this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2024
428 points (98.9% liked)

Technology

59605 readers
3302 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Office mandates don’t help companies make more money, study finds::Three years after the coronavirus pandemic sent people to work from home in record numbers, U.S. employers are still struggling to get people back to the office.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] MeekerThanBeaker@lemmy.world 142 points 10 months ago (18 children)

Companies likely lose money with more workers in the office. More electricity, more water, more supplies. More unhappy employees, more tired employees, more good employees looking elsewhere for WFH jobs.

[–] SkyezOpen@lemmy.world 74 points 10 months ago (14 children)

Probably sunk cost fallacy with the lease. Building is paid for, why not use it and also be better able to micromanage your drones?

[–] Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 6 points 10 months ago (4 children)

In many cases they don't even own the building!

[–] nilloc@discuss.tchncs.de 14 points 10 months ago (2 children)

The leases are often very long term like 5-10 years. So they are locked into paying for the building or risk hurting the company’s credit lines. So in a sense, they have paid for the building use. Which I think was OP’s intent, since they mentioned the lease.

[–] Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Sure but leaving it empty until the loan expires is still cheaper. My point is, in most cases it's not the company's problem if the building they have their office in loses value because it's empty and no one wants to renew their contract, so why force employees to go back?

[–] nilloc@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 10 months ago

You’re right, and you’re pretty much describing the sunk cost fallacy as well.

They probably don’t save much money that way though. You stop have to keep the place warm enough and clean enough to prevent mold and frozen pipes. Many are in bigger buildings with cleaning, maintenance and security contracts.

I suspect as dumb as it is, the moronic managers still think micro-managing makes up for the 5-10% cost of employees there (might even be less in some offices). And as said before, they usually at best break even, while alienating the smarter employees who go find wfh jobs.

[–] SkyezOpen@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago

Yeah my language was imprecise, thanks for clarifying.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (10 replies)
load more comments (13 replies)