I’d rather quit than go back to work every day at the office

In June, Elon Musk told his Tesla employees that he wanted them to return to work in the company’s office.

He even posted on Twitter saying that employees who did not return should “Pretend they work somewhere else🇧🇷

Musk isn’t the only employer requiring his employees to return to the workplace. And in many cases, there were professionals who preferred to quit their jobs than return to the five days of the week in the office.

HR platform LinkedIn has found that a third of British companies plan to phase out flexible working in the coming months. But nearly two-thirds of professionals say they are more productive working in a hybrid or remote environment.

Other research confirms that there is a chasm on this issue that separates business leaders from their employees.

Microsoft has surveyed more than 20,000 professionals in 11 countries. It concluded that 85% of leaders feel that switching to hybrid work has made it harder for them to be confident in employee productivity, while 73% of employees say they need better reasons to return than just company expectations.

The only person who has decided to quit rather than go back to the office is Christian Hansel, a search optimization manager who lives in Bonn, Germany.

“I didn’t feel valued as a team member,” he says of his boss’s demands to return to the office. “I didn’t feel valued as an employee, and I certainly didn’t feel like I was taken care of.”

It took Hansel only two days to find another job and to submit his resignation. He says many of his colleagues left soon after.

“You need to stand your ground, you need to talk about it, you need to speak up, but you also need to weigh the pros and cons of telecommuting and working from the office,” he advises. “And you need to figure out what’s right for you.”

The transition to “back to the office” is taking place at a time when there are fewer professionals in many countries.

Chantelle Brown works for the British HR company Latte. “We always advise clients not to advertise vacancies that require people to be present five days a week,” she says.

“We had a client who asked for four days and we had to tell them they needed to improve their pitch so they didn’t lose applicants to companies that only required two or three days in the office,” Brown says.

“It’s a better way to run a company,” says Jeff Magioncalda. Executive Director (CEO) of the US-based online learning platform Coursera. The platform employs more than 1,000 people, all of whom work “remote first,” meaning they choose whether they want to work from home or the office.

“Before the pandemic, I was a traditional CEO,” he says. “I advocated going into the office every day and we were letting some people work from home on Wednesdays. And honestly, I hated that policy. I was like, you know, if you don’t come, you’re not doing your job. I’m working.”

But during a pandemic, he was surprised to see that it was possible to get the job done and maintain flexibility, but a new type of management was needed. “It starts with recruitment,” Magioncalda says.

One of the things he’s doing now is personally welcoming new employees and showing them around the company, so that whether they’re working from home or in the office, “the company’s purpose aligns with their purpose in life.”

Now, the company is also focused more on results than activities, he said. “A manager who keeps track of the results that are being produced and doesn’t worry about whether or not someone will come into the office – that’s the main change that managers need to make,” according to Magioncalda.

He adds that offering more flexible work has allowed Coursera to have more women in leadership roles and in the technology sector.

But technology isn’t the only sector in which women are more likely to choose a company that allows remote work.

Grace Landon of the London School of Economics spoke to 100 finance professionals and concluded that, overwhelmingly, women are more willing to work remotely for a significant part of the week.

“Obviously, women still shoulder most of the domestic responsibilities,” she says. “They have always valued self-employment more than men.”

People with disabilities are also more likely to appreciate remote work, Landon says, as well as ethnic minorities. All in all, she says, employees and employers need to listen and compromise.

We are in the UK [onde] She says productivity is at an all-time low. “You have people… saying, ‘We’re more productive with a remote setup in the first place. “Why not trust them and see what happens as part of a larger experiment?”

People have worked in the office for generations without even wondering if it was necessary. The pandemic brought the need for rapid changes in a different way of working.

In industries where competition to attract professionals is greater than ever, employers are realizing that offering remote work is a cost-effective way to increase their offering.

But if we enter a prolonged recession, as many expect, and competition for talent wanes, companies may find it easier to demand back in the office.