IBM warns employees against WFH, urges return to office

Despite the tech companies laying off employees as a part of their cost-cutting strategies, IBM has advised its staff who work from home to be careful. The company’s CEO, Arvind Krishna, has warned employees that remote work could pose a risk to their career.

Additionally, it’s also mentioned by the top officials that they don’t want anyone to come to office right away, but asserted that remote workers will find it difficult moving up the hierarchy. This is true more so for roles in a managerial position where one is heading a team of workers.  Krishna asserted managing people remotely is difficult because as a people manager, it is essential to have occasional face-to-face interactions with your team. He clarified that this does not mean constant monitoring or adherence to outdated surveillance practices, but rather periodic check-ins with employees.

It’s not long when Mark Zuckerberg, CEO, Meta (formerly known as Facebook), also expressed his views on remote work. He urged employees to seek more opportunities for in-person collaboration with colleagues, and claimed that the company’s initial analysis of performance data revealed that engineers who began working in-person at Meta and then transitioned to remote work, or remained working in-person, had better average performance than those who joined remotely.

Zuckerberg also sent an email to the employees mentioning their analysis that demonstrated that junior engineers tend to perform better on average when they work in-person with their colleagues at least three days per week. He acknowledged that more research is necessary, but hypothesised that it is simpler to establish trust in-person and that these relationships help employees work more efficiently.