Why do companies want to return to the office?

The only reason to reduce head count is to save money. What is the benefit you think reducing head count makes other than saving money?

I think you are wrong here. It is not just the civil service and small local Irish companies. I work for a very large multinational as do many of my friends and they aren't being forced back into the office nor their clients.

How do you know? Only reason companies operate is to make money. If it is about reducing head count the only reason is to save money. You haven't explained why they want to reduce the head count just repeated that RTO is to reduce head count. Where I am they are increasing head count so do you think that is why they aren't making people go in? The fact they don't have enough space has nothing to do with it?!

You also moved from some will say to stating it as absolute fact

Start over. The thread is asking why are companies doing RTO when it doesn't make a lot of sense holistically. In the case of Amazon they aren't measuring productivity and only sacking the worst performers. It's a sweeping change across everyone.

What American companies often do is silent sacking. They have found rather giving people severance is cheaper to make them quit. Pips are another way. They often target the most expensive staff, the higher performers as it cheaper. Especially if they are attached to a failed product line or business area. They cut that business and move staff in into jobs they won't like.

When you look at Amazon it worth considering how often they have checked so many of theses boxes over the last couple of years before getting to RTO. Also the leaks from internal staff paint their own story.

Maybe it's not what they are doing, who can say for certain, but if it looks like a duck etc.

Theres nothing personal about it. It's just how it's done.

They are tech companies with a very young age profile. Work life balance isn't something they are terribly concerned about.

It's not my theory I'm just repeating what's been widely reported the media for months, years even. I'm surprised it's news to anyone. It's not even new to it RTO mandate's.

It costs more to do redundancies then if people just leave.

https://medium.com/%40ezcoach1/quiet-firing-versus-actual-firing-5e13d7023e08

https://justingarrison.com/blog/2023-12-30-amazons-silent-sacking/

Isn't the whole debate a sham in fairness? Companies saying they want people in for the sake of productivity when there is, at the very least, an element of control about it. And I've yet to see any company provide conclusive evidence that workers are more productive in an office.

People saying "I prefer to WFH because I'm more productive" which really means "I prefer to WFH because it suits my life better". Most don't give a flying f**k about where they are most productive and, similarly, provide little to no evidence that they are more productive at home.

Personally, I like going to the office but don't like the inconvenience of it (getting up earlier, the commute). I wouldn't want to give up my 2 days in office/3 days at home because of that and because it suits me from a childcare perspective. But, at the end of the day, my company pays my wages so they decide where I work. That's their right. So I'm very bloody grateful to them that they allow me my current arrangement.

Kinda farcical to say there's no data considering the studies that have been done. Largest WFH experiment ever. Just shows that people are happy to claim ignorance of them. Not that it matters theres no legislation protecting WFH. Really thats what it comes down to. Its a perk. Theres no entitlement to it.

Why are there so many company brown nosers here?

you cant have unused facilities, reason one - reason two if your job can be done fully remote it’s on a list of jobs that that could potentially be done in low cost locations.

You are mixing up certain things here to claim that 2 company's actions outside of Ireland applies to Ireland and all other companies in Ireland. Redundancy in Ireland is already paid for and the company doesn't lose money as it is in a fund they have already put money into. The reason they act like the way is because it is cheaper and they want to reduce costs which doesn't apply here and it is not just about reducing head count it is about costs nothing more.

If they tried that here it would go to the labour courts as it isn't legal here. Look at what happened with Twitter cases here

The biggest tech companies in the world have amassed huge empires based mainly on the collection, analysis and sale of data. Facebook and Amazon know exactly what their users want to see, hear or buy and they use it to squeeze every drop of income out of it. And you can be 100% sure that they know exactly the same about their employees.

They know exactly what WFH, hybrid and full-time in-office work mean for output and productivity, there is no one on the planet who understands it better. And they're the front-runners in bringing people back in.

There is not a match up on data taken from consumption of a product and data held on employees. There are these things called laws that don't allow it. The data on customers is also not used on an individual level but for overall stats. Lots of people don't understand how data is used and the multiple legal issues and just mash up vague understandings together to make up fantasy

What law precludes you from measuring the output of your employees? I'm not suggesting that facebook is spying on individuals to see how often Dave in Naas moves his mouse or what time Natasha in Sandyford logs in, but it's incredibly naive to think they're not collecting data in the aggregate.

The idea that these giant, data-driven, profit-focused behemoths are just sticking their finger in the air and saying "yeah, let's get the workers back in so the managers have something to do" is the fantasy.

 The data on customers is also not used on an individual level but for overall stats.

That's an interesting take on it. How then do Facebook and Google know exactly what ads to put in my feeds? How does Twitter know exactly what I'm interested in? Of course they're analysing individual data.