Am I the villain here?

[GilChesterton]

I work for a regional branch of a large company. During the pandemic I was promoted to manager of our branch, and then promoted a junior member of our team into the role I had just vacated. We worked from home all through the pandemic and various lockdowns, and only in the middle of last year did we start to look at moving to return to the office.

I have instructed our team that they can continue to work from home some of the time, but have to have a minimum amount of time in person in the office. This one member of staff is refusing to return to our office, and during one of the lockdowns actually relocated to be nearer his family, and is not in commutable distance of our office.

Our jobs can technically be done wholly remote, but I feel we lose a lot of team working, accountability and quality if we are not meeting in person regularly, and providing a proper service to our clients does mean being available in person.

I have issued an ultimatum to this team member, saying they either have to follow the guidance or find another job. I am now being accused of ruining his life.

Given the job can be done remote I have begun to doubt myself. AIBU?

This

I appreciate this is sector specific, and we don't know which sector the OP works in. But I disagree with this statement, the labour market generally isn't tight anymore. Broadly speaking, attrition across most industries is down too because there are less jobs = less movement within the market. We're also seeing signs of the crazy salary inflation of last year finally popping, which it needed to do because last year was awful.

I personally think the OP is in a stronger position here rather than the employee.

In my business, we are no longer issuing remote contracts. There's going to be a real change within the next two years to drive more office attendance, so it'll be interesting to see how it pans out.

(speaking as a senior manager in recruitment)

He shouldn't have moved without confirming it first. We had some issues in lockdown of people moving to see family across Europe, then wanting to stay. Fine for some countries where we have offices, but we can't run payroll and check alignment with employee legal rights for 15 countries just because someone wants to move, plus cover travel costs when we do want them at workshops, plus issues of wage discrepancies compared with their peers hired in that country. There were compromises all round, and nobody left.

For your guy, he should have asked and because he didn't he now needs to make getting into the office work. Consultants do it all the time to get to a range of offices; they fly or get a train, stay overnight, do 5am starts etc. It's up to him if he chooses to spend the money. If you can limit it to 2 days per fortnight or similar and allow later start plus finish times, then it should be perfectly doable.

@lemonyfox - what industry are you in? Finance and IT are still crazy sadly, nowhere near enough staff.

Did he discuss his move with you when it happened? I think this is crucial.

I don't think that's the question is it? It's a company decision.

This is crucial

Depends if they are a good member of the team or not. If they are good get them to put in a flexible working request.

I can commute to the office but if my boss started to impose the rules more of coming in the office I would looking at leaving my job.

The best manager I ever had wasn’t black / white. They could see the grey and how that’s different for everyone.

My background is finance, I have been in pretty senior positions but I have opted to take a huge step back recently (I am calling it semi retirement). And it was pretty easy to find junior finance work. I was not looking for senior finance work but I am on LinkedIn and sometimes look at the job pages, there are hundreds of applicants for most jobs, so I have been inclined to think it is more of a recruiters market right now.

Org consultancy / outsourcing, mostly across Pharma, Industry and Tech.

I can't imagine IT will still be a tough area to recruit in for the foreseeable, it's not a great time to be in tech at the moment with all the layoffs. I could be wrong though!

More like this needs to be reported to HQ and deleted. It's probably a previously banned poster.

One younger member of staff at my old office bought a house far away from the office and then threw a hissy fit/histrionics when she was expected to come into the office on a rota basis at least twice a month. She was contract staff and training so would’ve moved on anyway when her contract expired, and I had to manage a rota schedule for her team but when she got upset I got accused of making her so (I’d only asked kindly if she could come in and when and then to raise it with her other line manager).

I’d want this man in where possible.

Yanbu

It was idiotic of him to move to a non-commutable distance from his employment without first negotiating that his future employment would never become contingent on returning to the office (and any employer would be idiotic to issue such a guarantee so I presume you didn't)

It's not you ruining his life it's him. He was arrogant and short-sighted making such a move and assuming the world would reform around his preferences.

Stand firm. He can choose whether to move back or find a new job, for find a way to do a once-a-week commute. You could offer that he does a minimum 2 days per week in the office with slightly flexible times so that he does e.g. 10:30am to 6:30pm on tuesdays and 7:30am to 3:30pm on Wednesdays so that he can do the long journey just once a week and only have to find somewhere local to sleep for one night a week

Presumably the push to get people in is at company level, not something you're pushing yourself.

We have a similar issue at our workplace. We've been encouraged to come in twice a week. I do because I enjoy it and it suits me, as can tie it in with bringing DS to his gym training or get the bus.

Some people are pushing back very heavily though. Can't see the benefit of going in blah, blah, blah. Same people are annoyed that folks are putting meetings in the calendar or sending Teams messages and people " really should be picking up the phone to them". Oh and they also resolutely refuse to put their cameras on when speaking to people.

If the company directive is to come in 2-3 times per week and office based is in their contract, then to keep on receiving their salary that's what they need to do.

