I keep seeing people say “we are returning to working in the office because that’s how it always was”
Quick question - who had issues finding assigned seating, food, and stocked bathrooms with good toilet paper before covid?
Answer - nobody. Because RTO is not a return to how it was. It is way greedier and designed to be humiliating on purpose. Quit licking boots and be honest.
@6pv there is an exceptions process - and the exceptions are exceptional. Generally people started off coming in, slowly dropping off, I guess waiting to see whether anything will be said or done
How is 3 days in office working for everyone?
I hear there are still exceptions allowed if you are in US/UK and your full team is in India. So it's not that strict I believe.
As you return to the office remember the good times and these antisocial behaviors!
@h5 That is you. For many of us, it is not necessarily so. A mix of office and not-office can be optimal. Maybe 3 days in/2 days out would be better than the empty zones we see now. This would be much better for new hires, too.
@gn
What is this - a nuanced response on the Layoff? Get out of here with your logic and objective reasoning!
It’s fu--ing insane to me that it’s been nearly 6 years since COVID and Shell is still having these debates
I’m not sure how other people are working. but the “collaboration” that I do is entirely with people on other continents
What’s the value in me doing RTO? Even my line manager and team mates are abroad.
Objectively, I’ve been around long enough to see the shift from when five days a week in the office was the norm to where we are now. Back then, there was no hot desking—everyone had designated seating—but equally, there was no real way to work outside the office. Smartphones didn’t exist, remote access was complicated, requiring tokens and special devices, so there was a much clearer delineation between work (which happened in the office) and life outside.
Times have moved on considerably. With modern devices and access systems, you can work anywhere. Office capacity has generally reduced, and what remains is often shared or hot desking. The quality of offices and facilities varies widely: the Netherlands has very good setups; India has some excellent sites like Xenon, though others such as EcoWorld are less impressive; Houston feels empty, with poor partitioning but potential to improve; and London suffers from buildings not designed for modern needs—York Road was excellent, but most of it was leased out, and ideally should be reclaimed.
There’s probably a happy medium. If you never need to be in the office, then you could technically be anywhere, which may lead management to ask why not somewhere cheaper. For most people, regardless of seniority, a couple of days a week in the office helps maintain relationships and allows for serendipitous interactions. At the same time, much of our work is now done in virtual teams, which makes online collaboration the reality—and paradoxically, sometimes makes it harder to work quietly in the office.
Return-to-office (RTO) experiences differ by location: in Bangalore, traffic and time are major challenges; in London, commuting is expensive but offset by the London allowance; in the Netherlands, offices are pleasant and commuting costs are reimbursed; in Houston, driving and traffic mean starting very early and leaving early.
Overall, Shell’s RTO approach feels typical: rather than using data to take a harder line on those who never come in—thus undermining flexibility for the rest—they’ve opted for a uniform policy across the board. It’s a shame, but I do support the need to make changes, if only to level the playing field for those who are already making the effort.
RTO is for managers doing manager things and for youngsters seeking their purpose. If you are not of the above, RTO is of no value to you.
RTO is good for collaboration, but not Shell bcausr has lost all smart folks, during 2021-2024. only bloat/DEI beings left drinking coffee and acting busy in the West and tired Indians in the east because of 3 hours stuck on ORR to reach the office to do whatever, just for a paycheck and feed their family/village and nothing more.
Red flag is any company that only keeps you based on your network not your skills. I learned that the hard way. I was not smart.
people used to say that about cubicles at the office
there will always be slackers. have you considered that since all work is done on computers, we can literally just track and fire slackers by checking their online time versus their work output and quality?
@e6 WFH make shirking easier for the slackers
were you paying attention to our quarterly profits while people were working remotely?
remote work worked for the bottom line as well. tradition is not a logical explanation. the most logical explanation that i have heard for RTO is that it might make some people quit which is cheaper than firing them.
@db because they worked?
And even if the mentioned issues weren't happening, why are decisions made based on how things were in the past?
What kinds of innovation or progress ever come out of desperately clinging to outmoded practices?
RTO is only 3 days a week. Wednesday is mandatory and the other two days are agreed upon by the team.
you skipped a part so here it is again
“who had issues finding assigned seating, food, and stocked bathrooms with good toilet paper before covid?
Answer - nobody. Because RTO is not a return to how it was.”
the problem is that the employer has their end of the bargain to hold up, in that they must provide adequate facilities suitable for conducting work
If there had been no Covid shutdown, people wouldn’t have re-engineered the lives around working from home, running family errands, tending the kids, scheduling mid-day appointments, etc.
But there was and they did.
Fast forward to now, if the employer states required in-office attendance a few days a week, why is that outrageously unfair? A monthly paycheck comes with responsibilities for both employer and employee. If showing up at the office is one of them, just do it.
My line manager at WCK is asking our team to come in Monday - Thursday starting in 2026. Is this a universal policy? I’m not hearing about it from my friends on other teams.
We also don’t have assigned workstations which I find annoying. Hot-desking kind of su-ks.