More and more Dell employees are saying no to working from the office after the company resorted to strict mandates and punitive policies to get employees back in the office. In February, Dell introduced a return-to-office mandate, as the company told employees to formally classify themselves as either hybrid or remote. The company had then said that employees who chose to work from home will not be eligible for promotion or be able to change their roles. For hybrid workers, the company said that they must come to office 39 days in a quarter- which is roughly three days a week. The company also said that the attendance of these employees will be monitored using a color-coded system.
Internal data showed that almost 50% of Dell’s full-time workers in the US have opted to stay remote, Business Insider reported. These means that these employees will not be eligible for promotion while around a third of international staff chose to stay remote. On this, the company said as per the report, that it believes “in-person connections paired with a flexible approach are critical to drive innovation and value differentiation.”
One worker told the outlet, “My team is spread out around the world. Almost 90% of the team did the same as in our case there was no real advantage going to the office.”
Another said as per the report that there are personal and financial benefits of working remotely which are too good to give up. They said, “I benefited a lot from being WFH since 2020 and had a lot of personal growth. I’m not willing to give that up if I don’t have to”, adding that prior to Covid their life “was basically home and work,” and nothing else.
“The more time I have to spend in the office, the less time, money, and personal space I have for all of that. I can do my job just as well from home and have all of those personal benefits as well,” they said while another cited cost of commuting as the reason to skip work from office, “With the salary that we are receiving, a return to the office would leave a huge hole in our budget.”
A staffer on the global team of the company said, “I am not going to work eight hours in a Dell office and then come home and work three more hours in meetings with my folks in India or Malaysia.”