I was allowed to WFH every now and again as a specialist nurse through COViD (if for example I or husband had symptoms and was waiting for PCR results). This was only because we adapted our way of working such as telephone clinics rather than face to face. Am I allowed to do it now? No, as my contract specifies and outlines where I am expected to work and patients come in face to face again now that COVID restrictions have been dropped. Can I demand to WFH and say my life is ruined? No. If you worked from home pre COVID- grand, crack on. If your contract states office/hybrid, it states office/hybrid. If you allow one person to WFH, you have to allow everyone.

Surely he can come once a fortnight/month?

Interesting, I'm possibly not close enough, or too quick to give credit to HR. There's still major challenges for certain roles, contractors can be found but not the permanent staff we want. Investors especially from the USA ramping up UK AI and innovation spend has increased the shift from Big Tech into innovators, but I've been seeing a shift rather than a reduction. I heard for example that every Microsoft layoff had a job or contract before they actually left. That might be more of an indication about how big the gap was in those areas, and it could still slow down.

Yes - I don't understand the people who are being all militant about it at our office.
The way to go - and I've seen some people do it - is be very enthusiastic about the idea of going in. When you are in, go round talking to everyone, make sure it's a day with lots of face to face meetings.

Then have lots of vague reasons why you can't come in such as doctors appointments, possibly covid, furniture deliveries etc.etc.

Quite a few people in our team are averaging 1-2 days a month using this method and nobody is pulling them up for it.

The key here is what is written in the contract of employment. If it states they will work out of abc office/location then they have can be in no doubt that this their work base.

This gives you to right to insist on attendance in the office.

They have taken the decision to relocate, not you, that's on them!

Alternatively if there is no location in the contract yiu don't have a leg to stand on....

If he's a good member of staff, why potentially lose him because you can't get together and agree a solution. Seems mad to me.

Why do you need him in? And I mean really , not just some vague spurious "just because".

I'm of the view that you come to the office for a reason, be that a meeting, a customer or some purpose. We really need to get into 21st century - we have the digital tools and we know that during the Pandemic when we were all forced to be at home, we had to make it work. Burning up fossil fuels just to sit bum on a seat for 7 hours should be a thing of the past.

How far away is he living now? How long is his commute? These are important considerations. There's no point worrying about why he didn't consult before his house move. It's happened now, pragmatically all you can do is work with reality.

if this employee's job absolutely relies on him being in the office then that's a difference argument.

You'd need a credible rationale - is his work quality, performance or availability suffering, is he not on line and available when you need him. Trying to force someone back to the office just for the sake of it is counterproductive and a waste of energy if they have a proven track record of delivery. You need to set those criteria and measures.

If your company has a policy on remote working then that's what you could be using, if you really insist on having them bum on seat, but I would focus on what is the value add and how can you compromise with this employee if they are a solid performer, to agree a mutual pattern of office attendance on a reasonable frequency eg not "thou shalt be in every 2 weeks" if all they'll do is sit at a desk, have a one hour team meeting and the rest of the time just be working as if they were at home. If they input to that conversation, they are more likely to adhere.

YANBU.

Before covid I moved from a wholly office based role (financial services) to a completely flexible one (academia), where most people WFH - often in other countries - pretty much permanently.

It may be possible to do the mechanics of the job at home, but when everyone isn't in the office at least some of the time, the congeniality really suffers. It's so much harder for new starters to get up to speed, especially in entry level roles. Also a huge amount of soft knowledge is exchanged in those random chats in the kitchen.

Very short sighted to think he can move to completely WFH.

"I can't imagine IT will still be a tough area to recruit in for the foreseeable, it's not a great time to be in tech at the moment with all the layoffs. I could be wrong though!"

Layoffs in tech companies yes, but you're forgetting every single company out there needs some element of IT/Tech department. It's incredibly competitive and most skilled professionals can name their conditions. Skills like cyber security are in short supply, so much so that the government are offering fully funding degree programmes to try and patch the skills gap. This is an area which is growing at such a rate (AI/Information Security especially) that there are simply not enough people to do the jobs.

I wonder what the "not commutable" distance is

I think realistically, few people stay in a job for life, he’s been with your company for over 3 years. Would the next step up for him would be into your job (assuming you aren’t planning on leaving)? he’s not prepared to come into the office to be exposed to other work areas or shadowing other people, then it’s unlikely he’ll be able to move within your company and so any promotion /career step for him would involve moving company.

Don’t cause upset in the rest of your team to keep someone who might be looking around for their next career step in the next 12 -24 months anyway.

Be clear, he needs to come into the office as he was employed to do. You Will compromise with 2/3 days at home, but you need regular days in the office.

Don’t cause upset in your whole department to keep someone on side who is probably already looking around.

Don't be so ridiculous. He chose to move (as did many stupid people) thinking that once this was all over he could live the life of Riley, wfh and trying to hide behind the 'well we can do the job remotely'
@GilChesterton is not being petty either morally or contractually and 'he' shouldn't 'be allowed' to do just what the fuck he likes
But your post says more about you as an employee and a person, @Greensleeves than about anything else