Even months after the technology company Dale The company has pushed its strict return-to-office policy that bars completely remote employees from promotions, and its workers still refuse to return to in-person work.
Nearly 50% of Dell's full-time U.S. workforce and a third of international employees have continued to work remotely, according to the company's internal data, Business Insider reported. Unless these employees return to the office or Dell changes its remote work policy, they will not move up the career ladder.
Remote workers have been willing to challenge company policy because the perks of staying home simply outweigh what they believe in-person work has to offer.
“The more time I have to spend in the office, the less time, money, and personal space I have to do all of that,” one employee told Insider. “I can also do my job from home and get all these personal benefits as well.”
Other employees found that returning to in-person work was not practical given the nature of their work.
“My team is spread all over the world. Almost 90% of the team did the same, because in our case there was no real advantage to going to the office,” said another employee.
Several Dell employees told Insider that they work with team members in different time zones and have meetings that require them to be available around the clock at times when being on-site isn't convenient. Others said they live too far from the company location or that a Dell office near them had recently closed.
Dell did not immediately respond luckAsked for comment, she told Insider she believes “personal connections coupled with an agile approach are critical to driving innovation and value differentiation.”
that it The RTO policy was introduced in March Certainly reflects this. The policy reclassified employees into remote and hybrid workers, with workers in the latter category required to work in-person at least 30 days each quarter, about three days a week. in Blog 2022the company has set a goal of having 60% of its workforce remote at any given time.
In May, Del He was shocked On implementation, and creating additional means to track employee attendance at their offices. The tech company began tracking the number of times employees swiped their electronic key card and used their VPN to see which employees were actually showing up three days a week. Those who attended received blue flags, employees who attended less frequently received green and yellow flags, with employees who had never seen them at all receiving Literal red flags From the company.
But time and time again, remote workers have shown their disdain for policies like these: After the software company The juicer It began enforcing its RTO rules in January, 5,000 employees signed the letter to company executives in the remote work revolt, saying they felt “betrayed” by the policy. that October 2023 survey A FlexJobs study found that of 8,400 U.S. workers, 17% of employees are willing to sacrifice up to 20% of their salary if it means being able to work remotely. More than half of respondents said they know someone who plans to leave their job because of an unwanted RTO mandate.
“The lack of remote work options is a significant reason why people leave their jobs,” Keith Spencer, career expert at FlexJobs, wrote in the report.
How to quell insurgency in remote work
Despite the outcry over inflexible RTO policies, Dell's strict set of rules follows a Trend in companies Preference for hybrid employees and in-person employees, especially when it comes to promotion. according to January report From recruitment data platform Live Data Technologies, companies have held their ground when it comes to personally rewarding employees.
Of the 2 million white-collar workers, 5.6% of hybrid and in-person employees received promotions at work last year, compared to 3.9% of remote workers. Ninety percent of CEOs surveyed said they prefer employees who come to the office for a raise or a suitable assignment.
“People may not like it, but I can't build a company by playing to the lowest common denominator,” says Vineet Jain, CEO of software company Egnyte. L said Wall Street Journal. “If you don't show up and work with the rest of your colleagues, it shows a lack of communication and a lack of ownership.”
But Stanford University economist Nick Bloom Don't buy the strategy of strict RTO policies and found that hybrid working in particular has its benefits in the workplace ecosystem. According to a study he authored and published in nature This month, employees who worked from home twice a week reported greater job satisfaction and lower turnover than fully in-person employees. In fact, these flexible arrangements slightly improved productivity among a group of 1,612 employees at a Chinese technology company from 2021 to 2022. It also had no effect on promotion rates.
Although he did not exclusively extoll the benefits of remote work, Bloom championed flexibility for workers, not just for their own sake, but for managers hoping to retain talented employees.
“The results are clear: hybrid working is a win-win for employee productivity, performance and retention.” Bloom said.
This story originally appeared on Fortune.com