Why Workers Are Being 'Graded' on Office Attendance

If work is starting to remind you of grade school, you're not alone – increasingly, executives are tying job success to showing up to an office. Plus, why you should slide into DMs for a new job.

Why are CEOs still so intent on taking worker attendance?

Employers have dangled all sorts of perks – free food, concerts and on-site yoga – to entice employees back to the office, with varying degrees of success. Now, some are taking a more drastic approach: tying in-person office attendance to employee performance reviews.

Google and JPMorgan have each told staff that office attendance will be factored into performance evaluations. The US law firm Davis Polk informed employees that fewer days in the office would result in lower bonuses. And Meta and Amazon both communicated to their staff that they're now monitoring badge swipes, with potential consequences for workers who don't comply with attendance policies – including job loss.

Increasingly, workers across many jobs and sectors appear to be barrelling towards the same fate.

In some ways, it's unsurprising bosses are turning back to attendance as a standard. After all, we've long been conditioned to believe showing up is vital to success, from some of our earliest days. In school, perfect attendance is often still seen as a badge of honour. The obsession with attendance has also been a mainstay of workplace culture for decades; pre-pandemic, remote work was largely unheard of, and employees were expected to be physically present at their desks throughout the workday.

Yet after the success of flexible arrangements during the pandemic, attendance is still entrenched as a core metric. What's the point?

Read more from Rebecca M. Knight on the attendance mandate still plaguing workers.

The workers sliding into recruiters' DMs

Before copywriter and creative director Sarah Jenkins went freelance, she spent three years at a small advertising agency – one she courted via "a combo of DM-slide and cold email".

After admiring the agency's work from afar, she messaged the creative director, a casual acquaintance, on Facebook. After the director responded positively, 40-year-old Jenkins, based in Missouri, US, emailed the founder and CEO the same day. She met with the CEO the following week and landed a senior copywriter position soon after, thanks to her years of experience working for a larger agency.

Jenkins says, "They weren't technically hiring for anything that fit my skills at that time. But I had big 'why not' energy."

Many applicants are getting bolder, skirting old-school hiring practices, and going straight to the source. It's an increasingly common strategy that's helping some workers of all stripes – especially young ones – land coveted roles.

Read more from Lillian Stone on the outreach tactic helping people get jobs.

The perks and incentives coaxing workers back to the office

In August, when Zoom ordered its workers back to the office, shock rippled across the internet. The video conference platform, which has now become nearly synonymous with remote work, seemed to be flying in the face of the very thing they represented. The company now requires employees living within 50mi (80.5km) to work from the office at least twice a week.

Zoom is just one of the latest businesses to issue an office return ultimatum. Amazon sent a warning email to employees they believed were disobeying its three-days-in-the-office rule. Google released a memo giving managers permission to factor unexcused absences from the office into performance reviews. Advertising network Publicis bluntly told US workers that failure to come into the office three times a week could impact salary increases, bonuses and promotion opportunities.

Many workers who've gotten used to lenient remote work policies are unhappy amid increasing calls for autumn returns. Some companies are digging in their heels, threatening to punish workers who stay at home. Others, however, are taking less hardline approaches, and many say these gentler tactics are working. Managers are taking note.

Read more from Sophia Epstein on the benefits that could lure workers to office desks.

As always, find more at BBC Worklife ?and?BBC Business . See you next week.

–Meredith Turits, Editor, BBC Worklife