Vodafone says it will withhold bonuses from employees who don’t return to office

Report: Strict enforcement comes as Vodafone is reducing domestic office space.

See full article...

 

[plectrum]

Just for context, a rail season ticket between London and Newbury, the kind of not uncommon London area commute, costs £5857.20 ($7550) per year for 2 days a week and £6356 ($8200) per year for full time. So that's the level of de facto pay cut - add 20% or 40% as it'll come from post tax income (40% if earning more than £50k)

 

[Uncivil Servant]

As a side note, it does feel really good telling recruiters I'm not interested in a job with an on-site requirement and hearing their disappointment because it's the Xth time this week they've received the same feedback from other potential recruits.

I'd be tempted to respond by thanking the recruiter for confirming that I'd made the right decision. If they keep hearing the same response and refuse to make changes in recruitment, I can't imagine they somehow become more responsive when dealing with clients, customers, or investors.

And worse, they're oblivious to how it looks.

 

[Theonlybutler]

offshoring roles to Málaga, [Spain], Romania, India, and other countries, and having some colleagues on legacy contracts based at home in the UK

This is the nugget of truth, basically looking for soft layoffs.

 

[Theonlybutler]

On the topic of in-person networking -- you can't network if you don't interact. As a junior employee, I tended not to reach out to superiors, even down the hall, for fear of interrupting them, looking foolish, etc. Sure, that's a Me problem, but I don't think it's that uncommon.

Now that I WFH, reaching out to someone on Teams is so much easier. I don't feel like I'm interrupting, I can take time to frame my questions clearly, and I can see our conversation history. It's so much more compatible with my workstyle, and I believe it would have worked for me when starting out as well.

I share your sentiment, also I can actually show you what I mean on two separate screens, rather than us huddle over a tiny desk pointing my pudgy fingers at something and hoping you remember.

I can also refer to documentation without distracting you learning.
This is also why is just so handy for meetings in general I don't have to schedule a further meeting to go lookup something.

 

[Theonlybutler]

I'm torn on RTO value. On the one hand, I've been working from home for a decade now, and have turned down job offers with even partial in-office requirements since. On the other hand, the first 7 years of my career were in an office setting and I would not have survived in my field had I not had the positive influence of a few mentors who eventually became peers who guided me and pushed me.

It's just different when you're remote, and I don't think I'd recommend it for many who are just starting out in their career. But now that I'm established, I'm never going back.

These days we have Teams and Zoom, and with the right culture (that ensures there's frequent calls, no formality and good documentation), there's no reason someone should miss out on that regardless.

 

[coolblue2000]

I'm torn on RTO value. On the one hand, I've been working from home for a decade now, and have turned down job offers with even partial in-office requirements since. On the other hand, the first 7 years of my career were in an office setting and I would not have survived in my field had I not had the positive influence of a few mentors who eventually became peers who guided me and pushed me.

It's just different when you're remote, and I don't think I'd recommend it for many who are just starting out in their career. But now that I'm established, I'm never going back.

You say that but I trained two programming apprentices remotely and they both went on to very good careers. It is entirely down to company environment. If the company embraces Remote working then mentors can be just as effective remotely as they are in person. In fact more so sometimes. For instance I was able to talk to the Apprentices far more than if I was in person as I could just have them on a call while we both independently worked and they could get hold of me all the time. In an office I would likely have been in one of the millions of useless meetings managers put on to make themselves feel important. Or not necessarily able to speak so candidly due to office politics. I even worked in one office where talking was banned!! (Total silence is strangely oppressive).

I do however think it is important for companies to offer some sort of onsite working for those that want to do that.

 

[Geeklaw]

Hmmm. 8 days a month? I could come in for 8 straight days and work the rest from home.
Or I could work almost 5 straight months and work the rest of the year from home.

My first thought was work the last 8 days of a month and the first 8 days of the next month in office, then WFH for the next 5 weeks, and repeat. It's not ideal if you want full WFH but not a terrible trade. It'd be better if I could work the weekend days so I don't need those 16 in office days to span four work weeks, but I doubt most employers would be that flexible.

 

[chateauarusi]

Just for context, a rail season ticket between London and Newbury, the kind of not uncommon London area commute, costs £5857.20 ($7550) per year for 2 days a week and £6356 ($8200) per year for full time. So that's the level of de facto pay cut - add 20% or 40% as it'll come from post tax income (40% if earning more than £50k)

Thank you for this. I was reading through the comment thread, noting the dearth of responses recognizing the eye-watering cost of commuting in the UK, and thinking about how to add it. You got there first.

