By Kirstie McDermott
Return to office（RTO) is now in full effect for most knowledge workers. Earlier this year, Deutsche Bank issued a three-day-a-week return to office mandate. Dell recently told its workers that if they want to stay working remotely, they will no longer be considered for promotions, with hybrid workers receiving preferential treatment.
ADVERTISEMENTThere can be an element of proximity bias at play when it comes to how remote and in-office workers are treated. Managers may tend to default to giving better projects and tasks to those workers they can actually see sitting at their desks.
That’s despite a 2022 report by Future Forum which found that workers with flexibility were 29 per cent more productive and had 53 per cent more focus.
Despite this, a Microsoft Work Trend Index indicated that 85 per cent of leaders and 49 per cent of managers find it hard to trust workers to be productive in a hybrid setup.
3 jobs to apply for in Germany this week
- Master Audiologist Springer, Sonova, Berlin
- Country Manager, Germany, CSL Seqirus, Berlin
- Business Developer, Amazon Freight, Amazon TA, Berlin
As a result, there is another factor to consider when it comes to why companies have been so determined to get workers back into the office.
ADVERTISEMENTA new survey of over 1,500 US managers from BambooHR revealed last month that a quarter of executives said they’d hoped RTO mandates would act as a lever to encourage employee turnover.
Companies expected that workers who had taken advantage of remote working during the pandemic wouldn’t want to come back, but in many cases that hasn’t panned out as planned.
The survey found that 25 per cent of C-suite and VP executives and 18 per cent of HR professionals said they’d hoped for voluntary turnover.
In return, 37 per cent of managers, directors and executives said they also believed that the layoffs experienced across the tech and banking sectors, for example, directly correlate to this issue.
Office costs
Occupancy rates in German offices have dropped around a third since before the COVID-19 pandemic, according to industry research, which found that while occupancy was typically between 80 per cent and 60 per cent, it is now hovering around 40 per cent to 50 per cent.
These figures might paint a picture of silent workplaces surrounded by dust gathering in the corridors, but the truth is a bit more nuanced.
Depending on the style of work a company has adopted, it may not need its entire workforce in the office every day, and many workers now spend at least some of their week working remotely.
3 jobs to apply for in Germany this week
- Master Audiologist Springer, Sonova, Berlin
- Country Manager, Germany, CSL Seqirus, Berlin
- Business Developer, Amazon Freight, Amazon TA, Berlin
As a result, available desks can be shared, fewer meeting rooms, amenity spaces and facilities are required, and many businesses have taken advantage of this environment to downsize their office space.
Cost is another leading factor, as city centre prices for commercial office space can vary widely across the bloc.
ADVERTISEMENTIt cost around €1,069 per square metre per year to rent work space in Paris in 2023. Milan and Dublin were cheaper at €690 and €633 respectively, while Berlin and Amsterdam averaged €540 and €535 each.
New behaviours emerge
In an uncertain working environment, people start to behave a little differently. Now wise to the existence of proximity bias, workers are starting to adopt new techniques to show their visibility.
One of those is the rise of coffee badging, whereby people make sure to register their presence at work by tapping in, have a couple of strategic conversations with a beverage in hand to make themselves visible, and then head back home where the real work gets done.
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- Data Reporting Operations Coordinator, EBA CLEARING, Paris
- Account Manager (f/d/m), Leica Biosystems, Dulmen
- Business Analyst SAFe agile, De Belastingdienst, Utrecht
Office peacocking or productivity theatre are similar expressions that showcase worker fears too. An office peacock is a person who talks a lot about what they’re doing and the impact their work is having.
Those in the productivity theatre are putting on an act to appear super-busy, important or highly stressed out.
Tactics include spending all day every day in a meeting room allegedly on video calls, rushing about the office carrying their laptop to give the impression that they’re on their way somewhere or adopting a stressed-out expression. It turns out there are a multitude of ways workers can semaphore that they’re an essential cog in the operation.
This is actually really common behaviour, according to analytics provider Visier. Almost 85 per cent of employees say they do it, and 43 per cent say they spend more than 10 hours pretending to be busy a week.
Regardless, none of this may be enough to keep your job secure in an environment where layoffs are a regular occurrence. The German submarine-to-steel company Thyssenkrupp announced 450 layoffs in April, Unilever will slash a third of all office roles in Europe by the end of 2025, and in Ireland, Intel has announced job cuts which could affect as many as 750 workers.
