[Real Beat] Resignation Over "Return to Office" Directive... Remote Work Sparks 'Talent Shift' Reality [Office Shift]④

Power Struggle Between Management and Employees Over 'Office Return'
Office Supporters "Many Advantages", Remote Workers "Need Flexibility"

Editor's Note[Jjinbit] is a shortened form of 'Jung Hyunjin's Business Trend' and 'Real Business Trend,' a segment that showcases trends in changes in work. The segment within Jjinbit called 'Office Shift' closely examines changes in offices triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic and serves as a foundation to explore answers to work styles through experiments we have experienced together. It comes to you every Saturday and Sunday morning. After 40 installments, it will also be available as a book.

[Asia Economy Reporter Jung Hyunjin] Ian Goodfellow, an AI (Artificial Intelligence) technology developer at Apple, resigned in May 2022. Why did this star engineer in his 30s, one of the world’s leading experts in machine learning, leave? It was because Apple required employees to come to the office at least one day a week starting April of the same year. Apple CEO Tim Cook explained that he realized the necessity of face-to-face collaboration during the remote work period.

Ian Goodfellow (Photo by Goodfellow SNS)

According to Joy Schiffer of IT media The Verge, Goodfellow announced his resignation in a memo to employees, stating, "I believe more flexibility was the best policy for our team," and resigned in protest of CEO Cook’s decision. This was the moment when a talent who had been hard to recruit from Google left Apple and moved to DeepMind, Google’s AI subsidiary.

As seen in Goodfellow’s case, changes in the work environment have become a decisive factor in talent movement. Before COVID-19, going to the office was a rule that employees naturally followed. However, after experiencing remote work, employees are now questioning management about the reasons for having to come to the office. Amid significant differences in views between management and employees regarding the productivity of remote work, a subtle power struggle is unfolding in the office environment. In hybrid work, which mixes remote and office work, there even appears to be a tug-of-war over the number of days to come to the office.

◆ GM Announces, Then Delays... Goldman Sachs Partially Returns

Especially in 2022, many companies in the U.S. that had been working remotely declared 'Return To Office (RTO).' Facing concerns about economic recession, interest rate hikes, and soaring inflation, some companies decided they needed to increase productivity and demanded employees return to the office to revive traditional work methods. However, as seen in previous cases, the process of bringing employees back to the office is not smooth.

[Image source=Reuters Yonhap News]

General Motors (GM) announced its office return plan in September last year but postponed it to after the first quarter of this year just four days later. According to CNBC and others, GM announced at the end of last year that it would mandate employees to come to the office at least three days a week. However, after the announcement, complaints flooded the internal bulletin board. GM had introduced a flexible work policy called 'Work Appropriately' in April 2021, and employees expressed anger when the company reversed its stance.

According to Detroit Free Press, a U.S. automotive media outlet, GM stated in an email announcing the delay, "Our plan was to design a solution that balances the needs of the company and employees," and "We do not plan to mandate which days of the week will be collaboration days. There will be no progress on 'Work Appropriately' before the first quarter of 2023."

What about Goldman Sachs, the world’s largest investment bank? After experiencing COVID-19, some employees returned to the Wall Street office. Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon has repeatedly emphasized in public that remote work was a 'deviation' since the early days of the pandemic and stressed the need for office work. According to U.S. publications like Fortune, he believed that maintaining Goldman Sachs’ culture, which centers on teamwork, and conducting employee training face-to-face were essential. More than half of Goldman Sachs employees are in their 20s and early in their careers. Solomon officially declared a return to the office for all employees in February 2022 and prohibited remote work citing COVID-19 in September of the same year.

David Solomon Goldman Sachs CEO
Photo by Reuters Yonhap News

In an October interview with CNBC last year, Solomon revealed that before the pandemic, 75% of employees came to the office five days a week. On the first official return-to-office day in February 2022, the office attendance rate was 50%, rising to about 65% by October of the same year. However, this was still about 10 percentage points lower than pre-pandemic levels. Two months after the CNBC interview, at the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) conference in December, Solomon admitted, "From Monday to Thursday, operations are quite similar to pre-pandemic," but "Friday is somewhat different."

