to be irritated by this work email?

[BoldChild]

Note: This is a large international company, and I am a very tiny fish in a very large pond, but I’ll still paraphrase to avoid any major identifiers

An email went around our (fully remote) company today by new management and went a little something like this:

”Hello, everyone. As this year has been hard on our business, we have decided to implement the following rule: If you are behind in target, you will have to report to your local office and attend the office for a minimum of 4 days. This is so your manager can oversee your daily work and ensure you are doing your job. Your manager will track every phone call and email, and how many clients/customers you reach out to. You will continue to report to the office until your numbers to pick up.

Failure to meet targets will result in an immediate requirement to report to the office. This is non-optional, and everyone must comply. We will not accept any excuses.”

NOW… I am totally on board with the whole “if you’re not doing what you’re supposed to be doing, there’s an issue there” but the nature of the email really just irks me.

It reminds me of being back in school, with a teacher threatening to sit beside you to make sure you’ve done your maths instead of talking to your friends. Like if employees do not show up the office, they’ll call our parents.

Am I being unreasonable to feel this is very condescending? And unfair to those who may be struggling due to reasons that aren’t their fault (mental health, illness, personal issues, etc)? These people will be called out in front of their entire team and marched into the offices against their will, and it just seems totally unfair to do to someone instead of handling any issues privately.

I’m honestly considering handing in my notice

Find another job OP. This company has nothing but pure contempt for its workers

I’ve been one foot out the door for weeks now due to other management and low salary issues. I think this is the last straw

I’m sitting here having my tea having a right old laugh at the absolute mentality of it all. My husband thinks I’ve lost it

Totally agree that you should leave. Any employer who treats their staff like that isn’t anywhere I would want to work.

I can see where they are coming from. If you aren’t hitting targets when remote working then being in the office can help with coaching and improvement plans.

If you love being at home surely this will help incentivise you to meet targets and be productive?

It must be a bit crap as a company if they can't keep tabs remotely

When employees are behind on targets, good managers ask how they can support the employee. Poor ones word emails like the one you received which tell employees that they aren’t trusted and need to be publicly paraded as such. Leave. They can’t manage effectively.

I think this is quite common, and I do think it’s fair enough. Although I know everyone will disagree with me 😬

I can see why too, but I think using a scare tactic on adults is just ridiculous.

To be fair, this doesn’t affect me as I’m a high performer, but it’s the lack of choice or other avenues that is annoying me. If someone’s under performing, figure out why - fire them if it’s a huge issue - but don’t make a show of them to other coworkers by marching them into the office like a bold child

Seems that maybe they've discovered that some employees are royally taking the piss, and this is aimed as a warning to them to pull their socks up or else.

If it doesn't apply to you, ignore it.

I don’t think everyone will disagree. To be fair, I don’t even disagree to a degree that this is quite common for poor managers to do. It’s the attitude of using their authority to scare people into performing better instead of supporting those who are having issues.

Now, I know myself some people are taking the piss of remote work, but that shouldn’t blow back on everyone else

Wow. I’m amazed they've managed to retain any staff. Do you have a high staff turnover?

This. Talk about demotivating employees.

Should also mention there’s nothing in our contracts that state we can be made to attend the office. An oversight on their part, I’m sure, but a contract is a contract

Fair enough from piss poor managers. It is not the way to increase productivity and like OP I would not enjoy working somewhere with that culture.

Wow, that's utterly dreadful.

Yes. In the last month alone, we’ve lost half our team, and that’s just our area. This company has 100s of offices around the world.

People’s time spent at the company would have been around 8-10 years pre Covid/pre management change. It’s 2 years now.

Sounds like people are wfh doing fuck all and they are sick of it!

This is piss-poor management imo.

They know who's meeting targets and who isn't. They should address unsatisfactory performance with the individuals involved, not send out an email that's got a threatening undertone, that will make decent staff feel that they can be summoned back to work in the office.

And if there are a lot of staff who aren't meeting targets, maybe they should consider if the targets are reasonable.

If I got an email like that, I'd be looking for a new job.

I'd say they're probably sick of people WFH and therefore doing sweet FA. Sticking a load of laundry while working is obviously fine but but people have been taking the piss massively; Naps, going shopping, having sunbed or gym sessions and claiming that's acceptable under the guise of WFH. I'm on the employer's side

So what would you suggest? Treat targets like they are purely optional? Let people have all of the benefits of home working and the company just cope with the downsides with no recourse to improve things?

What's your incentive to hit target? Do you get financial compensation? I'd prefer carrot to stick but maybe having an element of performance based pay would also go down badly.

Do you appreciate that if the company doesn't hit targets then it won't be able to pay employees as much and may have to delay promotions, hold off on pay rises, maybe make cuts.

You need to think commercially. It's a great benefit to WFH and the company is right to try and still get results whilst offering benefits to employees.

But there are ways to handle it and that email
is not it.

Surely they can monitor performance, calls etc remotely already?
Anyway, treat us like misbehaving kids don't expect us to give you any loyalty.

They maybe haven't gone about it in the right way but absolutely loads of people take the piss with WFH. I bet they've seen productivity nose dive.

Theres a definite cross-sector trend for employers tightening up on WFH practices, either by formalising mandatory office days, taking enforcement action where the rules aren’t followed, and increasing the number of days of office based working. It was inevitable really.

Bottom line, if your employer is doing something you don’t like, vote with your feet and join somewhere that does.

This would have become apparent three years ago if employees were taking the piss like that! No one can carry on like that and not expect to be found out.

The email response is purely down to a shit management team