#rto

It was to go RTO full time.
You cannot go half a decade and blow it up like that.
It’s a cauldron of bad mojo and stupidity sprinkled with greed.
Bad corporate decision made my dei and fools.

Whats stopping us from collectively and politely saying no, collectively staying home, and forcing their hand? They are doing it in bits because they are scared of p*ssing off everyone all at once.

A friend in GD was fired today for not going into the office. No severance package, realy firing. Has this happened in any other group? Was this just GD or did it occur in other BUs/CFs?

Stink is a genius, RTO is working!!!

In all this mess, good thing is that no one is controlling if you work from office 3 times a week for a long time. So stay home, learn new skills, and send those applications

How do I tell on someone in the business who is taking advantage of RTO and ruining it for everyone else?

This person in particular is taking the kids to the pool everyday during work hours and still counts it as working.

The question isn’t why they’re leaving. The question is… what do they know that you don’t?

Morale is collapsing. Talent is walking out the door. People spend more time worrying about where their job might be moved next than how to grow the business. RTO and FTW are a major distraction and ruining what’s left of the company.

Meanwhile, leadership remains fixated on RTO, badge swipes, and presence reports as the company continues to lose ground.

RTO hasn’t created growth. It hasn’t created innovation. It hasn’t improved execution. It’s become a distraction from the real problems and significantly reduced hours. I can’t get in contact with anyone in the afternoon anymore.

At a time when the company needs stability, focus, and a reason for people to stay, leadership is kicking the company while it’s already down.

You can’t attract new young talent when you have prison policy. Nobody worthwhile is willingly signing up for this.

Need a bit of math help here - What's larger: -23% or +76%?

For example, if one company grew in value about 76% and the other grew negative 23% in value, who grew more? To make it a bit easier, you chose some fixed time fame and let's keep it in the industry, so let's make tmobile be 76 and att be -23...

Finally, once I understand what's larger, I'd like to see which factors cause numbers to differ. For example, if tmobile has a hybrid WFH system, and att is having all employees come be in the office all the time, would someone analyzing the numbers difference, be able to establish some kind of correlation here.

thank you!

Now that we’re all back in the office four days a week, we’ve started noticing something interesting: there are a whole lot of headphones out there.

And listen, I get it. Sometimes you need to focus. Sometimes Teams is lighting up like a Christmas tree, your inbox is acting like it has a personal grudge, and you just need to put your head down and get through it. We are not trying to outlaw concentration, peace, or the occasional musical escape from reality.

But if everybody has headphones on all day, we may have accidentally recreated remote work, except now we added fluorescent lights, badge access, and a commute.

The goal of being in the office together is to make it easier to collaborate. That means quick questions, hallway conversations, shared problem-solving, and those little “hold on, I know who can help with that” moments that save everyone from three meetings and a mystery spreadsheet.

So in the spirit of encouraging more cross-team collaboration, USB headphones issued for Teams calls will need to be returned at the front desk. Going forward, Teams calls taken in the office will be expected to use speakerphone whenever possible. This helps keep conversations open, accessible, and aligned with the collaborative environment we are trying to build.

We want to make sure we’re using our in-office time to actually connect with the folks around us, not just sit near each other while everyone broadcasts “do not disturb” from the ears up.

So let’s keep an ear open, say hello to the people around us, and make the office feel a little less like a silent library and a little more like a team.

Gas prices keep climbing, yet we’re still pretending there’s a business case for forcing people to drive to an office five days a week to do work that happens on a laptop.

Every increase at the pump is another pay cut for employees.

More money spent commuting, time wasted in traffic for the same work and same Teams calls that can happen anywhere in the world.

The cost of RTO keeps going up. The benefits remain impossible to find.

Hearing rumors going on about this.. can anyone here 'in the know' confirm?

I believe she will falter and rethink the FT RTO. It’s a bad decision it’s creating animus and very bad publicity which isn’t good for the bottom line.
People don’t like seeing their accounts handled by newbies outsourced and disgruntled employees.

I’m being asked to relocate as part of RTO to a location where my current skillset does not have long-term scope in ATT, so I chose to go to HQ that may offer more internal opportunities and some extended family support.

Now I’m second-guessing the decision. The move is coming up soon, and I’m worried about relocating my family only to face a layoff later because it is not the assigned location as per new presence indicators. What to do?

