Remote work has become an attractive option for several groups of people, including those burdened with family responsibilities and others simply looking to live their lives while making a living. However, the mandate enforced because of COVID-19 is slowly dissipating, as more and more companies are calling employees back to the office.
However, it has upset people who have created a good life around the flexible working situation. A person on Reddit shared how calling people back to the office created havoc at the company he worked for.
The person shared that he worked for a major food delivery app. When the bosses called people back to the office, the decision backfired as most of the people chose to leave the company.
Company had hired “remote-only” staff also
The Redditor shared that after the pandemic kicked in, the company shifted to working fully remote, like everyone else. It also hired some remote-only people during this time. They all worked in different time zones, but worked it out and adapted well.
He stated that since the company assured the staff that remote work would continue, many of them also relocated. All this flexibility translated to a happy team with high morale. The company made billions of dollars as people worked to make sure it kept progressing.
However, things changed when some senior members decided to change the whole thing around. “The entire C-suite decided that COVID was pretty much over… and that we would all be heading back to the office part-time, gradually increasing to full time,” the person wrote.
The problem was that most of the people working were hired on a remote-only basis, while others had relocated. The company told such people to “come up with a 1-year plan about how they were going to move without any assistance or compensation.”
“If you want to work from home, go work somewhere else”
During a company-wide town hall, one person asked whether exceptions would be made for those who did not, or could not, want to relocate. The CEO replied, “If you want to work from home, go work somewhere else.”
The staff was left dumbstruck and clearly unhappy with the response. People stopped joining online calls, gave company-wide meetings a miss, and several people resigned soon after. The company was caught unawares as a majority of people left. It was forced to make QC people do app development.