There's chatter about commercial real estate facing a major flop. This is good. Get rid of office buildings, and put something (anything) in its place that actually serves the surrounding community.
To help this along, and to always show that we refuse to live and work like it's still the 90s:
- Never spend money in or near your office location. No vending machines, cafeteria, etc. Never spend a penny. Every time you get lazy and spend money at work, you're sending the message that you like being there. Please stop doing that.
- Bring food from home. Hit a store/drive thru/restaurant near your home on your way. Use the fridge at work, or bring a lunch bag.
- Don't get gas near work. Get gas near your home.
- Only give minimal effort on in-office days. Give your best during WFH days. Make your metrics reflect greater productivity at home.
- Any PTO counts as in-office. When possible, try taking more half days (instead of full days) spread over different weeks to give yourself more weeks of 2 days in the office instead of 3.
Wells is not other employers. We're spread all over the country. There is no "collaboration" going on - at all. People waste significant time and money driving across town to log into a zoom meeting. It's ridiculous. There is literally no upside to anyone.
RTO is an abject failure that the current C suite will likely never be able to dig itself out of, in terms of morale and credibility. And it's not just the C suiters. Many of their brown-nosing lackeys also lie and claim that RTO is good. The moment a "leader" attempts to sell RTO, their staff immediately questions everything else they say, and for good reason.
The world has permanently changed. We all know it, even the few dinosaur bootlickers that post otherwise.
There's mild evidence that Wells is quietly trying to shrink its commercial real estate footprint. But it's taking too long. Pay the early out on the leases. Don't get greedy with profit on properties being sold. Just be happy you're free of it.
Then communicate to employees that WFH is the new culture, and explain how productivity will be measured. Sustained lack of productivity will result in consequences, just like in the office.
The company saves oodles of money, employees are happier and do better work, customers are happier, shareholders are happier, everyone wins. EVERYONE WINS
(Oh. And you can still lay people off as needed. At-home or in-office has no bearing on that.)
Lastly, the difference between us and them is that we genuinely care about this topic - they don't. They will fatigue of our resistance, while we never will. As such, it's inevitable that the RTO battle will eventually be won. But we need to do everything we can to hurry that along.