According to a survey conducted in May last year by Professor Nicholas Bloom of Stanford University and his team, although companies in the U.S. demanded five-day office attendance, about half of employees did not return to the office, and four out of ten employers had taken no significant action in response.

◆ 'Office Advocates': "Office is a Space for Collaboration and Training, with Many Advantages"

The so-called 'office advocates,' who emphasize the necessity of coming to the office, stress face-to-face collaboration. They point out that the longer the remote work period, the more the efficiency and productivity gained from working in the same space with supervisors and colleagues disappear. They believe that coming to the office allows for building relationships face-to-face, fostering a sense of belonging to the workplace, and real-time communication, all of which can improve productivity.

The world’s largest entertainment company, Walt Disney, instructed employees to come to the office four days a week starting March 1, 2023. Disney CEO Bob Iger said, "Over the past few months, meeting with teams across the company made me think about the tremendous value of working together with others," adding, "In a creative business like ours, nothing can replace physically being together, collaborating with colleagues, and having opportunities for professional growth."

In Korea, the game industry within the IT sector declared a return to the office in June last year, explaining that collaboration was necessary. To create a game, teams must work together, and efficient communication is required, which remote work hinders. It was reported that remote work was evaluated as a reason for disruptions in new game development. The game industry explains that sitting next to each other, seeing faces, and having real-time conversations enable creative ideas to emerge.

There are also criticisms regarding educational issues that arose during the COVID-19 period due to remote work. New or young employees have traditionally learned and grown by observing supervisors in the office environment. There is nonverbal training?learning by watching?that is difficult to realistically implement in a non-face-to-face environment. Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan, who attended the World Economic Forum (WEF, Davos Forum) in January this year, also evaluated in an interview with CNBC that remote work does not work well for young employees, spontaneity, and management aspects.

◆ 'Remote Work Advocates': "Flexible Work Environments Tailored to Individuals Are Needed"

The so-called 'remote work advocates,' who refuse to return to the office, emphasize the need for flexibility in new work styles. Since each employee has different spaces and times where they can focus on work, a flexible work environment allows individuals to create an appropriate environment for themselves, thereby improving work efficiency. They argue that jobs that can be done with just a laptop do not need to be fixed to the office to achieve results, and improved performance during the COVID-19 period is evidence of this.

They also question the necessity of going to the office when the way of working is not much different from remote work. When Apple ordered employees to come to the office at least three days a week in May last year, employees formed a group called 'Apple Together' and submitted a petition opposing office attendance. According to U.S. economic media Business Insider and others, Apple Together stated, "We have shown that work is possible over the past two years," and requested to be allowed to discuss and decide work methods with direct supervisors. Facing employee backlash, Apple was excluded from the 'Top 100 Best Places to Work in 2023' on the anonymous U.S. workplace review platform Glassdoor for the first time since 2009.

△ Management talks about the meaningful experience of chance encounters in the office, but we do not have only one office. We must intentionally try to contact each other.
△ It is inefficient for everyone to come to the office for occasional necessary face-to-face collaboration. Remote work has enabled international collaboration.
△ Fixing the number of office days reduces flexibility. Please allow us to decide the appropriate method according to our work.
△ Commuting to and from the office is very exhausting. Commuting wastes mental and physical resources as well as time.
△ Company policy adjustments can harm employee diversity. It means hiring people who can meet office attendance conditions rather than the most suitable person for the position.
△ We tell customers that Apple products enable effective remote work. But what if we ourselves cannot work remotely? Returning to the office is a policy that is bad not only for Apple employees and products but ultimately for customers.
(Source: Apple Together website)

Additionally, there is an argument that not commuting increases productivity. According to recent research by Professor Bloom and others, after the COVID-19 outbreak, the average commuting time for workers decreased by 1 hour and 12 minutes. In Korea, it decreased by 1 hour and 26 minutes. The largest decrease was in China, with 1 hour and 42 minutes. When asked in surveys about the best aspect of remote work, most workers answered 'not having to commute.' Remote work advocates argue that saving the time and energy spent on commuting allows them to focus more on work.