It’s hard to trust and want to work for leaders when employees feel they’re being lied to or that their leaders don’t seem to care about how their decisions affect their employees.
Senior management has been hypocritical in a very abrupt RTO policy and have demonstrated that they have no plan to effectively or fairly implement it. When given employee questions, most responses are tone deaf and vague that do not seem to add up with realities that employees face.
Promises were made for years that they like and will keep current hybrid schedules (at the time). People moved out of state and people were hired being told those promises. This spawned some of the most productive years of the company, while people were happiest to be working there.
Then one day they essentially told most of the workforce “move back to one of the most expensive places to live, commute hours if you can’t live here, or go find another job.”
In other cases, people that live 15 mins away can work remote, while others have to commute hours each way to the office.
Both of these people have the same job function.
This leaves lots of people with questions and no straight answers. Due to this lack of consistency, it leaves employees seeing themselves and others as “winners and losers” or “important and not important” at the company.
“We can’t lose this person 15 mins away, so they can work remote. You on the other hand… a 1.5 hour commute isn’t THAT bad.”