?? C-Suite or Control Suite?

Hey ??

Welcome back to ?? On The Clock.

Is anyone else sick of the constant debate around remote work? Everyone has an opinion on it.?

Remote work is great!?

No, it’s ridiculous.

People need to be back in the office.?

Offices should be banned!

The same debate pops up every morning when I open up my (digital) newspaper. It’s all over my LinkedIn feed. And now, it’s seeping into the local media of Toggl’s birthplace.

Last month, the CEO of Bolt, a fellow Estonian startup, issued a Return To Office (RTO) mandate to employees. In it, he stated he would stop the insanity of people working remotely from places like Bali.?

"That is a vacation, not what we hired them to do," he continued.?

Other companies, like Amazon, Tesla, and Apple, were mentioned in the memo. As if to say, if those employees were going back to the office, Bolt employees should suck it up. Well, that was my interpretation of it, anyway.

The longer this debate rolls on, the more I want to scream into the void: why are we still pretending this is about a more productive workforce and not about control? ??

Employees found their voice. Now, they're using it.?

When COVID-19 hit, thousands of companies were forced into a scenario they had spent years telling employees was impossible: people had to work remotely.?

So we all did just that. We set up home offices. We had meetings with our teams on Zoom. We figured out how to communicate and collaborate without seeing each other. In the process, we realized we didn't miss that long commute. Or talking to someone for 30 minutes when it could've been an email. Or those team stand-up meetings that dragged on every morning.?

Once things got back to normal, there was a noticeable shift from the C-suite. They were obsessed with where their employees worked instead of obsessing over how well they worked.?

Then, the Return To Office (RTO) mandates started. When employees pushed back, the power struggle between what employees wanted from their working environment and what employers were willing to give heated up.?

But if there is one thing the C-suite really doesn't like, it's being told what to do.

A recent report from KPMG shows 89% of corporate CEOs in the United States are willing to give favourable assignments, raises, and promotions to employees if they agree to go back in-house. CEOs might be willing to withhold the same benefits for employees who want to continue working from home.?

These CEOs forgot that working remotely during COVID-19 gave employees a real taste of flexibility. And a lot of people aren't willing to go back.

Just look at what recently happened when Dell issued a return-to-office mandate. Over half the company's remote workers chose to stay remote, even if it meant forfeiting future promotions or offers for new internal roles.?

The C-suite learned nothing from the pandemic. And it shows.

The gap between what employers want and what employees are willing to do is widening.?

Over and over, in study after study, employees have said they want more control over their lives and a more flexible work environment. A recent Forbes study lists flexible schedules as the most highly-desired fringe benefit of 2024 — for remote and in-house employees.?

The same study asked employers what perk they believed in-office employees needed. And nearly one in three (31%) said giving… free beverages.??

Seriously? Free f*cking drinks? ??

I can just imagine the conversation that went down to land on that life-changing employee benefit.

It’s almost comical. But C-suite is going to C-suite, am I right?

The Forbes study proves what Toggl has believed for a very long time: Employers make decisions in a vacuum when ordering employees back to the office or into a hybrid environment. We believe the argument around work environments is just a distraction from the bigger issue the C-suite has — they don’t trust their employees to do their jobs.?

The frustrating part is that if companies used productivity data to measure output and results instead of obsessing about where people worked, it would help them focus on issues that matter. The things that grow a business, like improving operating costs, or overcoming poor resource planning, or retaining those once-in-a-lifetime employees.?

Look, if a CEO wants to spend time obsessing over employees working from Bali or their couch, it’ll be at their peril.?

Because the shift has already happened, whether the C-suite wants to accept it or not?— employees are no longer asking for a flexible work environment. They're demanding it.??

Thanks for reading????On The Clock — see ya in two weeks ??