We are a family of 4, with 2 in elementary school assigned to go to ATL but I asked for Dallas and manager and VP were ok to Dallas with no confirmation from HR or ATS. I don’t have a choice except to move as I have single income. I am super scared of moving as there is no job guarantee after I move and could get surplused in a year as it happened to many people. I have tried for jobs since 3 years but did not land any. Was anybody in this situation where they chose one location over the assigned location? I live in a metro but still no jobs here

That's the whole point. It was always meant to be an attrition tool.

Former employee here. Been away for a while and haven't kept up on the latest with Wells.

Out of sheer (and I mean sheer desperation) I'm considering applying for an open role.

What is the RTO requirement these days? When I got laid off it was 3 days in office, with rumors of going to 4 or 5 days, combined with reporting to show if anyone isn't spending 8 hours everyday in the office.

But where did things actually wind up?

Alright, let's hear it! Comment below on the first week back under the new RTO mandate. People going from 3 to 4 days a week, how bad was it having that extra day and having 3x the amount of people around you all day? HBAs returning to office (myself included), was it as bad as you thought, worse or better? My personal opinion and observations were the following:

• Commutes: These are only 'tolerable' if you get there before 7 and leave before 3. Traffic is and always will su-k in a post covid world where everyone drives like they are either on me-h or sleeping pills.

• Collaboration: We have to sit around people we already work with (I work with cool people thank goodness). Zero difference in teamwork, communication etc other than talking over a cube wall instead of in a teams chat. The idea that being in person will "increase collaboration" is one of the biggest lies told to us. In fact, it seems that people are less likely to do any type of extra "collaborating" because everyone is tired, burnt out, and of patience. Another Fail for ELT. (put this L on the stack with the others)

-"Culture": Day one had lots of chatter and "summit energy" from associates seeing others they had not seen in years. This type of "energy" also can be found at Founders Day. Oh wait, PP ki-led that whole event with no explaination. By day 3 people appeared to be less "bubbly" and were more or less just focused on staying in their cubes, plugging the ears with a headset or ear buds, and counting down the hours until it was time to leave. Everyone looks tired and checked out. If EDJ had any brains, 2 days in office seems to be the sweet spot if you were going to have RTO and not make it fail horribly. But, these people are stupid and will never notice this. Also, for the folks that think HBA peeps are lazy because we are (or were) at home, please sit down and take your L. Lazy people in the office are no different than a lazy HBA. In office are actually worse about getting out of doing work because there is nobody watching them. HBAs always felt like they had to go above and beyond to stay off the radar.

• Productivity: This was the biggest fail of them all. The distractions of having people walking by my cube, the background noise, hearing other calls, and just general in office vibes. This is a horrible, outdated, beyond stupid way to complete non client/branch facing work. It is unbelievable how much less productive I was this week in office VS at home. The time it took to get day to day work done was increased due to having so many distractions. I made more errors this week than I have in years. Stupid errors from simply not being 100% locked in on the work I was doing.

• Leaders: The only leaders that seem to be enjoying this new RTO are the ones at or above DL. The ones who wear the sport coat/blazer every day. They have the talking points down, the fake persona like a politician, and generally walk around thinking they are Gods gift to this company as they figure out new and creative ways to break everything they touch. They don't even seem like real people and make zero effort to interact or have any personal relationship with the people under them, unless of course they need a new 'work around' created for a system tech failure. They stay in their clique` with the other 'jackets'. They seem almost completely detached from reality and have zero ability to "read the room".

Summary: I knew it would be bad, but this is much worse than I imagined now that I'm seeing it in real time. People that love WFH don't care if someone is in office, teams chat is yellow/away, or someone doesnt reply right away. We simply do not care and only focus on the job we are paid to do. Nothing else matters to us if the work is getting done correctly. The in office junkies (the ones who love RTO) seem to be nothing more than micro managing control freaks. They dont have enough to do and have major insecurities. They love being in the office and therefore everyone needs to be in the office to fill whatever mental void they have. These people are borderline psychopaths with the way they obsess over what their coworkers are doing. It's sick and childish when it comes down to it. The obsession with seeing bodies in the cubes and nothing more has to be one of the biggest fumbles and fails EDJ has ever done (next to layoffs and outsourcing). I'm generally curious at this point as to how much extra $ is wasted on these buildings to keep them functional VS when the company was fully remote for almost 4 years. It's going to be a very long summer.

Just wanted to share something I heard from a pretty reliable source they’re bringing back Work From Home for Mondays because of the latest CES results. Apparently leadership took one look at the numbers and feedback and decided to hit the pause button on the full RTO push again.

