Thread regarding Wells Fargo & Co. layoffs

@bf Allowing employees to work from home has been consistently shown to increase productivity. Commuting not only consumes time and money, but also contributes to environmental harm through increased carbon emissions and continued reliance on imported fuel. A mandatory full-time return-to-office model provides no clear benefit—both companies and employees (and environment) are negatively impacted. It is not a trade-off situation; it reduces efficiency on all sides. From this perspective, the push for full in-office attendance appears counterproductive. The policy can only be interpreted as a strategy to encourage attrition, where the primary objective is reducing headcount rather than improving organizational performance.

@w7 - you were always just a dot on a map.

that's corporate life. we are all just numbers.

Stop insulting HR anf telling them what their job is. People in HR are also employees and have to live by the same rules they have to execute. They experience mental health challenges with the job just like you do. They advocate for employees and risk their jobs. Maybe not all, but many do. Your manager may OR may not advocate on your behalf. They are employees too. Stop judging and insulting others in these threads. It is easy to tell others what to do, how to fight, quit their job or move. If you are not in their shoes, you have no idea what they can and cannot do. When faced with life changing decisions, reality sets in. For goodness sake there is so much negativity right now, don't contribute any more to it. It doesn't cost anything to be civil.

Some employees such as myself were hired in a position on a team that was fully remote. For 8 years I worked in that position with no issues. My review rating was exceeding, I participated in meetings, worked on projects and collaborated with my peers and other lines of business with success and formed great relationships. Now, because of the RTO policy I was forced to make a decision to relocate or take a severance package. Unfortunately after 29 years of service I had to take severance because moving wasn't really a good option for me. So crazy that you can be told how much you are valued your whole career and then because of a new policy you just feel like you are reduced to a dot on a map.

@ba WFC is not their nanny nor gov't. They should do the same thing all other couples did for decades pre the last 10 years. Tradeoffs exist.

@b4 I totally agree, keep bringing up the stupidity of RTO. I have two-up who seems to have issued a decree that he doesn’t want to hear about it anymore. This is all the more reason to double-down. Shout it from the rooftops.

@cd+1k80q9rxx

Not all of us have kids or elderly parents we are taking care of during work hours. You know that, right? It's actually pretty easy to monitor production. My manager isn't at my assigned location anyway, so she is always, 100% of the time, monitoring me remotely whether I've driven to a random office building or not. Somehow that monitoring is 'good enough' if I'm in a WF building, but not good enough if I'm at home. That dog won't hunt.

@cd Focus on yourself and stop worrying about what your coworkers are doing.

@cd Because they do monitor keystrokes and other activity on your lap top.

Well it su-ks for those forced to go in esp if it’s bait and witch from when they were hired, but I do not trust people who work from home to be focused on the job and do work. If ur watching kids how will u be available for meetings with screaming kids or crying babies in the background ? If ur watching an elderly parent, how can u be mentally checked into the job if ur thinking “I must check my parent every 15 minutes”. How would a boss know ur not working a second job concurrently?

I was recently looking for some technology images for a presentation in the brand standards site. Could not find one shot of a computer screen and 2 or 3 of 100's of people sitting at a computer working. But there were 100's of shots of people together sitting around a table or fooling with sticky notes on a wall. Walk through CIC. You see people heads down, working, usually with headphones on to block out the noise of the people at their computers. The vision of how we work does not match reality. Knowledge workers do not kumbaya. They write, they research, they ping, they get on a call if they have to, usually while multitasking on one of the other things. They don't hang out with the people around them - who they usually don't work with anyway. I'll do what I have to do because I do love what I do. But my productivity was much higher when I was working at home an hour or so until traffic died down, driving 20 minutes instead of an hour+, heading in for 4-5 hours, then heading home and putting in another 3-5 in a quiet office at home. It was an average 8-10 hour productive day.

@OP you can tell that it is a toxic place. Seeing people at the office does not equate to growth or build any relationship. Upgrade your mindset, its 2025.

if you didn't have kids to only see them 2 hours a day then it sounds like you need to be a stay at home parent.

@ad this one. This one is the boomer.

The world changed after COVID and house prices skyrocketed and soon after interest rates did too. A lot of dual working parents pre-COVID lived in decent proximity to work but that option is unaffordable for many families.

@a9 good for you. Some people didn't have kids just to put them in after school care and see them for 2 hours a day in a 24-hour window.

@b7 there's no data showing higher productivity as a result of working in-office. That's the point. If data like that actually existed, they'd shout it from the rooftops. Instead every pro-RTO argument, inside Wells and at other companies, has been built entirely around nebulous intangibles like collaboration and watercooler conversations. The fact that the executives here looked at time in office and saw people putting in four hours or less, is itself direct evidence that despite years of unified effort to sell RTO from every level of management at the bank, people ain't buying what they're selling. They can change the metrics, but coerced compliance is not the same thing as buy-in. People know when their time is being wasted.

@bf Oh, Fisher Price? That explains the logic you’re using.

If someone rents, yeah they could move relatively easy. However, if someone owns, they have to think about interest rates, school districts, did their house appreciate or not, and the list goes on.

