After giving the return-to-office mandate several months to be fair and well-intentioned, it’s clear this policy creates significant friction without delivering any meaningful benefit—particularly for employees who were hired explicitly as full-time telecommuters. We are now expected to spend personal time getting ready in office attire, commuting, badging in, navigating parking ramps, security checkpoints, and elevators, only to sit alone in a cubicle all day with no teammates in the same state, let alone the same office.
On top of that, there are no assigned desks. Employees routinely arrive to find reserved desks already taken, workstations missing basic equipment, and time wasted simply trying to locate a place where they can do their jobs. This is not collaborative or productive.
Requiring people to sacrifice hours of personal time and incur additional costs to sit alone on video calls all day is not improving productivity, engagement, or morale. It is creating widespread frustration and disengagement. Employees are openly unhappy with this change, and when asked by peers about the policy, they are candid in sharing how illogical and counterproductive it feels. This approach adds inconvenience and resentment while delivering no measurable value.