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WebMD forcing employees back to office. "We aren’t asking or negotiating at this point. We’re informing" (ody.sh)

submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

139 comments fedilink hide all child comments

This leaked today from inside webmd, the most bullshit corpo HR video I think I've ever seen.

To break down the obvious ones:

Employees who are obviously either drinking wayyy too much company koolaid or who know that their jobs will end if they aren't in this video
An extremely out of touch CEO who wants things back the old way without giving any concrete data proving that it's better beyond conjecture
A company with "internet" in the name who literally doesn't understand the concept of the internet
Threatening and bullying language to force people back in office.
and just a nice touch, the office is of course not near mass transit or anything and requires driving in
Did anyone notice they were all on green screen, kinda proving that there was no need for them to be in person?

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[+] [email protected] -122 points 10 months ago (48 children)

I agree the video is cringy AF, but I don't have a problem with the company demanding its employees return to working in the office rather than remotely. There are a whole host of tangible benefits (for both companies and employees) from coming into work and I don't see a problem with a company insisting on it. There are some industries and/or jobs in which remote work is probably fine, but most organizations benefit more from having people come into a shared workspace.

[–] [email protected] 52 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (24 children)

People always say there are tangible benefits, but then rarely ever give any actual evidence. (Note the CEO in the video said the exact same thing and then also did not provide any evidence backing it up, unless you count someone drawing a graph on a whiteboard in an "up" direction evidence)

Covid forced anyone who could work remotely to work remotely, and the economy went through the roof. Tech especially had some of their best years - ever.

I also want to call out that a lot of employees that were hired during the pandemic were hired out of region - in other states, across the country. Most "return to office" mandates are veiled layoffs hiding behind the need for employees to be in person for arbitrary reasons. By forcing them back in office they get to claim employees failed to show up for work, neglecting the whole "They work in Arizona and the job is in Tennessee" bit.

The brass tacks is that:

Employers pay sometimes by the decade to rent office space and are annoyed that it's sitting empty and
Bad managers don't know how to manage if they aren't micromanaging their employees. Good managers have no problem managing remotely.
It's an easy way to cut costs by forcing people working out of state to quit while claiming they were never fired.

[+] [email protected] -8 points 10 months ago (15 children)

I don't think I'm a terrible manager and I'm definitely not a micromanager. One problem I had managing a remote team was how to deal with people who were clearly not working when they should have been. I could never prove it so I could never do anything about it.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 10 months ago (1 children)

If they are "clearly not working", why can't you prove it?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Not are, were. I no longer work for that company. I'm typing up more details in my reply to OP.

I never met the burden of proof that my HR team said was required if I wanted to write someone up. The company did not have appropriate spying tools to definitively prove that an employee had not actually typed anything in two hours even though their teams status was showing active. There was always the hypothetical, "I was at my desk but my phone was ringing non-stop with customer calls and that's why I couldn't answer this customer's 5 urgent e-mails over 3 hours."

I'm not saying that I wanted that kind of babysitting spyware installed. I absolutely did not. I don't believe in that sort of thing and wouldn't have wanted something like that installed on my computer for my bosses to spy on me.

To answer your question directly, I'm not an idiot. I'd call an employee's cell to ask why certain things had not been actioned yet and hear background noises that clearly did not come from a home office (traffic noise, wind, PA announcements, etc). My best guess is they would stop whatever they were doing, pull out their laptop for a few minutes to do whatever I was bugging them about and then disappear again. I'd call them out on it, but they knew there was nothing I could actually do so it didn't matter to them.

Most of the team were honest and diligent. They worked just as well at home as they did in the office and we never had any problems. But there are always people who know what they can get away with and will try to get away with as much as they can.