Employers oftentimes may only be hurting themselves by denying their employees’ strong, justifiable preference to work remotely.
Commentary
Walmart, which remains America’s largest employer despite Amazon’s rise to the status of world’s largest online seller,
announced on May 14 that it will let go of hundreds of its corporate staff and require the majority of those of its 1.6 million employees working remotely to return to the office, some four years after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Those who appreciate that the free market leaves workers materially better off than any other way of conducting economic affairs shouldn’t be too quick to criticize businesses’ decisions to cut costs via workforce reductions. Absent excessive government and taxation, those finding themselves out of a job are empowered to find another job with minimum difficulty. Nevertheless, no one should imagine that Walmart is tightening its belt out of being faced with lean times.
As an “essential business,” no one fared better under the lockdowns than Walmart, whose net sales, for instance,
grew by 10.5 percent in the first quarter of the pandemic in 2020, its e-commerce sales skyrocketing by 74 percent. The overall retail market, by comparison, declined by nearly 3 percent in that period. Walmart, in fact, was the
only retailer with net income growth during the first quarter of 2020.
Its sales were $611 billion in 2022 with profits
doubling, and that money isn’t sitting idly. Not only has Walmart been prosperous enough to be found frequently gobbling up other companies, like Irvine, California-based electronic appliance maker Vizio, but it announced last month that it will be installing electric vehicle charging stations in the parking lots of thousands of its stores in the coming years and will
open more than 150 branches domestically over the next five years and refurbish 650 of its current stores across the country. Walmart’s stock price is up by about 50 percent since the beginning of COVID-19.
Its new personnel decision means that most Walmart employees in Dallas, Atlanta, and even Toronto will be required to relocate to Bentonville, Arkansas, the firm’s birthplace and headquarters, where a 350-acre complex is being constructed featuring a child care center, a hotel, a 360,000-square-foot health center and gym, a dining hall, and a 37-mile walking-and-biking trail.
The objective is obviously a corporate home away from home. Chief People Officer Donna Morris, in an email to her people, remarked, “We believe that being together, in person, makes us better and helps us to collaborate, innovate and move even faster.”
She added, “We also believe it helps strengthen our culture as well as grow and develop our associates.”
Now throughout the industrial age, breadwinners have kissed their spouses goodbye in the morning and spent the daylight hours away from hearth and loved ones, sometimes for more than eight hours. In not a few cases and for varied reasons, the spouse and children prefer the frequent absence of the family’s chief moneymaker. In one- and two-income families alike, it is a way of life that works.
But it is also true for families that “being together, in person, makes us better”; parents, for instance, are often better able to impart their values to their children
when schooling takes place at home, the teacher in homeschooling being someone who loves the pupil as his or her own flesh and blood, and socialization happening through joint sessions and get-togethers with fellow homeschoolers.
Futurists of the past announced the prophecy that workers would be losing their chains, not thanks to Marx but because computerization would allow them the convenience, comforts, and savings in travel costs of working from home. Alvin Toffler, author of the 1970’s massive global bestseller “Future Shock,”
predicted accurately that the home would “assume a startling new importance” as “a central unit in the society of tomorrow ... with enhanced rather than diminished economic, medical, educational and social functions.”
In 1990, Apple visionary Steve Jobs
previewed the advance of the computer age: “As we start to link these computers together with sophisticated networks and great user interfaces, we’re starting to be able to create clusters of people working on a common task” who “can work together extremely efficiently no matter where they are geographically. And no matter who they work for hierarchically.”
Some employees, of course, prefer a traditional workplace setting, whether it be for the in-person camaraderie or as a remedy to the cabin fever of being stuck at home all the time. But some 82 percent of U.S. workers
said during the lockdowns that after the pandemic they wanted to work remotely at least once a week, preferably half the time, while only 8 percent didn’t wish to work at home frequently; 19 percent wanted to work at home all the time, according to a survey of 1,100 by the Global Workplace Analytics consulting firm.
