Bosses who order staff back to the office are “dinosaurs of our age”, says work guru

Several companies this year abandoned remote and hybrid work configurations that were introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This week, Amazon became the latest in a string of companies to order employees back to the office full-time starting in January in a bid to strengthen the company’s culture.

In August, the CEO of the provocative smartphone brand Nothing said that remote work is not “compatible with a high level of ambition plus speed.”

In a memo to staff, Nothing boss Carl Pei suggested those unwilling to sign up for the group’s RTO mandate look for other jobs.

These tech bosses are reflecting a wave that makes the return to the five-day-at-the-office norm feel ever more inevitable. The banking sector was another early leader in bringing full-time staff back under their noses.

In a KPMG survey of 1,300 executives last year, 63% of bosses said workers would return to the office full-time from 2026.

The rationale behind these bosses’ decisions is often the same, bringing the benefits of collaboration and team culture. Many also have an underlying suspicion that their employees don’t work as hard on remote days.

However, a management guru with decades of experience tracking the negative impact of office work says the move is wrong.

Sir Gary Cooper, professor of organizational and health psychology at the University of Manchester, said the practice of Amazon and investment banks to force their staff to return to work five days a week was against the evidence.

Cooper coined the term “presenteeism,” which refers to employees who are in the office but have low productivity due to illness. He fears that company-wide mandates for office work risk entrenching these problems rather than providing a silver bullet for growth-hungry firms.

“Unfortunately, some organizations and companies are considering trying to force people back into the work environment five days a week. I think they are the dinosaurs of our age. The old command-and-control type of management style,” Cooper said Tutor.

“If you value and trust people to get on with their work and give them autonomy – and flexible working is one of those – they’ll perform better, you’ll keep them and they’ll be less likely to be stressed. associated disease.

“If you micromanage, you won’t get productivity gains and you won’t attract the next generation.”

As businesses continue to cut back on flexibility for their staff, the UK’s new Labor government is stepping in to make flexibility in workers’ contracts law.

Labor is creating a bill that could see the most significant overhaul of workers’ rights in generations, including the right to work remotely.

Jonathan Reynolds, the Labor government’s business secretary, says flexible arrangements could boost the UK economy and increase employee satisfaction.

Underscoring his point, Reynolds verified Cooper’s eponymous argument.

“I think it’s important to emphasize that good employers understand that the workforce, in order to keep them motivated and resilient, needs to judge people on results and not on a culture of presenteeism,” Reynolds told Times.

The Labor Government is also looking at ‘Right to Stop’ legislation which would prevent bosses from repeatedly contacting their workers outside working hours, as well as giving employees the legal right to request flexible working arrangements, including a reduced work week when joining a company.

The stakes are higher than they have been in decades when it comes to staff well-being.

Gen Z are facing an epidemic of mental illness, meaning they are more likely to call in sick to work than Gen Xers 20 years their senior, the Resolution Foundation found earlier this year.

According to Cooper, spending more time at the office won’t provide the tonic for these ailments.

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