It kind of makes sense when you think about it. The Chevron Way is supposed to be all about our people being the most valuable asset, building trust, integrity, and taking care of each other while getting results the right way. Forcing everyone back into the office when morale is already low and people are burned out doesn’t exactly line up with that. All the reorgs, constant changes, and pressure have been wearing folks down. Those survey comments probably reflected a lot of frustration and distrust that leadership can’t just ignore forever.

From what I’m hearing, some teams are already being told quietly to plan on WFH Mondays from August.

Has anyone else heard the same? Is your manager or skip level saying anything, or are they still acting like everything’s great? Would be nice if they actually addressed the real issues instead of throwing out occasional WFH days as a quick fix.

Does anyone know whether badge swipes are actually being tracked and if they are to what extent?

I’m not trying to call anyone out, and I certainly won’t be naming names, but it’s getting increasingly difficult to justify coming into the office five days a week when the building feels emptier by the day.

The communication around RTO has been incredibly vague. Other than the dry a$$ generic email that went out in January, there hasn’t been much clarity on expectations, enforcement, or how compliance is being measured.

If badge swipes aren’t being tracked, what exactly is the point of complying and coming in?

“Hi losers I want you to return to the office (I won’t be going in because that’s for wage jockies like you), also work even harder (I won’t be paying you more lol). Let me explain to you what AI is (even though I have no experience in it)”

Not sure if this is company wide or just certain departments, but it looks like they’re going to start cracking down on hours in office for salaried employees. Last month a girl on a neighboring team was placed on “administrative leave” as she was being investigated for hours spent in office. Then earlier today, a guy on my team received an email titled “Corporate Investigation - RTO”, but he was able to come back to his desk and continue his day. He said he’ll talk to me off campus about the meeting.

Stank tried to spin the metric that 79% of the employees that did respond felt committed and engaged and used that number as support for his policies. He did not share the next metric that if only 79% of those who responded felt engaged/committed, then it is a easy assumption to make that really only about 60% of the total work force felt committed and engaged.
Remember, the C-Suite will ignore the responses that do not support their ideology and strategy, and outright lie about what the employees really feel is important.
499/600 and 875/900 are the real survey numbers.

PP is cutting again - this time is massive almost a quarter of all employed. It's going to be about 300 people which in the grand schema of things is not that big but for us at PP it's the biggest round ever - the impacts are massive. JH got her promo, kudos girl, but you are responsible for the mess as much as anyone else. this time they are not blaming it on ai cause by now everyone knows that story is all bs. i shall be back with a rant on RTO and all failed promises the execs sold us over last few years. well done jill.

Guys are in our building today moving out old furniture to get things ready for the final group coming back in! Good luck in getting a spot you like. Those of us that have been coming in for TWO YEARS have taken all of the good ones. Enjoy your final days at home!

After 6.5 years of successful remote and hybrid work, leadership decided employees must return to the office more than half the time. Despite years of strong performance, increased productivity, and record results, management couldn't even provide a basic explanation for the decision.

The announcement itself perfectly reflected the company's culture. After months of rumors and speculation, employees were informed through a Teams meeting while many of us were already sitting in the office. Cameras were off. Employees were muted. Questions were not answered. Instead, we were told to ask our managers for information that leadership should have communicated directly.

The return-to-office rollout has been just as poorly executed. Some employees have been separated from their managers, collaboration has become more difficult, and basic equipment and workspace issues remain unresolved. Apparently, requiring people to commute was a higher priority than ensuring they had functional tools to do their jobs.
What makes this especially frustrating is that employees spent years proving that remote and hybrid work could be successful. The company benefited from our flexibility, commitment, and results. Now we're expected to accept a major change without transparency, accountability, or even the courtesy of a meaningful conversation.

This experience has made it clear that employees are viewed as resources to manage, not people to respect!

Leadership seems to need a decoder to comprehend the results, so here it is.

The negative survey results are not about healthcare perks or wellness programs no one uses, they are only about RTO and the lack of flexibility.

“I am proud to work at AT&T”


Once true. No longer. Public perception has deteriorated, and when people outside the company hear about the five-day RTO policy, the lack of any real collaboration, and the absence of assigned seating or co-located teams, the reaction is disbelief. Pride erodes when policies feel performative instead of purposeful.

