before I make any choices on what I do with that brand-new campus – like shutting it down, (cutting) those perks – I want to at least give it one shot and get everybody back.”

It’s a contrast to other companies, which have never made their office environment part of their value proposition to job candidates, Upadhyay says during a visit to Australia.

Even so, it’s not just tech firms pushing people to return, driven by the perception their workers are not as productive or engaged at home as they are in the office.

The global executive says we have a way to go before the model is settled and warns that some companies are “overstepping” in their rhetoric and desire to get people back to the office. That’s because we’re still in an experimental phase about how far we can go with technology, so companies are still testing the waters.

Companies are still juggling the issues around office space: “It’s interesting, I was talking to a customer recently and they said that they had a certain capacity of office space and everyone came into the office,” she says.

“Three years later they have doubled their business, but their office capacity has not grown, so they’re almost hoping that not everyone comes back at the same time because otherwise they will have to lease yet another space. So there is a direct cost implication to the policies that organisations might put in place. So it’s like, I want everyone to come back, but actually I’m hoping not everyone comes back, versus I want everyone to come back and how do I plan for it?”

Upadhyay says the workplace disruption is an opportunity to focus more on the different needs of different types of employees as new models emerge.

“I hope that we get a lot more human-centric,” she says. “The same thing doesn’t work for everybody (but) we don’t want to provide a situation for one person at a time because that’s not going to work, that’s not how HR departments can run, that’s not how it can provide the tools, But I hope we can truly understand employees, understand their purpose, the connection they feel to the job and then how they can use technology to be successful in what they do.”

While the fixed phone is virtually dead in the modern office, the smartphone is an important communicator

Upadhyay says she is seeing job candidates choose positions on the basis of whether they offer flexible work policies, with the job itself and salary coming in second. They look for the line in the job ad that says remote work is an option and, if that’s missing, go no further.

She says it’s no longer really viable for an organisation not to offer remote work, especially if they want to attract diverse talent from a pool that “sits everywhere” around the globe.

A company could decide not to offer flexible work but would need to be upfront with an employee from the beginning of the hiring process.

With the increase in distributed workforces, companies have to be clearer about their business aims and the talent and skills they need. Along with diverse workforces, companies also are adjusting to managing “multigenerational workforces”, with people of different ages demanding different types of technology in their work.

Once the technology gap was cultural, now it’s generational, too, with the challenge of picking the correct digital tool for employees.

Says Upadhyay: “I’ll give my own team’s example. I had a person who just recently retired and I am also hiring college graduates. Both of them sit on the same team. One person loves to pick up the phone and that’s how he connects and that’s how he likes to make sure people at the other end understand the value he provides, and another person is extremely comfortable connecting using purely digital tools on chat.”

She says that while the fixed phone is virtually dead in the modern office, the smartphone is an important communicator and “the comfort with that device is pretty much ubiquitous across generations and cultures”.

But there are differences: younger people in an office may have their headphones on, but they are likely listening to music, not making a phone call, and are texting clients, while older workers are engaged in phone conversations.