Has anyone gotten flagged before and how many days until they actually notice.
27 replies (most recent on top)
@1ee or playing foosball like all the juvenile leap candidates
@1js it's one more thing they can use to nail you with. Disgusting
@6qt excellent points but this is a long way off.
@6ze this is just so wrong! Sadly, I'm not surprised. A#s in a spreadsheet - salaries and # days working remote. Sort by salary descending. How much do we have to cut? This is corporate America only this time the added variable is the remote situation. That's why I learned a long time ago - no checking emails the night before returning from vacation. No missing kids' big games or concerts unless it's a true emergency. These things are not factored it when the cuts come. I've seen it first hand. I'm retired now - but after 40 years working for large companies, this is the sad lesson I've been taught - sometimes the hard way.
I’m not in HR, but it’s obvi how this is going to work.
They will have a number of people the company needs to get rid of. The number of days in violation will be swizzled so that the people involved will equal the number they need to RIF.
My best direct report worked at home last fall (start of PY2025) year to facilitate cancer care for a child. I approved this and got approval from my SVP. The whole time they performed at EP levels. HR put them on the list midyear. For calibration HR mandated an IP and said she should have taken FMLA. I pushed back hard and was told to tow the company line or else. She just got an offer external with full remote and is now leaving after 15 solid years. Curious why Fidelity is going back in time but it just fu---d my best employee and a model worker. What company is Fidelity now? I'm embarrassed.
HR won’t tell managers what the threshold is to end up on “the list” and we just hear rumors like everyone else. The SVP we roll up to claims he doesn’t know either and has had to fight with HR over some people on the list.
I basically tell my team to miss connect week days at your own risk because it’s seemingly out of managers control about what’s reasonable.
Once this older management generation fades into history will new vibrant forward thinking leadership see the true value in meeting employees where they perform the best. Covid showed workers that they can be productive and capture more productive time vs sitting in traffic, wasted small talk with coworkers & catching sicknesses from crowded office spaces by working remotely.
I would love to be privy to the past pulse surveys on opinions of remote work vs mandatory work in office.
It would probably save the company money by removing the real estate expense and pay for possibly quarterly team outing/ building get togethers to satisfy some of the emotional connection some people need or feel isolated with remote work.
Of course, AI is advancing to remove most of these repetitive roles anyway so most employees may have to seek other alternatives in their future career journey
Anyone else on "the list" end up with an IP? Manager said he put in for an EP for me after a stellar perf year. Hr overrode with an IP because I wfh most Fridays with manager approval - they never told manager that's not allowed anymore. If they want a RIF they're about to get one. What a d-mb a-s company fidelity has become. They'll reward a dipsh-t in the office before a rock star who works Fridays from home.
Former tech manager here. Left over this policy (after 10 years) when it impacted a guy on my team who was in office more than I was last year. HR won't tell us the criteria other than they need to badge in every day of the week for each connect week. If you do less than that, then you'll eventually end up on the list, I'm guessing as you near the bottom 20% of adherence or something. They also didn't account for his approved PTO in this it seems which is 100% against what they told us. It's a sham, almost cost my guy his promo after a year of busting his a-s. It was worth the political nonsense prior to COVID, but since the partial RTO started it just became a nightmare.
Same as i got the same warning from my manager. Not an official warning as HR talked to my manager...said I will just come the office every day for the 2 weeks...
@ad it has zero to do with your manager. HR will tell the manager who is on the list. HR will not tell the manager what the criteria is for being on the list.
My buddy got fired for not showing up to connect week for 6 months straight. They’re cracking down
My SVP has pushed HR for the criteria they use and they have refused to tell him. As you can imagine, this is someone with hundreds of reports.
I’m a manager in a enterprise tech
It’s true that managers have no influence over remote work policies; those decisions are entirely made by HR. When I’ve asked about my team, I get vague or non-committal answers. It’s widely assumed that the real purpose of these policies is to encourage turnover, with the added side effect of reducing bonus payouts (I had team members whose bonuses were capped at 85% last year despite strong performance).
The organization wants employees who comply, wants to avoid the negative optics of large-scale layoffs (by forcing people out), and also wants to cut costs (reduced bonuses) — RTO helps accomplish all of that. My personal belief is that HR uses a kind of “forced curve” where a certain percentage of people will always be negatively impacted during bonus season. The criteria shift each year, but the outcome is the same: someone will be penalized. Unless attendance is perfect across the board, there will always be employees singled out.
WI, thank you for sharing your experience. Sorry to hear about the write up but how laughable, what are we in school?? After 20 years I would suspect financially you could tell Fidelity to go f themselves. You brought up a good point about achieving metrics and how it's more important to push some attendance nonsense then achieving results.
Instead of wasting time and energy on monitoring attendance- invest in a better WI system as it is junk! Empower is starting to eat Fidelity's lunch & when I've spoken with Empower they make it way easier for participants.
Go into the office and enjoy yourself like everyone else is with sc--wing around and laughing half the day.
WI EE,
It was someone like me who is making your life miserable. You are slacking on this initiative and I am not. I make you look bad, and me good by comparison.