“I would recommend AT&T as a great place to work”


That answer is now clearly no. A mandatory five-day RTO policy for roles that historically had been remote before COVID and can be done more effectively remotely is an immediate dealbreaker for modern workers. The policy alone makes the company undesirable and uncompetitive as an employer.

“We trust the leadership decisions”


Trust is broken. Loyalty is dead. Employees do not support the financial decisions that destroyed value, nor the RTO mandate that ignored clear employee feedback. Trust cannot survive when leadership consistently doubles down instead of course-correcting.

“The company provides opportunities to support career growth”


Opportunities are narrowly concentrated in Dallas, with limited mobility elsewhere. For a national company, that is a self-inflicted constraint that unnecessarily caps growth and retention.

“Our policies and systems support me doing my best work”


They do the opposite. The five-day RTO policy actively reduces productivity, and many internal systems remain outdated and inefficient. Physical presence does not compensate for structural friction.

“The company cares about my health and well-being”


Employees feel burned out, mentally and physically, largely due to excessive commuting and rigid mandates that add stress without any benefit to the company or the employees. Well-being is not addressed by pushing unused benefits or wellness messaging while ignoring the root cause repeatedly identified in feedback.

“Do you feel changes have been made as a result of prior surveys”


No. In fact, the opposite. Employees explicitly opposed three-day RTO in the last survey, and leadership responded by increasing it to five. Feedback was not just ignored, it was contradicted. The disappearance of the prior third-party McKinsey survey results only reinforces that perception.

Did I miss anything else?

The pattern is now set and clear. Instead of addressing the core RTO issue employees are raising, leadership deflects with ancillary benefits and BS messaging. That approach feels like gaslighting, and not listening. So why should I even bother taking this next one?

If leadership truly wants different survey results, the solution is not another email, benefit rollout, or talking point. It is addressing the one issue employees are consistently, overwhelmingly, and clearly raising.

Flexibility. Trust. Results over “presence”.

That is the message of the survey, whether leadership wants to hear it or not.

RTO is here to stay, we all know that. I badly want to move states. Does anyone have experience with moving locations, how did that work out? I will report to the office to keep my job of course, but I don’t want to live in this location anymore. We have team members that live in other states and report to their office even walking in and working alone. I don’t see why I wouldn’t be able to change locations.

BNY Used RTO, Performance Reviews to Cut Jobs: Ex-Staffers

The firm has consistently reduced its headcount for the last six quarters, regulatory filings show. Former employees told Ignites how they were pushed out due to unexpected poor performance reviews and forced relocations without benefits.

Hey California ,any update on you guys going rtm q3 ,or any other region updates ..
Let’s keep the nation informed

Are you guys still doing 35 days per quarter? Disclosure: I work for a competitor and was just curious (comparing it with 5/wk that we have)

Here we go! Day one of ELT's move to get more of us to quit. Post your concerns, complaints, funny stories, frustrations, etc in this thread so we can keep the comment section active for our neighborhood ELT trolls who love to lurk here (they are useless anyway, so might as well give them something to do today). Good luck everyone, and enjoy the collaboration this week! 🤡

PS. r/st louis (edward jones) has a post from a few days ago that links this site if reddit is more your scene.

Considering taking a position with the company but am reading about their strict onsite policy. Is it tracked by how many days you are on site or how many hours? How is it addressed if you have an offsite meeting or had to work from home part of your day (such as a coworker asking you to join an early or late meeting before or after you are at the office)?

I'm looking forward to reading all about "return to office" four days a week tomorrow in this forum.

