Surprising no one but the mgmt teams…
Unispace found that nearly half (42%) of companies with return-to-office mandates witnessed a higher level of employee attrition than they had anticipated. And almost a third (29%) of companies enforcing office returns are struggling with recruitment. In other words, employers knew the mandates would cause some attrition, but they weren’t ready for the serious problems that would result.
Meanwhile, a staggering 76% of employees stand ready to jump ship if their companies decide to pull the plug on flexible work schedules, according to the Greenhouse report. Moreover, employees from historically underrepresented groups are 22% more likely to consider other options if flexibility comes to an end.
In the SHED survey, the gravity of this situation becomes more evident. The survey equates the displeasure of shifting from a flexible work model to a traditional one to that of experiencing a 2% to 3% pay cut.
Not OP, but yes and no. I work as customer service/tech support. We get abused by customers harshly every day. Work from home, for me, was great at first, but the isolation combined with the daily abuse or other trauma (worked in telephone porting for a while, and old people who can’t keep their phone numbers or have to be with no phone service for a while get legit traumatized, and I felt I was causing it) caused me to become depressed, overeat, develop a heavy alcohol habit, and basically not move around much. I gained 100 pounds from 2019-2022. I am still struggling to lose it.
RTO for me was not a thing I wanted to do, but I needed to.
Also, I am thankfully no longer answering phone calls anymore, just taking chats. People are still assholes, but they cannot yell at you or use their voice to emotionally manipulate you.
I’m certainly sympathetic as I too have faced terrible abuse when working in customer service. TBH to me that says more about the job (which sounds pretty awful) than working from home. But perhaps that kind of job makes it more difficult since it sounds pretty “solo” to begin with, and I can see how WFH can at least exacerbate that, especially if your workplace isn’t set up for it. It’s probably a pretty isolating job no matter if you are WFH or not, though.