Further findings show that if not permitted to work from home after the pandemic, 54 percent would remain with that employer but would be less willing to “walk the extra mile,” while 46 percent would seek another job, according to a 2020 survey by Massachusetts-based videoconferencing firm Owl Labs. In 2016, Gallup found that 35 percent of employees would be willing to change jobs in order to work from home full time, 37 percent if it was to work remotely some of the time. Owl Labs found in 2019 that more than a third of workers would take a pay cut of 5 percent to work from home some of the time while a quarter would take a 10 percent pay cut and 20 percent of employees would take an even bigger reduction in salary. Employers oftentimes may only be hurting themselves by denying their employees’ strong, justifiable preference to work remotely.
This is the long-promised high-tech world of full personal control over one’s own life and family environment, with all the satisfaction and fulfillment accompanying it. It is one of the primary dividends of what George Gilder in describing the technological revolution
called nothing less than “the overthrow of matter,” as “some 100 million personal computers around the world” are nothing less than “individuals at a workstation with the creative power of factory owners of the Industrial Age.” From news reports to science fiction movies, mankind has been promised this technological harvest for many decades now, and they resent it when bosses deny it to them despite the fact that the technology facilitating it is now ubiquitous and relatively inexpensive.
What’s more, that hoary rallying cry from Marx and Engels, “Workers of the world, unite!” is finally being heeded by the proletariat, but it’s happening by shoving capitalists up against the wall in a different manner than anticipated. A year ago, thousands of Amazon employees staged a
walkout in objection to the firm’s return-to-office mandates, as well as to the biggest series of layoffs, numbering in the ten thousands, in Amazon’s history, and a perceived failure of this very green company to be green enough.
Gathering outside Amazon’s Seattle headquarters, employees carried signs declaring messages that included: “Earth’s best employer? Stop the PR and listen to us.” One worker told the press that telecommuting had allowed her more time with her family; others described how it allowed them to care for newborns and handicapped or elderly relatives. Workers petitioned Amazon CEO Andy Jassy to cancel the return-to-work directive.
Beyond Walmart and Amazon, major firms such as Boeing, Google, JP Morgan Chase, IBM, and UPS are executing some form of “return to the office or else,” but they may regret it. A Conference Board
survey in January found that most CEOs recognize this, with only six of 158 asked saying they will prioritize bringing employees back into the office full time this year. At the same time, however, some eight out of 10 companies are going to be
tracking their workers’ office attendance this year.
The get-tough policy has led to many valued employees
engaging in the practices of “quiet quitting”—resentfully performing only the bare minimum—and “coffee badging,” i.e., appearing in the office only long enough to grab a cup of coffee, then leaving for the day. Henry Nothhaft, Jr., president of EssentialDx, a business diagnostic solutions provider, told CNBC that many firms are finding the enforcement of return-to-work edicts not being taken seriously, with a critical mass of employees defying the rules, many of them productive and valued workers. Lower-level employees see their own managers defying the policy and continuing to work from home. Workers come in and are disgusted to find themselves spending the entire workday on video conference calls that they could have taken part in at home.
There is obviously widespread hostility for the very decision of imposing requirements to return to work, considering that telecommuting has been a widespread success for years now, and workers place a high value on the flexibility it gives them.
Perhaps the most glaring contradiction comes from one of the architects of the social computer age, none other than Facebook founder and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who during year one of the pandemic,
observed that “good work can get done anywhere, and I’m even more optimistic that remote work at scale is possible, particularly as remote video presence and virtual reality continue to improve.” Reversing this sentiment last fall, Meta required its employees to come into the office at least three days a week, a PR statement declaring: “In the near-term, our in-person focus is designed to support a strong, valuable experience for our people who have chosen to work from the office, and we’re being thoughtful and intentional about where we invest in remote work.”
The hysteria that the federal government inflamed in reaction to COVID-19 led both to the negative of children forced to stay home from school and interface with teachers over the computer, to their mental and intellectual detriment, and the great positive of their parents learning that the dawn of the work-from-home age had been delayed for no better reason than executives preferring to keep the drones in the hive.
For the sake of a happy home life and healthy families, the tech pioneers who have made billions dangling before our eyes a future of un-imagined personal preference via the microchip should follow through on their promises when it comes to those who have devoted their careers to making their entrepreneurial dreams a reality.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