Yes, you read that right. Twice now I’ve had to watch where I walk because someone decided to de-----e in public. I never experienced that while remote. Before I forget did anyone see the pervert exec on the home page this week. Gosh it’s going to be so uncomfortable when he speaks to us at the June town hall. Hopefully he doesn’t ask us about our boxers or briefs 🥴 >> https://www.thestandard.com.hk/finance/article/167954/BlackRocks-Mark-Wiedman-sorry-for-off-color-comments-to-women-such-as-boxers-or-briefs << When I’m not playing frogger to avoid stepping in sh-t I’m either (1) hoping for my bus to arrive less late than usual (2) watching my back as a woman amongst the crazy people in town (3) witnessing open air dr-g use/dr-g exchanges and public urination (4) avoiding confrontation of any panhandler because I’ve seen the tension escalate to punches being thrown and if it comes down to it I would like to defend myself but I can’t carry a pepper spray deterrent with me and into the building (5) calling the babysitter to let her know I might be 80 minutes or 120 minutes before I get home (6) chatting with my son to see how soccer practice went since I can’t be there as often (7) hoping that my vehicle didn’t get damaged sitting at the park and ride lot (8) wondering if I’ll have enough time tomorrow to complete what I couldn’t get done in office the previous two days. Plus much more. Don’t ask me how many home cooked meals I’ve been able to make and eat with my family like we usually did before May 4. On the financial side of things I am struggling with this worrying dilemma. Do I cancel my IRA contributions to cover the cost of daycare and a frequent babysitter? Do I cancel my HSA contribution to pay for gas? What can I cancel to pay for my time? Seriously I am drained. This is the 2nd payday under the RTO policy and I am in the negative yet again. Thankfully my enormous 1.25% raise allowed me to buy a few tanks of gas this month. Not sure what I’m going to do next month. Probably have to bring the older child into work to avoid babysitter costs. My team is loosing talent soon. I’m sure my workload will increase. I’m sure I’ll be asked to get things done in the same amount of time. I’m definitely sure I won’t get any additional compensation for covering an empty seat. As of May 4, working here has become financially unjustifiable, incredibly stressful and a waste of time. It would be different if this was a job that physically needed my presence. But it isn’t. Same goes for the rest of my team. We have this futuristic ability to do our work remotely like we were doing for years but now all of a sudden we are needed in office to justify their real estate investment. Here is the best part my team is all remote with respect to each other. We are at least 250 miles from each other. The policy literally makes no sense. It’s causing me to lose cents too, well actually dollars — lots of dollars. So yea my testimony is sh-t is literally hitting the fu--ing fan. So if more sh-t hits the fan we can expect to have to avoid more human sh-t piles. If this is brilliantly boring well I am having trouble finding anything brilliant about it. Maybe I’ve been too generous by meeting or exceeding all expectations every year for over a decade. To Bill: make the brilliant decision to reverse the RTO policy completely before you wreck the careers and lives of more of your loyal employees and customers. The customers who no longer want to bank with us because of this terrible decision.

Don’t forget Bill gets a 30% comp increase and executive security. We get pennies on the dollar and a mandatory RTO five days.

Just read on a local news website that the 800 bldg downtown STL will be going up for auction next month (June). With all the RTO mandates it will be interesting to see if the bank will purchase the building not knowing whomever buys that building has different plans with that property that could potentially displace BOA altogether in that building. I hope not because I will WFH if that happens and not relocate to another location which I currently commute 2hrs already RT.

• WF will drain your patience
• We're all just headcount lines
• revews are always hanging over you
• Formal warning = slow exit
• One mistake will follow you
• RTO is control, not collaboration
• Badge reports replaced trust
• Office hours matter more than output
• Commute is your problem
• Morale is your problem
• Town halls are performative theater
• Location strategy keeps moving the target
• Offshoring is omnipresent and has no end
• Politics always beats merit
• Silence is safest
• Speaking's risky
• Everyone is trying to look essential
• But... Everyone is tired
• C-level lineup = the grift brigade
• Trust is long gone
• The job is no longer doing the work (it's surviving)

The town hall felt like the usual, with a few stand out moments. Plants legitimately asked how to get a req approved and filled faster and basically got an answer that EVP reviews weekly but other than that, we just don’t know! Also, having EVP say he’s not a process guy is frustrating- isn’t poor and cumbersome processes (tickets and self-serve apps that get you nowhere) a big part of the problem? That is probably the reason so much time is spent on calls and meetings and meaningless metrics. Joking about being EVP for a quarter means he outlasted the last guy was actually funny, but if exec levels turnover that fast, why wouldn’t employees? Don’t they quit bad managers before they quit bad companies? I guess we just need to be on site and that will fix things

When is phase 2? More lay offs? More desks?

I saw and read that someone passed away recenty at their desk. I feel sorry for this person and the family. Stinky and his minions do not care, in fact, they either want us to quit or expire. Same win for them. This is not the 1st time that someone with health issues or disabilities denied accommodation. In ATL alone, one of my coworkers passed away (he was disabled, walked with crutches), no assigned seating each time. I believe at one point he fell walking around and caused him to file FMLA and sadly he passed. Another one, walking with a walker, obviously impaired, also no assigned seats. I see this person walking around with walker assisting him daily. Some I knew had heart attacks, at least 2 people. Some lost their legs due to accidents, and yet were still told to report 5 days a week. This is just in 1 office here in ATL.