Google and JPMorgan have each told staff that office attendance will be factored into performance evaluations. The US law firm Davis Polk informed employees that fewer days in the office would result in lower bonuses. And Meta and Amazon both told employees they’re now monitoring badge swipes, with potential consequences for workers who don’t comply with attendance policies – including job loss. Increasingly, workers across many jobs and sectors appear to be barrelling towards the same fate.
In some ways, it’s unsurprising bosses are turning back to attendance as a standard. After all, we’ve long been conditioned to believe showing up is vital to success, from some of our earliest days. In school, perfect attendance is often still seen a badge of honour. The obsession with attendance has also been a mainstay of workplace culture for decades; pre-pandemic, remote work was largely unheard of, and employees were expected to be physically present at their desks throughout the workday.
Yet after the success of flexible arrangements during the pandemic, attendance is still entrenched as a core metric. What’s the point?
Exactly. Which I think is the reason these executives are so gung ho about RTO. They realize people aren’t spending 100% of their time and attention on their work every day, and that’s what they want and expect. I’m not sure if they realize people will do the same thing in the office, except they’ll drag it out and make it seem like it took longer as you described. They probably don’t care.
I think part of it is this corporate mindset that they own you if you work there. And you should be grateful for the job they’ve provided, and that means working every minute of every work day. No amount of data showing that’s less productive/efficient will ever get those people to change their minds. Because in this case, for these people, it’s about feeling superior and showing “dominance”.