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Return-to-office mandates are easier issued than realised. Workers called back to offices recently have found buildings are not always prepared to host their entire workforces for 40 hours each week.
Some have reported inadequate desk space, too few parking spaces and even additional congestion through big cities.
In Washington last week, for example, the US Navy’s civilian staff were asked to return to work full-time from the city’s Navy Yard, bringing what was expected to be 17,000 workers to the area. Navy Yard has only 4,473 parking spots, according to Washington city council member Charles Allen.
He and other city officials warned that workers’ commutes would create congestion throughout the city. “Requiring all in-person work without helping agencies plan = mess,” Allen wrote on X, asking Washington residents to avoid the area. In the event, the worst of the congestion was reportedly avoided after workers chose to take the bus.
When Amazon’s corporate employees were last month ordered to return to in-person work Monday-Friday, some struggled to find both parking and desk space, according to one member of staff at the ecommerce group’s 11,000-plus capacity Bellevue site.
“Someone failed on the math here,” said the worker, who asked for their name to be withheld because they feared retribution.
Amazon said in a statement that while it “heard ideas for improvement from a relatively small number of employees and are working to address those, this anecdote doesn’t reflect the sentiment we’re hearing from most of our teammates”.
However, the company has delayed return-to-office dates for employees based in some buildings in Austin, Dallas, Phoenix, Atlanta, Nashville and Houston because their workspaces were not ready.
Several workers across Fortune 500 companies also complained to the Financial Times that crackdowns on office attendance had overwhelmed workspaces not set up to operate at full capacity in years.
One software engineer said his large technology company’s return to its Washington state headquarters was so disorganised that he lost respect for the chief executive: “Every day my colleagues and I put a lot of effort in . . . but I am left wondering who organised this return-to-office plan without the proper planning?”
“I’ve heard a lot of complaints,” said University of Pittsburgh business professor Mark Ma, who last year co-authored a study highlighting “abnormally high” staff turnover in companies with return-to-office mandates.
In some cases, Ma’s as-yet unpublished research showed workers were forced to abandon assigned seating to accommodate more people in the same, or smaller, spaces than before Covid-19. Inconveniences ranged from long waits for elevators to overcrowded workspaces to jammed parking lots.
Some employers are working to acquire more space or adapt existing premises to accommodate staff full time. In January, JPMorgan told its global employees they should return to the office five days a week from March but warned insufficient capacity in its buildings meant some would continue with a hybrid schedule temporarily. Offices where limited space has delayed a full return include Canary Wharf, where the bank is in talks to lease a part of Credit Suisse’s former UK headquarters.
Nicola Hancock, of talent acquisition company AMS, said clients issuing return-to-office directives believed improved collaboration, productivity and training was worth the disruption. While the logistics of returning could be tough, she added, they could in the longer term be more straightforward than navigating a hybrid staff.
“How do you communicate and engage with a workforce where some people are in the office, some people are sometimes in the office and maybe some people are still remote?” Hancock said. “Actually, that’s much harder.”
