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Why Mandating ‘X’ Days a Week in the Office is a Stupid Idea
As the pandemic eases, increasing numbers of companies and employees are running out of health-related reasons why everyone who can work from home needs to do so.
And yet employees have gotten used to skipping the daily commute, have proven that they can remain productive in their pajamas, and are often struggling to find good reasons why they need to return to their pre-pandemic office hours — or even some semi-reasonably mandated hybrid schedule.
One high-profile example of the rebellion brewing is Ian Goodfellow, Apple’s director of machine learning, who recently announced his departure from this bastion of high-tech due to its return-to-work policy.
I understand the tension. There are many reasons why companies want their employees toiling away in their offices — some of them good, and some of them bad. And there are many reasons why employees might want to work from home — most of them good and, in a few cases, some not quite so good.
And so, when occupants of the C-suite ask themselves, “How many days each week must our employees come into the office?”, it is understandably a hard question, and there’s no one answer that is going to please everyone. But that’s why they make the big bucks, right?
