Has anyone heard for sure if exempt (professional and managers) are part of the 8 hour RTO requirement? It’s odd that exempts are not paid for working a specific number of hours, yet they’re requiring it by proxy through this RTO policy. I see that becoming a labor issue.
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@a8 I wonder why they move everyone to NC:
https://www.justeconomicswnc.org/north-carolina-top-state-for-business-worst-state-for-workers/
@d9 They will tell you what they told us, you can work those flexible hours (to their benefit only) on your days off. For example if you're an engineer who has to do off hours deployments they tell us to work from home on days we have deployments scheduled....
If 8 hours is the expectation, that is exactly what I’ll give them - whether in office or remote. It keeps you off the naughty list but then I wonder if they’ll start pulling reports for those ONLY working 8 hours as I believe this will negatively impact production as well as collaboration across timezones.
My confusion is the actual calculation of 8 hours. Does that include a 30/60 minute lunch break? Is it badge in / badge out and connection time to the network combined with clicks per minute? I would prefer to work a straight 8 with a few 15 min breaks and then head home. Crazy to have this conversation as exempt employees, especially when this is a new expectation in tech as remote was the norm for most.
@dk I was told 6 hours minimum by my manager and then less than a week later had that changed to 8 hours minimum. Talk about moving the goalposts. Oddly enough I wasn’t getting 8 hours in office before WFH happened in 2020. The expectation was always get your job done and be available. Now that I think about it, I’m not sure I’ve done 8 hours in office since I worked in a call center my first year out of college. What fun times lie ahead!
I think exempt employees are included in the expectation because on our all hands call about the topic our managers and senior managers were talking about how they don't like the requirement either and discussing who they were having to rearrange things in their lives to make the 8 x 3 work for them.
When it comes to the question of 4 hours PTO counting as meeting the 8 x 3, I have to assume that if 4 hours of PTO counts as an in-office day, then it has to count as 8 hours too. It wouldn't make sense to say 4 hours PTO counts as an in-office day, but then you have to go to the office anyway to get 4 hours of in office time
@dk That's so they can have legal wiggle room. I've not heard a thing from my direct manager since the announcement. Nicely done, right before reviews are written and right before the Holidays.
Why wasn’t this clearly communicated? I’ve heard so many different things. They better not penalize us for not adhering before we were even clearly communicated with.
as exempt we take PTO in 4 hour increments. since the guidance is anything 4 hours or more counts as an in office day then I will take my 4 hours and work exactly 4 hours from home before signing off. at some point they'll see the forest through the trees be it a law suit or failed process
We technically become hourly employee. So u can take PTO or personal days ( after PTO exhausted) for 1 or 2 hours that we have to leave early. The report should count those days as in office.
@d9 >>if you are constantly average 4hrs or in the 6/7hr range, I'm hopeful they'll just leave us alone especially when their tracking shows we are still working 8+ hours a day
Nope. I know someone who was doing just what you were talking about--taking an hour or two of early calls in the morning, then heading in to finish out the last 6-7 hours of their day. They were told recently that if they don't immediately start spending 8 minimum in the office during their 3 days a week they'll get a Does Not Meet on their performance review and not get a bonus. So now they've got their calendar blocked 6-8 a.m. M-F and people overseas who need to reach them have to settle for email. Which they won't see the reply to until the next morning over there. There have already been delays, but that seems to be what management around here wants.
So many miserable people. Two days in a row I said "Good morning" to two random people, I was lucky to get grunts that didn't even resemble "Good Morning."
The upper management mo--ns are really doing a nice number on us right before the Holidays. They are evil and I'd pay to see them all fall.
all we are asking for is a little flexibility so it will be interesting to see how this plays out over time. I'm fine working 8 hours a day, heck most days I work 10, but if I need to take calls for a couple hours at 5/6a then the expectation and flexibility should be that I am the. in the office for 6 hours once I get there. my guess is that they are going after the coffee badgers. if you are constantly average 4hrs or in the 6/7hr range, I'm hopeful they'll just leave us alone especially when their tracking shows we are still working 8+ hours a day
Every industry in the US has exempt employees who are required to work specific hours at specific locations. If you think its illegal for your employer to expect you to come to work and work when they tell you to then youre an id--t and should feel fortunate anyone is willing to pay you to do anything at all.
@cy From what I'm hearing, a lot of people are planning exactly that. I'm in Corp Risk, where we're going to 4/days a week in office in January (side note: D Flowers is a di-k), and a lot of people are saying they'll do their 8x4 but no way in heck are they staying late in a cr-ppy office or logging back on after the commute.
@ck No, actually the requirements they have for us is NOT fair. We're exempt employees and expected to work whatever hours are necessary. They expect people to work all sorts of hours but also be in the office 8 hours. We could def take on malicious compliance approach and just work the 8 hours in the office. Forget weekend fail over testing. Forget late night releases. Forget early morning meetings to accommodate India or east coast.
I thought this was already common knowledge and communicated. Hourly don't have the same issue as exempt employees.
yes, they're expecting exempt behavior (work whatever hours are necessary, at whatever time of day) but treating us like hourly clock punchers.
what's a bit amusing is I hear tons of hallway, breakroom, cube conversations of people bi--hing about this.