How about you change careers in this job market? Not to mention people would have to start over at entry level with a career change, which is a big pay cut.

Before you give an opinion, you should do a little research first. Your suggestions are very out of touch with reality.

Maybe stick to your Fisher Price toys, the adult conversations seem to be above your pay grade.

These threads read like Fisher Price | My First Steps into Adulthood. Chapter 1 : Where is my everything mommy? It hasn't been handed to me on a silver platter!

@ba , has the employee base of Wells Fargo been so coddled that it has forgotten that there is a giant world out there? Half of these posts read as if they are from the same person who would walking into a KFC and DEMAND a Quarter Pounder with Cheese and a Fried Apple pie.

A serious response to your rhetorical questions :
"Can't afford to move closer?" - The answer is ANYONE can, its just about the sacrifices made to do so. The same sacrifices made by those coming up the ladder. (downsizing, living in a less desirable location or housing, not having 6 cell phones for 2 people and a toddler)

"No jobs closer to home?" I don't know, move? Change careers? Grow a spine and figure it the F out?

@b8 and if they can’t afford to move closer? Or there are no jobs closer to home?

@a4 my understanding is that managers can approve up to two weeks flexibility on their own or two to four using the flexible work agreement. The FWA usually requires approval at OC + 2.

Regardless, you will still show in the reporting as missing days in office targets. The expectation is that you will make up the time to get back to target days in office average. Meaning come in more days than normal the following week.

@ac It was your decision to live an hour away. Move closer or deal with being an hour away. That was your choice. Live with it.

@b4 the data is this. There was an unexpectedly high proportion of employees working less than 4 hours in the office when the metrics were first run over the summer. So high in fact they thought the calculations were wrong. Well they weren’t wrong. Many people were taking advantage of flexibility by spending on average less than four hours in office. Mind you this is not PRODUCTIVE hours just hours in the office. So sitting there just watching Netflix.

It pis$ed off the execs and here we are.

@ap learn correct grammar

Keep putting in the requests and suggestions regardless. If you stop asking about RTO/WFH, you're giving them what they want out of doing this. I think the owner class is just hoping the worker class eventually shuts up about WFH. They clearly have no data to support it, if they had actual performance metrics they would have shouted it from the rooftops for years now. So its all just vibes based and hoping to wait out the demand. Not realizing that every single day their workers commute, the glaring non-value-add is made apparent all over again. Keep bringing it up

@ap accept*

@an+1k80q9rxx

Wrong.

@ac You should have considered that when you decided to except the position. Take the RIF and find something closer to home.

And the reason that went away is due to all the coffee badgers who blatantly sc--wed everyone else over the last couple years. This overreaction is all because of them.

@ak no we based our decision on pre covid times. When we had flexibility and no tracking. When parents regularly only worked 6 hours a day from the office so they could be available for school drop offs/pick ups and then finished the workday from home.

So when everyone decided to have kids did you base that on a permanent work from home scenario? Do you feel that WF should consider your parental status when laying people off? Although i can understand that this scenario is very new to parents. This is the problem and it actually sounds pretty foolish on your part to assume these things.

For the love of god can we stop pulling HR into this?

1. None of this is our idea
2. We hate it too
3. We are just as confused as to the rules and processes as you are
4. We are hoping it all goes away too

I have been on 3 separate leader of leader calls where the message was “just do it for now, we are working on this”

@ad this is why Wells is so outdated compared to other big banks. You all just follow the leader. Yes master, anything you say master.

Everyone loveesss to hate on parents but they all want us to have more kids. Make it make sense.

@ad lol that one iPhone is definitely what’s hurting families pockets.

I can’t wait for some of yall childless workers who make these stupid comments to have kids. I was clueless once too.

@ad these are such out of touch, out of date, naive thoughts.

You know what also happens in history? Things change, we find better ways to do things. Just because we used to do something a certain way doesn’t mean it was the right or best way.

It is unfortunate that this is the approach WF is taking. However, people sounding out the alarm that they are both working parents and the commuting time is a hardship really need to understand some history. History did not begin during COVID lockouts. What was something we had to do is now an entitlement. Many parents value a stay at home parent so fill in for this issue. If you have to both work that that should be considered in family planning. This may sound harsh but the entitlement attitude is hurting all of us. Stay home, buy one less iphone a year do with less. Family time is quality time but don’t expect WF to treat you different because you have children

@a9 how about the parents that have to deal with an hours drive to and from work because of traffic so their kids now have to be in someone else’s care for 10+ hours a day.

Some of us actually want to spend time with our family.

@a9 what a privilege it is that you can afford before and after school care. Not all of us have that luxury. Not to mention the single parents.

I think people’s point is that everyone’s circumstances are different and just because something works for you, doesn’t mean it works for everyone.

I’m sure all managers will apply the same logic to ensure fairness and consistency.

I have kids, my spouse and I both work, we pay for before and after school care which allows us work flexibility. If your manager won't approve any exceptions then I am sorry to hear that. you may want to take it up with their manager or show them the guidance on Teamworks letting them know they have some flexibility. if they won't budge then just use PTO. if my spouse is traveling for work and I have to deal with a situation then I take half day PTO which covers me.