Though it should be additionally noted that the escalating expsense of rail commuting in the UK is pretty much a direct consequence of the selling off of previously nationalized rail services to private interests in the Thatcher era, which was, not coincidentally, rooted in a short-sighted "profit first!" mindset very similar to what's now driving the poorly considered RTO policies.

 

[pug fugly]

Going into a recession? Probably the cash, unfortunately.

Self imposed recession

 

[moddrift]

At some point, for the long term well-being of humanity, we are going to have to weed out the sociopaths. They are actively becoming too large of a burden, a hindrance, and a threat to us all.

 

[Astra Architect]

Withholding agreed upon compensation is theft.

Not if your labor agreement specifies that bonuses are not guaranteed and the amount, or the entire bonus, is contingent on factors that include whether or not you comply with company policies - i.e., a company RTO policy that mandates a minimum number of days per month in the office.

This is a British company. I'm not sure what British law says, or what the Vodafone labor agreement/contract says. But in the U.S. it would be perfectly legal so long as the employment agreement stipulates the bonus is discretionary and contingent upon one or more factors that encompass obeying a RTO mandate.

 

[plectrum]

Thank you for this. I was reading through the comment thread, noting the dearth of responses recognizing the eye-watering cost of commuting in the UK, and thinking about how to add it. You got there first.

Though it should be additionally noted that the escalating expsense of rail commuting in the UK is pretty much a direct consequence of the selling off of previously nationalized rail services to private interests in the Thatcher era, which was, not coincidentally, rooted in a short-sighted "profit first!" mindset very similar to what's now driving the poorly considered RTO policies.

Well, it's a bit more complicated than that. The main problem is that we have a railway network built for about a million people to commute into London every weekday, and now many people aren't doing it but all the fixed costs remain. So the railway is losing a lot of money, even more than it was losing pre COVID. The ~2-3% profit skimmed off by private operators is in the noise.

Concurrently the government for many years has been set upon reducing the amount funded to the railway out of taxation. That results in solid above inflation fare increases for many years, which does nothing to encourage more people to use the railway.

Add both together and it's a downward spiral and if you can it's much better not to play.

 

[Tonkaman]

It depends on how reliably the company pays, and how much. At my company you'd give up an average of 21% of your income by not taking the bonus. That includes the worst performance year the company ever had where the bonus paid at 16%, a bunch of years at-target (20%) and quite a few years in which the company overperformed and overpaid the 20%.

A former coworker used to work at a place (as an engineer) that 70%+ of his compensation was a profit-sharing bonus. He quit after two years because of the inconvenience of taxes and just monthly budgeting. He'd be paid the salary equivalent of $30k a year in the midwest, and then at the end of the year get a $60k+ bonus. They made asphalt plants (the mobile ones), so some years they'd sell only 2 machines and other years they'd sell 10 machines. Often your better off assuming no bonus when weighing job offers.

 

[Astra Architect]

If you can't tell the difference between RTO employees and "cheaters" without counting the card swipes, does it really matter? Or is it just a power play?

Counting card swipes, as you put it, provides hard evidence on non-compliance if management docks the bonus, issues a written warning, or lays off an employee and the affected employee files a complaint with HR or a lawsuit.

"Everybody in the office knows s/he wasn't coming in the minimum X days per week/month" doesn't work too well in a courtroom.

 

[Tonkaman]

Good, work from home workers have been shown to be less productive. The department of labor has had this information available since it began during COVID. The less productive people at a company don't get bonuses. Bonuses aren't wages, they aren't required to give you a bonus. Now, if you have a contract, and they're withholding something from your contract? Go ahead. However, almost nobody does.

This is false, and actually the opposite of reality.

 

[Astra Architect]

Meh. This'll all sort itself out. Either people will comply or they'll find new jobs. Or companies will take the "no promotions and/or bonuses" approach and the die hard WFHers will accept that.

 

[dgeb]

"Don't point out that we're only as competitive as we actually are, why aren't you lying for us on our behalf!?"

The things HR and management will say can be so absurdly unhinged but they never even bother to self reflect. It's just a regurgitation of exploitative corporate norms that actually harm themselves. Like, the HR employees, personally.

I think about it like this: take a given norm for employer/employee interaction and ask if it would be acceptable in a B2B negotiation setting.

