to be irritated by this work email?

I agree. I think the people who are saying it is outrageous are completely oblivious to how much people take the piss with remote working. Taking the afternoon off, taking 3 hour lunches, taking a week to do a task that should only taken an afternoon etc. not everyone is motivated at their job and works effectively.
If it doesn’t apply to you, ignore.

I agree the tone and policy is patronising and a poor response to performance issues. BUT for company wide comms from a large, international company I don’t find that all that surprising. I’d be looking now at how your local manager actually handle it and what their attitude is like. I wouldn’t be out the door just because some corporate lackey possibly thousands of miles away is bad at empathy.

Cynical hat on:
They want people to leave so they can get all new employees on a contract which hasn't forgotten to reserve the right to require full time onsite attendance.

Omg LEAVE! they know who's missing targets, so those people's managers should be dealing with them directly. A single blanket email threat to every employee is a dumb way to solve this problem. The good employees will burn out with anxiety that their figures might drop, and the bad/lazy employees will just quit. So....the company is screwed either way

@Fourwallsclosingin it's little things like cake in for birthdays or drinks on peoples leaving ( a sore point at the moment I know) - companies that do well and where people stay , especially smaller ones, often have a strong social/team together element to them. That is very hard to maintain purely over the internet. Look at this email for instance. If everyone had been called in as a team for a chat with coffee and lunchtime buffet followed by a discussion on the points, it would not seem nearly as harsh

That's actually a really good point, it seems to alot of people it's literally just a pay check, even many posters here.

We've recently asked someone to come back to the office full time that wasn't performing well at home. Has it gone down well? No.

Difference with us though is that we'd had lots of discussions with him about his performance and had said that returning to the office was a last resort if he didn't pull his socks up. He had a few chances, failed, so was brought in and his work has started to improve.

When it gets to where we want it to be, we may let him go back to working from home but for now he has to earn it.

OP's employer seems to not be managing their staff individually, but as a whole which isn't perhaps unusual in a larger workplace. If they either had more managers or better managers that could address performance issues on an individual basis, the blanket across the board response may not be needed.

I can see their point and agree that if targets aren't being met then some intervention is required but the email could have been constructed more positively. As in "if your targets aren't being met then you will need to attend the office so support to you can be optimised", or some bollocks along those lines.

They've worded it like you're a bunch of 14 year olds failing on coursework.

I think this was always going to be the outcome for poor performers with WFH. The thing is it's not just women utilising it to their advantage and picking kids up or prepping dinner in what would previously have been commute time- which is absolutely fair enough - there are people out there who have set up side businesses (I know of two) and are operating these side by side - some jobs really don't lend themselves to CRM systems. I'm afraid there are always some people who will happily and totally take the piss on someone else's dollar- especially when they don't like the job anyway. I think the problem with WFH 'for some' is they no longer actually 'feel' a part of anything , there's no 'togerthness or social aspect to it' and consequently no longer feel guilt if they do as little as they can get away with or feel any loyalty. It just becomes a series of tasks for a pretty faceless employer.

Maybe a conversation to form a relationship, find out about rest of life stuff and potential impacts etc is easier in person?

The email was paraphrased by OP. It’s not the actual email…

That’s utter ridiculous and if I was a manager or team leader would nit allow this within my team without a massive fuss . It’s not even that the work is controlled , all they suggest is already possible and I can do that to any of the 10 people on my team ( check their work ) , it’s the way the email was put together . It’s incredibly aggressive . Are they by any chance trying to get people on the office ?

Yep. I agree. I am also in the same boat at the moment, micro managers can kiss my arse. Look for a better job OP. Good luck!

YABU, and should go and find another job if the email irritates you that much. Good luck progressing up the career ladder, I can assure you there is worse sh*t than this the further up you go.

Your dumbing down of the email, which will be influenced by how you feel about it, makes the email look much worse than it is. The original email was much more professional, as you admit. You say the original email will be outing, which also suggests you have paraphrased quite a bit.

So you are definitely making the situation look worse than it actually is for the purposes of getting support on MN.

A decent manager would have been able to identify poor performance and not meeting targets and spoken to the person on their team long before it reached the stage of it being such a company wide issue that they had to send a ridiculous email such as this. I don't think it's unreasonable to have some form of monitoring (presumably this happens if they know people are hitting targets?) but to the level they're proposing is a no. Also not unreasonable to expect people to work from the office if its deemed its going to help, but again, surely that's something for the managers to actually manage.

Some strange replies on this post.

I agree with everything you have said, OP and reckon most of your coworkers will feel the same way.

Definitely time for a new job.

well having seen OPs update about how the mail was actually written: again, meh. It is their company and this may be their way of bucking people up before taking any measures.

And if they have already written about this? then it is clear that it is an issue, no matter how the bosses phrase it. As for "should be discussed one-on-one" meh too. This seems to be a huge issue to the bosses. They may have decided that it's more cost/time-effective to let everyone know (one more time) before having to separate the wheat from the chaff.

If you know it applies to you, and your performance worries you (general "you" for your colleagues, OP, not you personally) you should welcome support
if you know it applies to you and your thought your performance would scrape you by? time to pull your socks up or leave and find a new job
if it doesn't apply to you because your performance is fine? keep calm and carry on. Although I'd be keeping an eye on the company's performance because if they're about to let a load of shitty ones go, their work will be redistributed.

Agree. I find it so odd how so many are outraged on the thread as it's only the poor performers who have has wfh revoked, and rightly so. Am guessing they must also be pisstakers

Not sure I agree with the posters who think this email is "treating people like children". I actually find it more childish and frustrating when someone's doing a piss poor job but management don't directly tell them that and try and dress it up in a positive, motivational way . There's a guy at my work who is awful and management always skirt around it in this heavy hinting, positive way, offering "support" but he is just far too dense to pick up on the hint and seems to just think "awe that's nice" and then ignore it, rather than realise they are telling him he is shit. I wish management would use a bit of stick rather than just solely carrot, as everyone else in the team are the ones picking up the slack.

Has she? I thought the email was as written - I know (of) a few employers who are quite capable of sending something as bad as that.

After reading quite a few posters on other threads boasting about this sort of WFH lifestyle I must admit I can't blame employers who are fed up of some employees who take the piss.
Unfortunately it's a case of a few slackers creating a bad atmosphere for everybody, which is a shame for the conscientious workers.

Any email like that and I’d be looking for another job.
You can’t reason with idiots.