You are leaving, so my scheme works.
Thank you for validating my process.
WI employee here.
Two weeks ago I was given a "verbal warning" by my manager for non adherence to the dynamic working policy. Oddly, it came with a written warning that I had to sign and put in my HR file. I am a 20 year Fidelity vet with high performance, recent performance-based awards, well-respected in my business unit, EP rating last year. Not bragging, just showing that performance had nothing to do with this.
Going back to pre-covid, I've always done a day or two per week at home. Across multiple teams, my managers were fine with this. Never any issues. The first year of dynamic working I continued doing this. When we went to two weeks I continued doing this. Since I am the only person on my team in my location, my manager had no issues with this approach - I would usually be in the office M-Th and home Friday. Some weeks I'd do another day at home if I had appts. This past winter I had major surgery and spent two of my dynamic weeks working from home because getting into the office was difficult but I could work just fine at home.
Around February of this year my manager told me I was on "a list" for the first time. He admitted he had no idea what the criteria was. He had no previously had any issues with my attendance. Since that conversation I have been in the office 100% of my dynamic days. Going back, the last 12 dynamic weeks I have been in all five days each week. I am not interested in being on any HR lists, so I fixed the issue in February.
For this performance year, I am over 80% attendance on dynamic days. My manager had to deliver the "verbal warning", but has always admitted he hates the dynamic policy, had no idea they were looking this closely, and doesn't agree with how they've rolled it out. I am hearing rumors that if you work at the office four days, but home one, that means you did not attend your dynamic week per the policy.
I spoke with our HR rep about the warning and just got a lot of defensive bs about the 5 day, 8 hour policy for dynamic working. HR admitted that they don't expect 100% adherence and when I pressed him on what the actual expectation is, he said they can't tell us because. What they're actually looking for is a mystery to everyone I've spoken to.
My opinions:
This no longer has anything to do with your manager. If your manager tells you you can WFH because he/she doesn't care about the policy, he/she is wrong. This is a firm-wide HR group sending these warnings. Working from home is no longer something an employee and manager can decide, and putting anything in workday doesn't matter.
I got mixed messages from HR about whether or not this will impact my year-end raise, bonus, shares, etc. HR said this was independent of performance, but then said "we will see how it plays out"
I have been told I'm now under "increased scrutiny" by the HR rep. Let me remind you I was an EP last year and won a large performance-based award, six months ago. Objectively, I am a good employee who does good work.
HR could not tell me what the threshold is for the warning, what "increased scrutiny" means, or if I would ever get off "the list", even after I reminded him that I've been at 100% adherence for 6 months. What they are actually looking at, and what falls into their gray area vs what is given a warning is a total mystery and is not documented anywhere.
HR told me I should have taken PTO the two weeks that I was scheduled to be in the office but was recovering from major knee surgery. Ludicrous. My office is in my bedroom, and I was productive for those 10 days. But as I'm learning, productivity and performance no longer matters. There is zero discretion or humanity with this policy.
I'm actively looking for new roles outside of Fidelity at this point after 20 years. No use trying to do good work for a company that cares more about hitting an arbitrary location goal (that they won't tell you) and then being penalized and monitored for it.
Connect Weeks is a great way to undermine people I don’t like.
Some of the more senior people (aka deadwood) keep getting in my way. They don’t like to come in and I let our boss know for sure that they are backsliders in this initiative.
I was recently told that my connect week attendance was low and being monitored. When I asked what the criteria was, I was just told to be here when we are in the office!!!
Connect weeks should be voluntary especially for those that are more productive at remote work. This is a juvenile policy and the only true reason Fidelity would want to push this is the overhead expenses of the properties. Connect weeks are having the opposite desired effect of collaboration as most associates I come across are unhappy and complaining about being forced into a noisy office which perpetuates more negativity. Ignorance is bliss working remote but when associates start talking about displeasure in their pay and role responsibilities it causes one to question their own situation as well. What I hear in the office is a lot of personal chit chat, coughing, sneezing and loud laughing which I'm sure is not a good image for a client to hear in the background. Keep it up Fidelity you're doing great.
In tech, managers are supposed to review regularly, say quarterly, and the compare to the total days vs. you vs. your peers, but YMMV based on manager. I do know last year it affected promos and payouts. Honestly, if my teammates are not pulling their weight during the week and following HR processes, I'm going to remind them, because you don't want it to be a problem EOY for comp. HR has a lot of away these days, much more than ever in the past.
Its visible to the manager on WD how many days you were there.
I had to deal with some narrow minded a-s of a manager who lived a thousand miles from the nearest Fidelity site and still loved to micromanage my time in office.
Like to hear from those folks missing half how much bonus they get 😀 at year end.
In my experience HR dont care. It’s your teammates who loves the office who talks sh--e when u leave early
I have people on my team that miss about half the days and have said they haven’t had a problem. They were the ones that brought it up, it’s not something I noticed but I don’t really think it’s as big of a deal as managers are making it. I think it’s just a policy HR has in case they want to show you broke a policy
It’s just based on how your manager acts and wants to apply the rule.