"We won't share salary info until we're pretty sure you'll work with us."

"We won't share product pricing with you until we're already pretty sure you're committed to buying from us."

You'd literally be laughed out of the room (or off the call). It would be considered very unprofessional and would completely burn that bridge.

But for an employer? "You should be so lucky as to get an offer!"

vs "you should be so lucky to get us as a vendor!"

Yeahhhh no.

Trying to put off sharing any pricing is pretty common in B2B too - whilst it sounds ridiculous, it's fairly central to "value-based pricing". That's certainly not to say that it is /good/, but it perhaps doesn't stand as an example of your point.

 

[David651]

AI will be creeping into this space eventually replacing low level executives, supervisory and administrative level (white collar) professional personnel within five to ten years if we all don't blow ourselves up in a nuclear conflict. Take appropriate career action into occupations that would be resistant to AI replacement preferably technical occupations that require physical manual dexterity and spontaneous problem solving intelligence in which automation would be too cumbersome.

 

[physicsandcode]

I worked here in the past (left in ~2014). At the time I left, it was the norm for many roles to WFH at least one day a week. The Newbury campus is really big and it was all based on hot desking even then, unless you worked in the network operations centre. They run (ran?) a shuttle bus from Newbury station and there was lots of parking too. I'm pretty skeptical of the view that there's not enough office space there.

I used to get the train from Reading at the time and it was never particularly busy going in that direction in the morning.

 

[F MHilton]

"RTO? When I see my CEO in his office on the same days I'm in my office, then I'll return to work. Until then, no."

 

[s73v3r]

Good, work from home workers have been shown to be less productive.

WRONG.

Also, why should I care?

 

[cyberfunk]

And they make up those standards.

Bonus money isn't real until the check clears. It can be yanked back because the company's financials came in under expectations, or because your division came in under expectations, or because the company expects poor results next year, or because your performance evaluations weren't sufficiently glowing...

Trading work from home for the possible hope of a future bonus payment seems like a lousy deal.

Sure. Nothing is guaranteed from an employer until the money is in the bank, save for past work done and promised payment for. People would do well to remember that this is the cruel and ruthless world of business where the company rarely cares for the employee anymore.

 

[vze33jng]

As a worker with mental illness, I'm in a group of people who had no idea how great work could be until COVID-19 forced WFH on the world. My WFH requests had always been denied, despite completing ADA requests, having my pDoc provide very personal health info to my employer, and offering what seemed like reasonable work-arounds.

I'm in the enviable position where my social anxiety and PTSD-induced panic attacks are well-hidden and compensated for by acquired people skills (and, I'm told, charisma). Those qualities have been hard-won over thirty years in the workforce.

It took me three months of WFH to start sleeping through the night without fear of what the next day will bring. Will someone barge into my office and corner me behind my desk? Will I have to pretend that I dont feel like I'm about to scream because everyone is too close? Will I have to pull my car over until I can breathe again, or will I get to work on time today?

We've come a long way to accepting and destigmatizating mental illness, but that long way still means coworkers look at me funny, resent me for needing accommodations (which are almost never granted), and offer advice like, "calm down, man," or, "just run the presentation to the CEO, he likes you." Most neurotypical people dont have to deal with my problems, so its very convenient to blame my behavior on "silly fears" at best, or laziness, unwillingness to be part of the team, or incompetence at worst.

Now that I've had a taste of a morning commute to the office that involves 30 paces in slippers and pajamas, the ability and permission to turn off my webcam, and (the value of this cannot be overstated) the ability to have my cats on my lap for me to pet, I can't go back. I've turned down multiple job offers that claimed to be remote, but had some kind of RTO requirements.

Since I went fully WFH, I've had three performance reviews. All give me the highest scores for productivity and collaboration/teamwork. I've lost thirty pounds as I eat healthy food from home instead of the cafeteria, and take a 1-2 minute break every twenty minutes to stretch or do pushups or other exercise. I fill my gas tank every six weeks instead of every three days. I dont have to pop a Xanax every 90 minutes anymore.

I have to consider employers want to pay me less while I am so much more productive, but it's an easy calculation. It's a shame the industry is so blind to realities like mine.

 

[ceejayza]

Malicious Compliance.

Everyone come into the office on Monday.

You joke, but our entire company now does have to come in on Mondays. Traffic and parking is insane, but hey, that comes out of your time, not work time, so management doesn't care.