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

tbh i couldn't get overly excited about this. If there is some reason you're not hitting your targets, then one-on-one or group coaching can help.

I agree the email is possibly (but paraphrased in the OP so difficult to tell) worded badly. Companys are only interested in the bottom line
I work either at home or in the office depending on what i have to do so I don't have a horse in the "wfh means skiving" or "only people who work in the office do it properly" camp

I support the basis that poor performers should have to work in an office, but think it should follow a private conversation between manager and poor performer, not some general email.

Well, yeah. And you won't have any systematic way to find out which kinds of calls are more successful.

Back on topic, it's another reason why this email is stupid (whilst getting underperformers in for coaching isn't).

The business is doing badly, probably because of external factors. So they are turning around to staff, and saying,

1. we're doing badly, worry about your jobs
2. this is the fault of some of you
3. we're going to "punish" those who we identify

Not exactly inspiring if you're a HIGH performer, is it? I know it isn't because I have always been that overperformer, and when I didn't think management were handling a situation well, I dusted off my CV. Because how the company performed affected my career too.

And when I was management, I dealt with underperformers individually, and listened to staff without blaming them for external problems, but taking their ideas for how to address them. Weirdly, treating them like adults worked for both morale and the bottom line.

People who take the mick and don’t do their job cost companies money,if companies fold because of slackers then that’s many people who lose their jobs. We are quite possibly going into a recession,some businesses are struggling and cannot afford those who coast and they shouldnt cost others their livelihoods.
If folk do their work like grownups ,and not play hooky like kids because they’re not being watched,then they don’t need to be treated like children.
Only those who have not done their jobs will be affected, if they are physically or mentally sick then their drs can provide letters to this eff3ct
Sadly often the innocent pay for the mistakes of others.

That email sounds incredibly childish and unprofessional, as well as rather unintelligent on the whole. Good quality management do not need to be looking over their employee's shoulders in order to effectively manage. This just seems good way to destroy morale and good will at a time that is already difficult for many.

There are two issues here. The first is obviously that forcing attendance at the office on remote workers is a serious proposed change of contract, and I would suggest that workers challenge this through their union or by getting legal advice.

Even supposing that this problem is sorted out, the email is written in a gratuitously offensive way! For fun, I redrafted it. Doesn't the below look perfect (and go some way to preventing the immediate challenges on grounds of discrimination which the original last paragraphs were simply asking for!)

”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 work with you to address any problems you are having. We will also be able to address problems where people are not being able, for some reason, to make the number of phone calls and reach outs expected. This office based coaching and review will continue until targets are reached and we are confident that any problems have been overcome.

if there are any particular problems with attendance at the office, we will meet with you to discuss these problems. However, we would suggest that you read your contract carefully to ensure you are meeting your contractual obligations, and attendance for this in-office coaching will normally be non-negotiable.”

Issue is you’ve paraphrased that email and in a tone that reflects your dissatisfaction with it, so it sounds much worse than it is. I’d be interested to see the original email and how it was written, as I don’t think the underlying message is an issue. If an employee is going to abuse the trust that comes with wfh, then they need to be managed accordingly.

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

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.

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.

The extent of the paraphrasing is that I’ve replaced more “corporate language” to regular, everyday language.

For example, original email said it more like “so that your manager can oversee your professional capability within this company” rather than what I said, which was more casual.

Basically I switched “as per my last email” to “I literally said this before”, which is what as per my last email really means 😂😂

I won’t post the actual email because I think that’s pushing the bounds of identifiable vs non identifiable

but another example of my paraphrasing is this. In the original email, it stated that “attendance to the office will be mandatory until your superiors are satisfied with your performance”. I dumbed it down, so to speak.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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 ?

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

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

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.

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.