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

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.

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

@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

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

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.

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.

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.