@aj No WFH pre-COVID? I don't know where you were, but in our department, no one was in office 5 days a week. A good chunk of our team was fully remote with one in-office day a month (second Monday, IIRC), most of the rest were in-office 2-3 days a week, and a few did 4 but WFH-ed on Fridays and occasionally other days like bad weather or daycare failure or whatever. Full-time remote just required your manager to approve a form, and part-time remote just required your manager to not be a controlling je-k.
Of course they are! Problems most managers are the biggest offenders of never working a full 8 hour day.
unless you have an employment contract (offer letter isn't a contract) which most of us don't, they can change the terms of our employment and policies as they see fit. Just like we can change the terms of our employment with WF as we see fit, ie. quit.
It is fair the employer ask u to be workplace. If u got employment offer with no in office expectations, then u see lawyer. During Covid they demanded u work remote. That time u should’ve asked for in office facilities or no work with pay. U should have asked for higher life insurance coverage in case of death. We didn’t protest and we happily took remote work.
I didn't realize that YOU were the sole standard bearer of in-person working. Go to the nearest food service and grab yourself a cookie!
I work in branch banking so yes I did
@af you didnt go in to the office April 2020. You required an exception. No reason to embellish, troll
8 hours has been added to team works under our work place, understand our approach. It states that for in office days employees are expected to spend a full workday, 8 hours, in the office. It goes on to state that we are expected to meet in office expectations (days and time). it also states that holidays and all forms of time away taken in half day or more increments count as in office days.
@bg they won’t touch base salary if you aren’t hitting 8. But variable they can decimate at will.
all it says is they can't pay you less if you work less. If WF says they want you on the office 8 hours a day 3 to 4 days a week or 10 hours a day 5 days a week they can take action against you if you don't comply, what they can't do is pay you less if in a given week you only put in 30 hours.
Yes, just saw it.... it's posted on Teamworks where the in office expectations are listed
@a8 I really think you’re on to something here. Department of Labor site: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/17g-overtime-salary
And the applicable except:
“ Being paid on a “salary basis” means an employee regularly receives a predetermined amount of compensation each pay period on a weekly, or less frequent, basis. The predetermined amount cannot be reduced because of variations in the quality or quantity of the employee’s work. Subject to exceptions listed below, an exempt employee must receive the full salary for any week in which the employee performs any work, regardless of the number of days or hours worked. Exempt employees do not need to be paid for any workweek in which they perform no work. If the employer makes deductions from an employee’s predetermined salary, i.e., because of the operating requirements of the business, that employee is not paid on a “salary basis.” If the employee is ready, willing and able to work, deductions may not be made for time when work is not available.”
They have created such an environment of animosity that I don’t see anyone working hard at all. I don’t anticipate much effort into the end of the year. It makes me wonder how many ba--s will be dropped. They have created an “us” vs “them” instead of working toward goals established by a respected leadership team. This may allow for a couple quarters of financial gain on paper, but long term it is creating house of cards one step away from next disaster.
OP- basically everyone I know that is exempt has moved from getting their work done even if that meant working over 8 hours to logging off at 8 on the dot. It’s kind of nice. I used to do a few things after dinner but now I log off after 8 hours and don’t touch my computer until the next day.
I am the OP. I actually do not have an issue with RTO personally. But I’ve been an exempt professional for many many years, with WF and other companies. I’ve always understood that I was paid for my knowledge and experience, not necessarily my time…if that makes sense. Very rarely I may only put in 35 hours a week, and other time 70, as long as I got the job done is what mattered. And I thought that’s what the labor laws also said for exempt employees. I may be wrong but that was my understanding. And by WF requiring 8 hours per day in office, that seems to reek of an hourly approach. And if that’s the case, I want OT.
@af What is it that you don’t get? Pre-COVID we were told no WFH because productivity would drop, deadlines would be missed, meetings couldn’t be held.
Then the pandemic happened and guess what? Productivity remained high, workers were happier, many were healthier, we weren’t polluting the environment or wasting money on gas & parking, and we remained in contact via Teams or other communication channels (that still make up 90%+ of communication today).
This in office nonsense is the top of the house desperately trying to claw back power, to shutter the curtain, to remove that joy we had being closer to friends and family, to keep our noses to the proverbial grindstone.
Not a single manager can provide a justification for RTO other than “senior management says so.” And here we are, being treated like children and being told to be thankful that we even have a job.
Offices are the opposite of work. Negative returns.
It is awesome only working 8 hours. Go to the office and leave right at 8 hours and don’t log in from home. Working less here!
Man, we just can’t get rid of the bloat fast enough. The sheer volume of threads of people complaining about having to go to work absolutely amazes me! I literally went in every single day during march and April 2020 with zero concerns.
A coworker of mine who is exempt already received a warning.
My whole team is exempt and we were told this.
And some of us have heard not peep one from their direct manager on the subject.
Go figure.
Manager told me there were some discussions in MN recently about the legality of it and that it may be shakey to actually enforce. Could definitely see some states with better labor laws make this hard to stick with.